Page 37 of Grind
Shaking my head, I look around. “I don’t see him very much these days.”
“Good,” Seamus says with a nod. He’s quiet for a minute. All I can think of is Connor.
“I miss him.” It’s ripped out of me against my will. “I miss him so much. But I have questions.”
“There’s no rush, Ava,” Seamus says, his well-manicured hand touches mine ever so briefly. “But Connor is a good man. An honorable man. Don’t tell him I said that though. Why don’t you think about it while I deliver this boring lecture? You won’t miss anything, I promise.”
Smiling for the first time in days, I nod as he walks up to the front of the room.
He’s right. The lecture is terrible. Seamus is a dynamic speaker, but the content is dry and my heart’s just not in this today. But the places that my thoughts go, decidedly not boring. Once the talk ends, Seamus takes a few questions and leaves quickly, slipping a business card onto my desk as he passes.
Picking up the card, I finger the fancy paper it’s printed on before sliding it into my bag.
After class ends, I slowly walk to the domestic violence center and head straight into Ruth’s office. She looks up at me, and when our eyes meet, I sag. She stands up quickly and closes the door. I pour out everything that’s happened – well, almost everything – with Brooks. And I confess how poorly things have gone with the Stacys, with Brooks, with the police, and with getting anything handled at the school.
“What do you want to do, Ava?”
It’s the question we always ask. Empowering the survivor or the person seeking help to define what success looks like.
“I’m tired of being afraid, Ruth. I’m fucking tired of being terrified. I want to confront him. Stop hiding what happened. Get him out of this program and get some kind of justice,” as I say it, I realize how true it is.
Justice isn’t black and white. It’s not being handed to me. But I’m ready to demand it, claim it, fight for it. No matter what it takes.
Am I willing to demand, fight for, and claim something else? Something personal? A shot at a life with Connor.
After I leave Ruth’s office, having worked out a feasible action plan around Brooks with her, I walk over to Boston Common and get some air. My eyes linger on the expanse of green, people lounging and playing kickball. The normal scenes.
Sitting on a bench, I watch several fat squirrels chase each other around the trunk of an old elm tree.
Lost in my thoughts, I sense someone nearby and look up fast. The bench creaks as a large man sits next down next to me, carefully lowering his bulk.
“Don’t go,” Connor says. At the sound of his voice, my eyes snap up to his face and then back to the ground. I’m rooted to the spot.
“I’m sorry you got fired, Ava. I didn’t mean for that to happen.”
His legs are inches from mine. My palm yearns to run along the steely muscles of his thighs. I look up at him, but he’s looking straight ahead. He’s wearing a wool pea coat and a soft-looking red scarf.
I shiver, more at his proximity than at the cold. He turns to me, his brow furrowing. Unwinding the scarf from around his neck, he drapes it gently over my shoulders. Unable to help myself, I pull it tightly around me and bury my nose in it, drinking in his scent. Tears already burn at my eyes.
“I love my family, Ava,” he says, staring straight ahead once again. His voice has a hard edge, but I can see that his fists are unclenching. This is a hard conversation to have. “They’re good people. But we don’t always do good things.”
He continues, “I should have owned up to that with you. Talked to you straight. I tried, but clearly I could have done better.”
“I want to be with you too, Connor.”
He freezes.
“I’m sorry, Connor. I was scared, confused and hurt. I didn’t think I’d love anyone again after what Brooks put me through. But you’ve always been honest with me.”
Connor winces at the mention of Brooks’s name.
I snuggle further into the scarf. It makes me feel brave. “Nobody’s perfect. I still admire the work my dad did, even though he left my mother and I. It’s inspired me to want to make the world a better place. People are complex.”
His eyes cut toward me, but he’s restraining himself. Waiting. My breath is constricting in my chest, hurting for this man and how I pushed him away. I’d do anything in this moment to cross that gulf, but the best that I can offer is the truth.
And hope it’s enough.
“I can’t promise to like everything you do or to understand it. But I can promise you that you will be the first person I ask—and that we can work through things together.”
