Maggie flicked Ava’s hair back off her shoulder, pressed the back of her hand to Ava’s cheek. “You alright?”
“Fine,” Ava said. “Just a little faint.”
In autumn, Bonita and James spent most of their downtime on the three-season porch on the back of the house. Floored with wide tiles and covered with a half-dozen cozy rugs, the room was lined on three sides by picture windows that could be opened to screens in the summer and spring. A wood stove in one corner heated the space, along with half the house, and the furniture was deep, casual, comfortable. James had wired a flat screen TV to the wall that attached to the main house, so there was always a game of some sort on, year-round.
They ate mole chicken, rice, salad, and chilaquiles off plates balanced on their laps, the whole crowd of them scattered throughout the house. Mercy ate with RJ and Dublin, and drank Coronas like water as he stole glimpses of his girl.
His girl. That’s what she’d always been. How stupid of him to think that sleeping with her would change that somehow, wreck it, make it less important. How truly foolish to underestimate just how much stronger the connection would be after they’d been together.
She sat in the dining room, beside her mother, picking at her food, a long curtain of hair shielding her from some female conversation she didn’t want to be a part of. The bandage on her thumb snared his glance, spiked his worry. That hadn’t been there before. She must have done something to herself in the kitchen, while she was pretending to cook. Bless her heart, she was a klutz in the kitchen. Someone should have been watching her better. Someone shouldn’t have given her a job that involved sharp objects.
Her safety had been his responsibility for too long; he couldn’t stop the spin of accusatory, protective sentiment. He wanted to shake one of those women, ask who had let his girl get hurt.
That separation, in his mind – She wasn’t one of the women to him. Not a part of that mysterious cluster of chatting females he’d never understand. He didn’t categorize Ava that way – as a woman. She was…she was just this person.Hisperson, that he’d always understood and loved. She was just Ava, and the three letters of her name held an essential meaning for him, one that he didn’t have to justify or explain to himself. There was not, nor had there even been, any confusion when it came to her. Guilt, yes – plenty of guilt these days. But his complete comprehension of her as a living thing couldn’t he shaken by something as simple as sex.
After dinner, his brothers piled onto the porch, quiet and full of food. Mercy saw a flash of dark shiny hair, a wedge of leather jacket, and knew Ava had slipped outside.
He waited a moment, said, “I need a smoke,” in case anyone cared, and let himself out the storm door, into the crisp, dark evening.
The moon was a high white wedge, wisps of cloud scudding across it, the stars bright as tiny torches. Someone on the block had a wood fire going, the sweet-and-smoke tang shifting through the air, tickling the inside of his nose. And somewhere under the smoke and fermenting crunch of fallen leaves, he imagined he smelled Ava.
She was tucked around the corner, out of sight of the porch, against a patch of house with no windows. Her arms were folded against the chill, one boot propped on the siding of the house, head tipped back as she stared up at the sky, the half-moon reflected in her wide dark eyes.
She noticed him, but she didn’t react right away. He saw the fast twitch of her lashes, the anxious flick to her fingers as she pulled a strand of hair out of her lip gloss. She was pleased; she had that excitement, deep in the pit of her stomach, at the sight of him with her alone like this. But she wasn’t going to leap on him. Seventeen, and she was learning how to contain herself already, grown up in a way that most of the thirty-something women he knew weren’t.
He was content to prop a shoulder against the house and watch her fight down her exuberance.
Ava lifted a hand and pointed to the sky. “Orion.”
“What?” He followed the aim of her finger, up at the aimless dotting of stars.
“The constellation.” There was a breathless catch to her voice that might have been about him and might have been about the stars. He didn’t know, and for some reason, that made him smile. “Orion. The hunter. See, there’s his belt, and his arm, his bow, his legs.” She traced the shape with her fingertip.
“Bad enough you grill me on Shakespeare. Have I gotta learn astronomy too?”
Her eyes cut to him, bright and moon-shaped as she grinned. “Actually, Orion’s the only one I know. Just don’t tell Aidan. I may have told him I could navigate a ship by starlight when I was eleven, and this wouldkillmy reputation.”
Mercy turned and put the flat of his back to the wall, digging a smoke out of his cut pocket. “Good way to get yourself dumped outside of town and told to ‘navigate’ your way back, knowing your brother.” He found his lighter and stuck a cigarette between his teeth.
“Nah. There’s a line between torturing me and running scared from my mom. He wouldn’t bethatstupid.” She watched him light up, gaze trained on the movements of his hands. When she reached absently to tuck her hair behind her ear, he saw the white flash of the bandage on her thumb.
“What’d you do to yourself?” It came out sharper than he’d meant.
Her eyes widened a fraction and she pulled her hand down, glancing at the injury. “I cut my thumb slicing lettuce.” She shoved her hands in her pockets – tried to anyway. He grabbed her left hand before it could disappear. “It’s nothing.”
Mercy turned her palm up to the moonlight, her skin pale and almost translucent; he could see the faint tracks of veins beneath the surface. Someone had wrapped her thumb up tight, but he saw the shadow of blood seeping through the gauze.
“This was deep.” It was a reprimand, one he couldn’t seem to twist into a simple comment.
Ava’s fingers closed around one of his, the index that probed the edge of the bandage. She said, soothingly, “It’s no big deal. Just clumsy me and a sharp knife.”
He glanced up at her face, at her soft expression, the little notch of concern between her brows.
“What’s that about?”
“You’re worried,” Ava said, straight-faced. “And that’s sweet, but I’m okay.”
Anger shot through him before he recognized what was happening. “Yeah? When in your little life have you ever been okay?”
