Page 38 of If You Stayed

“Language,” I scolded her.

“My mom said hell is a place, not a curse word. Anyway, I’m fourteen, Gabriel.”

“Oh, well, all right then.” Heck, I didn’t know what words fourteen-year-olds were allowed to say.

“Do you have a girlfriend now or are you single?” she asked as she continued to build her tacos.

“Single.”

“Do you like women?”

I smiled. “Love them. Quite a fan.”

“Do you want to get married someday? Have kids?”

“Yeah. Maybe.”

“Tick- tock, tick-tock,” she said, tapping the invisible watch on her wrist. “You’re kind of old to be single, and you’re not getting any younger.”

Once this kid’s shyness wore off, she didn’t pull her punches. “I’m only forty.”

“‘Only’ and ‘forty’ don’t belong in the same sentence. That’s like five hundred and four in dinosaur years.” She narrowed her eyes as she looked at me. “You have gray hairs in your beard.”

“Trust me, kid. Time flies faster than you think.”

“You’re just saying that because you blacked out and missed twenty-one years of time.”

“Again, touché.” I chuckled. Ava was a smart-ass and Iappreciated it. “What about you, kid? Are you dating someone?”

“Gosh, no. Guys my age are just so…gross. That’s why I read my books. Fictional men will always do better by me than real boys. Men written by women are just better.”

I laughed. “I have absolutely no clue what that means.”

“It means the idea of boys is actually better than the reality of them.” She shrugged. “Plus, a lot of boys in the real world don’t like girls like me.”

I arched an eyebrow. “Girls like you?”

“You know.” She grew a bit somber as she looked down at herself. “Fatandugly.”

My jaw dropped. I froze in my tracks as I held a spoon of crema in the air. “Who the fuck told you that lie?” I barked, feeling a newfound rage shoot through my body.

“Language,” Ava echoed.

“I’m forty years old. I can say ‘fuck.’ So again, who the fuck told you that lie?” I repeated, still beyond livid that this poor girl was told such bold-faced lies.

“Cory and James Harrison.”

“Who the fuck are Cory and James Harrison?!”

“Twin brothers from my school. They told me that on the last day of school. The whole school year, they’d moo behind me, too, and make pig noises and call me Porky Pig.”

“Where do they live?” I asked, dropping the spoon back into the container. “I’ll kick their fucking asses.”

“I’m pretty sure that’s a crime,” she said.

Then put me in prison.

Or at least let me beat up the assholes’ parents.

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