“Yeah.” His voice: faint and faraway.
Ava moved to stand in front of him, between his outstretched legs, drawing his attention to her face. “I really do feel terrible about what I did to Ronnie,” she repeated in a tremulous voice. “It was wrong.”
His brows lifted, a smile threatening. “You did something to him?”
“I cheated on him.”
“Did you tell him that?”
“No.”
“And you broke up with him?”
“Not just because you told me to. I did it because it was the right thing to do.”
“But you did.”
She sighed. “Yes.”
“So what’s there to feel bad about?” He shrugged. “Things didn’t work out. He’ll find somebody else.”
“But it wasn’t fair to him,” she insisted. “I brought him here to meet my family, and I ended up dumping him.Sleeping around on him. That’s so unlike me it makes me want to throw up.”
A bit of anger came into him, tightening him all over, pressing lines between his brows. “So, what, were you gonna marry the guy?”
“I don’t know…” She cringed. “Probably not.” Headshake. “No.”
“Do you love him?”
“No.” Emphatic and sure. She knew that much, at least. “Never.”
“Then what the hell’s the problem, Ava?”
She stepped over his knee and dropped down onto the bench beside him, hugging herself, chilled not from the air, but from the inside, rattled and uncertain. “I don’t know what we’re doing,” she said.
“I think we’re sitting on a bench, looking at the stars.”
“You know what I mean.”
He sighed. “I think regular people call it a relationship.”
“A relationship for how long? A week? A month? Three months?” She turned to him, gaze pleading. “Merc, you said it would only hurt worse if you told me why you left. But how am I supposed to trust that you’ll stay if I don’t know why you had to leave in the first place? How long until you get tired of me again?”
The shadows lay harsh across his face as his head turned toward her. He pulled the cigarette from his lips and tossed it at his feet. The last exhale of smoke curled around his words when he spoke. “I didn’t want to leave,” he said, voice hard-edged. “I had to. It was what was best for you. You got to go to college; you got to grow up. You have got to believe me that it was for you, and not to hurt you.”
She swallowed and glanced away.
“And as much as I hate this fucking conversation, I’ll have it every day if that’s what it takes.”
A lump rose in her throat. “What about my dad? Can you have that conversation every day?”
Instead of answering, he said, “How are you paying for grad school?”
“What?”
“How?”
“I have some grant money. A small scholarship.” She waved helplessly as emotion began to take hold of her, making her impatient. “Mom and Dad are paying for a little. And I’m living with them, obviously.”
