I took her to dinner.To a dive across the street from where Marcus told me the busker showed up most evenings. So far it was sort of a bust. The girl we were hoping to see hadn’t shown, but Venice Beach is a show at night. Big bro-dudes pumping iron, seventies’ style roller skaters, homeless hippie kids, lots to see. So we waited, eating greasy mozzarella sticks and nachos and chugging beers in the setting California sun. We also talked. First, about nothing much, things like the last time we were in Cali and other nonsense, but then I found myself asking Ava why she applied to work for my parents.
“In the beginning,” she said, “it had nothing to do with them or LSA. It was just an escape, ya know. I needed to find a way out of…” She paused, her eyes drifting up to the right as she considered her words. “My situation. I had this teacher who thought I was smart, and she helped people apply for scholarships and stuff. She showed me the flyer for the internship at LSA.” She took a bite of a mozzarella stick she was holding, and the white cheese oozed but didn’t sever immediately so it stretched until it snapped, hanging from her lip and sticking to her chin.
“You have…” I pointed to the cheese.
She swiped at it with her thumb, pushing the strand into her mouth and drawing my attention to her lips. Fuck.
I looked away. “So, that’s the story. LSA was your escape?”
“In the beginning, yes, and then it changed.”
“How?”
She shrugged and then deflected. “Why are you asking me about this?”
“I don’t know. I guess I’m curious why you dedicated your entire life to my parents’ company. I mean, you never went to college and clearly you could have. They would have sent you. I bet they even offered. But you seem perfectly content to just be part of LSA. Don’t you have dreams of your own?”
She scoffed at me. “Jesus, Bruno. You are such a condescending dick all the time. I am a twenty-two-year-old COO of a billion-dollar company. I think my dreams are fine.”
I hadn’t meant it the way she took it, so I tried to backtrack. “No, fuck. I mean, is that what you were going for the whole time? Like when you got your GED, were you thinking, someday I’m going to run this joint?”
She softened and shook her head no. “I was still thinking, I wanted out of my life and into the one your parents were offering. Your world was like an addiction for me. It was so safe, so unthreatening. I was appreciated. I wanted to be with you and your family all the time. But I was sure that you’d all wake up one day and remember I didn’t belong.”
“Really?” I questioned her, mostly because I always felt she fit so easily, like she came into my world and made more sense at my parents’ dining table than I did.
“That changed though,” she said, looking at her lap and fidgeting with the corner of her napkin.
“Of course, because they adored you,” I said flippantly, picking up a behemoth of a nacho and popping it into my mouth.
Glancing up, she stared at me and held my gaze hard when she said, “They didn’t make me feel accepted, Bruno. You did.”
I stopped chewing, the remnants of the nacho wet and heavy on my tongue. What?
“Are you surprised?” she asked, smiling quizzically.
I uncomfortably swallowed bits of chip that weren’t quite small enough to go down but also soggy enough to make it through. I picked up the water glass in front of me that had mostly been neglected so it was weeping condensation and took a huge swig.
“You are, you’re surprised,” she said, almost stunned. She sighed and then smiled sadly. “No one ever put me first except you. There were huge consequences to your choice in the subway that day. And you knew that, but you took the hit because you were sure that for you it would matter less than it would for me.”
I shifted in my seat and tried to be unimpressed by what she was saying. “I was fourteen, Ava. I’m not sure I really knew what I was doing.”
“No, you did. You knew you were saving me. It was a big deal. That moment shaped both our lives. You can’t pretend it didn’t.” She was emotional, her voice fluttering, but she fought past it, putting her hands on the table and sitting taller. “I know I owe you everything. I always will, and even though it hurt you, and it strained whatever good was between us, from that moment on, I felt safe with you. Safe for you.” She fumbled suddenly, growing uncomfortable. “I don’t know. It’s fucked up, I guess.” She laughed. “Maybe I’m just fucked up.”
“Join the club,” I said softly. And they were nothing words, a joke really, but I heard her. Every word she said pierced my skin, opening old sickly scars and letting sordid stagnant infection ooze.
She laughed again but it was a throwaway sound, a I’m-a-damn-fool kind of a laugh. Then she sniffled and picked up her napkin to wipe her nose. I didn’t want her to feel like what she said didn’t matter. It mattered. Ava mattered. Fuck, she was the one I called when I was lost. It was always her.
“I’d do it again,” I said a little too forcefully. Her eyes flooded and I watched her chin twitch as she clenched her teeth to keep from crying.
“Really?” She was barely audible.
I nodded curtly.
We just looked at each other. Another staring contest, only there was no winning this time. This was all bare souls and pain. This was thank you and I hate you and I need you. This was the fucked-up turmoil of being a goddamn unlovable mess and somehow in some weird way knowing there was one person who was there, one person who would always show up. This was probably what love looked like when no one taught you how to love.
Ava looked away first. She turned her face so I was left staring at her profile. The hard line of her nose, the plush curves of her pink lips. The ocean breeze picked up and fluttered through her hair as she pointed and said, “Look. Isn’t that her, Marcus’s busker?”