As it was, the day of the barbecue had come, and I still hadn’t decided if I should even go. Things were awkward with Ava at work as it was. Being away from the professional environment and just hanging out with our families would only amplify that.
Our parents had been friends for many years, and all of them were thrilled when she and I were together. There was a bit of a royal families uniting their kingdoms vibe to it. From the time we were children, they encouraged our friendship. And when it blossomed into a romance, they were as happy about it as we were. From day one, they talked about us like we were engaged.
In all honesty, I didn’t mind. From the very beginning, Ava was my endgame. She was everything to me. I couldn’t imagine a moment of my life without her. Even when I got scared and acted like a punk. There was probably a better, more sophisticated word I could use for it now that I was an adult, but the one my brothers hurled at me back when it all went down worked just as well after all these years as it did then.
Our breakup was devastating, and it was just compounded by having to tell my parents. They were crushed, and I had to deal with the sense that I had broken Ava’s heart and disappointed my parents all while running my life through a woodchipper.
Even all these years later, our parents weren’t over us not being together anymore. My parents believed we would be back together one day, that us breaking up was a fluke of our youth and she’d find her way back to me. I’d heard her parents thought the same way. Which just made the idea of being on display in front of them while we waded through the murky weirdness that was our current interaction with each other even more uncomfortable.
But what was also uncomfortable was the thought of telling my parents I wasn’t going to be there. They would want to know why and start making assumptions. Questions would start flying. Inevitably they would try to be helpful by making big, loud excuses for me when they got to the barbecue. It would just be easier to face it myself.
Finally coming to the decision to go came late, and by the time I got there, it was already in full swing. As soon as I walked out onto the deck behind their house, I saw Stephanie. That wasn’t a coincidence. She wasn’t just there because she and Ava had been best friends for years. Stephanie was a living shield.
As soon as Stephanie saw me, she glanced back behind her, and I caught sight of Ava. She was standing beside the table full of food, talking to her mother. Seeing her there in a flowing floral sundress that grazed over her curves with the gentle breeze and scooped low on her graceful back brought back all the compulsions that made me kiss her behind the bar the other day. I couldn’t help myself then, and if I was any closer to her now, I would be right back to that place.
Trying to put those thoughts behind me, I headed over to where Ava’s father sat on a chaise lounge propped with a variety of pillows and cushions. An umbrella brought close up beside him protected him from the sun, and a little table to the other side held a glass of iced lemonade. I walked up to him and grinned.
“I see what you’re doing,” I said. “You’re just faking all this two broken legs stuff so you can get all these perks.”
Wayne smiled up at me and chuckled. “You caught me. These casts—” he knocked on the protective devices on his legs, “—totally fake. I had the prop department up at the high school make them for me.”
I laughed. “Well, you are pulling it off. I brought you some of this.”
His face lit up when I pulled the bottle of Crown Royal from behind my back and held it out to him. It remembered it being his favorite drink when Ava and I were dating. He always had a little of it after dinner or at parties. Wayne took the bottle and held it carefully in his hands, gazing down at it for a few seconds before setting it to the side.
“Thank you,” he said. He reached up his arms, and I leaned down into his hug. “You’ve always been the son I’ve never had.”
And there it was. I’d been at the barbecue for less than five minutes, and it had already begun. I could only hope that would be the most intrusive of it.
He opened the bottle and tipped some of the Crown Royal into his lemonade, then invited me to get my own. I went to the drink table and came back with a lemonade for him to augment. We chatted for a few minutes before he told me to go get something to eat. Since I was late getting to the gathering, everybody else was scattered around already eating from their massively mounded plates.