Page 14 of Why Not Now?

“Today. She’s coming to take some promo shots.”

“What are you going to do?”

“Do you think we could be friends again?” I ask. “I could invite her over with the others tonight.”

Gina knows I host a game night on the last Monday of every month.

“You could try. If she says no, you know where you stand and you move on from there.”

I nod, decided. We spend the rest of our time together chatting. Eventually, I put Travis down to continue his nap and fill Gina’s dishwasher before I head to Blue Vista.

It’s after 3pm when Spencer leans against my doorframe. Earlier, I’d asked him to tell me when Ava arrives and that I intend to invite her to game night. He still hasn’t asked about what happened between me and Ava, beyond what I’d told him before.

“She’s here. She started on the roof.”

I nearly knock over my coffee in my haste to stand.

“Shit. Fuck.” I grab the cup, preventing it from spilling over my desk, then take a second to compose myself.

Obviously, Spencer laughs at me. “You going to be okay, man?”

“Yes. I’m fine.”

“Right.”

I brush past him and climb the stairs to the roof, reminding myself I don’t need to rush, taking the stairs two at a time, anyway.

As soon as I see her, something inside me relaxes, almost like a pain I’ve gotten used to has eased.

“The one and only Ava Calligan,” I say, walking toward where she’s taking some pictures of the lights Spencer and I helped string up yesterday. “How’s it going?”

She looks around the rooftop as though unsure who I’m talking to, but we’re alone.

“Going okay,” she says. “What’s up?”

I note she has again said things are okay. It’s not the usual bright answer she would have for me if she was actually happy, but the one she would give me when she doesn’t really want to tell me what’s wrong.

Instead of prying, I take a deep breath and plunge in. “What are you up to tonight? My friends are coming over to hang out. We’ll play games, have some drinks. I think Lis is making something. Wondered if you wanted to join us.”

“Join you and your friends?”

“Sure.”

She searches my face, looking for something, but I don’t know what.

“Why?” she asks.

“Why not? We were friends once.”

She keeps watching me, like she’s waiting for me to explain why I want to do this, but I don’t have an answer. I don’t want to tell her I remember how close we’d once been, how it had felt for someone to know me better than I knew myself. And I really don’t want to admit how a part of me wants that relationship back.

“I’ll think about it,” she says, then returns to her photos.

I look out at the rooftop, our tents set up so we can host events out here even on days when it rains, which will happen a lot over the next few months, though it isn’t raining today. We don’t have to worry too much about snow in Vancouver. If it snows—which it almost never does until January, if at all—it’s usually gone within a day.

The tents are done up with blinking white lights and sparkling blue and silver garlands. We’d mounted bunches of holly to the spots where the garland is tied to the railings. In the middle of the space, we’d hung a spray of mistletoe, tied with a red ribbon.

“It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” I ask. We did an exceptional job this year.

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