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Connor sighs, his head rolling to face me. “I wish today lasted forever,” he murmurs.
I take his hand, kiss the inside of his wrist. “Me, too.”
A short, sharp whistle has both of us looking up. Trevor’s fists are balled, his shoulders squared as he comes down the porch steps. Only they’re not my steps… they’re Connor’s.
* * *
Connor’s dad sits on the couch opposite us while Trevor paces the living room, back and forth, back and forth, and I wish he’d stop because it’s not that big of a deal. “What the hell were you thinking?” Trevor all but shouts. “Ava, I’ve been calling you nonstop. Where the hell is your phone?”
I try to remember… I’d left it in the car. All day. My pulse spikes. “Oh, my God, is Mom—”
“She’s fine, Ava, but that’s not the point! Do you know how worried I was? Do you know how many times I tried calling you? And you think you can just cut school for no reason? Do you know how expensive that school is? How hard I work to—”
“I’m sorry!” I cry out, tears welling. “I won’t do it again.”
“Sorry’s not really good enough—”
“What do you want me to say?”
“It’s my fault,” Connor speaks up. “She fell asleep on the way to school, and I didn’t want to wake her so—”
Corey interrupts him. “So you just didn’t bother going to school at all? Or not tell anyone where you were or what you were doing?”
“Jesus, Ava!” Trevor yells. “Goddammit, you have that phone glued to your hand twenty-four-seven and all of a sudden it’s not—”
“Stop!” I yell back. “Don’t take this away from me!” I swipe at the tears refusing to stop and look up at him. “Please,” I beg, my voice cracking, my heart breaking. “Today was the best day I’ve had since Mom got back, and I don’t want you or anyone else taking that away from me, okay? I said I was sorry. But I just wanted one day, Trevor. Just one day when I could act my age, when I could be careless and reckless and… God, I just wanted to be a seventeen-year-old girl spending time with a boy I love—”
“You love me?” Connor cuts in.
I drop my head in my hands, humiliated. I glare at Trevor, imploring him. “Can we just go? Please!”
“Ava,” Trevor sighs out. “There has to be consequences…”
“I know.” I stand and head for the front door. “And I’ll deal with them like I always do, but please… just enough, okay? I just…”
“Hey,” Connor coos, wrapping me in his arms. “It’s okay.”
Tears blur my vision when I look up at him. “I just…” I don’t want to go home, I admit only to myself. I don’t want to go home and live in the darkness now that I know what it’s like to breathe in the light. “I just have to go home.”
CONNOR
Dad waits until Trevor and Ava are out of the house and for sure out of earshot before speaking, his tone a lot calmer than Trevor’s. “Your coach called. You're suspended for a game, and they assured me that no matter what Ava says or does, this time it has to stick. They’re using you to set an example.”
I nod, keep my gaze lowered. “That’s fair.”
Dad sighs. “Connor, if you want to tell me what happened, I’m happy to listen.”
“Nothing,” I say, looking at him for the first time since I entered the house. “I picked her up this morning, and she mentioned she hadn’t slept well because of her mom…”
Dad nods, urging me to continue.
“And by the time I got to school she was fast asleep, and I… I don’t know, I felt bad waking her, so I just kept driving.”
“What did you guys do all day?”
Shrugging, I give him the truth. “I ended up parking near a lake, I guess, and we just spent the day… just…”
“Being teenagers?” Dad asks, a compassionate smile tugging on his lips.
