Page 76 of Where Are You Now
Apart from her, however, the place was empty. She hadn’t had an issue with being alone before, but after spending so much time with her mom and Lucas, would it feel overlyquiet? Or would she relish the silence once she got going in her new position?
“Have you told Elise?” she asked, unable to manage her morbid curiosity.
“I left her a message. I haven’t had a chance to really talk to her the way I want to.”
Ava nodded and tried to hide her uneasiness. She had to get used to the fact that Lucas cared for someone other than her. While she wanted things to be different, she had to be the bigger person.
He turned away and looked out over the lake.
“I’d hoped the news was that you’d want to move back to New York,” she finally said. “It would be nice to have my best friend in town.”
“I’dhoped you’d want to stay in Nashville.” Lucas offered a downhearted smile.
She leaned on the arm of her chair to be closer to him. “Why were you hoping I’d want to stay in Nashville?”
Their eyes met, unsaid words suspended between his lips. She held her breath, waiting for him to say something to make her stay. Instead, he stood, walked to the edge of the deck, and put his hands into his pockets.
Ava rose and stepped up beside him.
“I never had another best friend after you,” he said. “My only best friend walks into my world out of nowhere and breathes life into me after months of absolute agony, only to walk right back out. It doesn’t seem right.” He faced her. “So it all ends this weekend?”
She shook her head. “No. We can text or call every night if you want to. I’ve already promised myself I’ll do better this time. We’re older. We can handle the separation.”
She’d ruined one relationship with David, and while she was different now, she dared not move too quickly with this one. She still needed to learn her place within it. And there wastoo much at stake when it came to Lucas. But all she wanted to do was bury herself in his arms. Would his more-experienced lips feel the same as that fifteen-year-old boy’s?
If there were an earthly version of the love she’d felt in the void, this would be it, and Ava struggled to verbalize a way out of it when everything in her body pushed her toward it.
The whole rest of the evening they were together, the feeling just kept getting stronger. That night, after Lucas had gone home, as she lay in bed, Ava thanked God for the choice he’d given her, and she admitted her feelings for Lucas. Her love for Lucas had always been there; it had just been dormant in her adult life.
What do I do with these feelings? You asked me to find Lucas, so—surely—you knew I’d fall for him. What am I supposed to do now?
Ava sharpened her hearing, turning inward in an attempt to hear a response, but she got nothing.
Without warning, an image of her dad floated into her memory. She’d forgotten all about that day. He had one arm around Ava’s shoulders and the other around Lucas’s.
“Two of my favorite people,” her dad had said.
Wrapped in the warmth of the memory, Ava drifted off into sleep.
Chapter Twenty-Six
“What’s that?” Ava asked her mom as she padded into the kitchen on that bright Saturday morning. The whole room smelled of cinnamon and butter.
Martha smiled from her seat by the window that overlooked the lake. In front of her was a wrapped package beside a plate of her famous apple cinnamon French toast—sandwiches made from French toast with her baked cinnamon apples in the center, the whole thing drizzled with syrup.
“I ordered it for you the other day,” her mom said. “I thought it would make a nice going-home gift—a good read for the plane. And I made your favorite French toast sandwiches since it’s your last weekend. I know you’ll be rushing off to church tomorrow with Lucas, so I thought I’d surprise you today.”
Curious, Ava sat next to her mother and pulled the package toward her.
“I saw it and knew you had to have it.”
Ava opened the package and pulled out a thin book.
“It’s all real accounts of near-death experiences.”
“Oh, wow. Thank you.”
Martha shook her head. “Last night, I had the clearest dream of your dad. It was so real, it felt like my one brush with the afterlife. He and I sat and talked about you for ages. He told me he was sorry he’d monopolized you as a child.” She smiled at Ava. “He was so tangible I was almost sure it hadn’t been a dream.”
