Page 36 of This Love
She was going to stick to all business.
“Well,” Gram said. “What I want is a chicken-fried steak drowning in gravy, but if my doctor finds out, he’ll have a heart attack on my behalf.”
Ava cracked a small smile. “So, a salad, then?”
“I suppose so.”
“How about I mix in some grilled chicken and some fried chicken strips so you are a little bit healthy and a little bit naughty?”
Gram set down her menu. “I like the way you think.”
A pang of jealousy zipped through my chest. It was so easy for Gram to connect with Ava. I always did everything wrong.
“You know what you want?” Ava asked me. I didn’t miss the guardedness in her tone.
“A cheeseburger.”
“Got it.” She collected the menus. “And water?”
We both nodded.
Then, she was gone.
“That went well,” Gram said.
I stared at the scarred wooden tabletop. “Sure, if you were placing an order and not trying to convince her to give you the time of day.”
“You’ll get there.”
Gram was right. But in the last pinwheel hair era, Ava had read all her notes and still rejected me. It had taken months to make inroads then.
But now we had a house together, a situation to figure out. This created added pressure for both of us. I wanted things back to where we had been. She wanted to live her new life.
It was unbearable.
We fell silent as Ava returned with the water. I expected her to dart away again, but she paused.
“I found a couple of shirts that are too big for me. I think you missed them when you packed.”
“Which ones?”
“An AC/DC that says ‘Highway to Hell.’ And a red one with the Shelfmart logo.”
I knew what she was talking about. “You stole the AC/DC one from me because that was the song playing when we met. You liked to wear it to—” I cut myself off before I said, “Bed.” “You liked to wear it. And the Shelfmart one was always yours. They gave you the wrong size when you first worked there.”
“I worked at Shelfmart?”
“Yes, when you escaped your mother.”
This got her attention. “Wait? I had to escape my mother?”
So, she definitely had never finished all the videos or even her own stories written out. If she had, she would have known.
“When you were eighteen. She lied to you after a memory reset and told you that you were sixteen so you wouldn’t run away.”
“More juice behind the ol’ tattoo.” She looked down at her thigh as if she could see Mom is bad through her jeans. “Why don’t I have a tattoo about you?”
“You do.”
