Most Likely (Most Likely #1) - Sarah Watson Page 0,70
her voice. “Are you not eating?” The question didn’t require the loaded tone. They all knew what it meant. Ava stopped eating when she was depressed.
“It’s just a hard week,” Ava said. “I’m overwhelmed. But I’m okay.”
“You promise?” CJ asked.
Ava shrugged.
Jordan pulled out her phone. “That settles it. I’m going too. You need all the emotional support you can get. What weekend is it?” She opened her calendar.
“The one after next,” Ava said.
Martha was getting impatient. “That’s my point,” she said. “And what else is that weekend?”
Ava kept picking at her water bottle. It made a frustratingly repetitive sound. “I don’t know.”
Martha reached over and took the water bottle away from her. “Ava. Your art show.”
Ava looked up. “Oh my god. I can’t believe I forgot.”
They were planning on going together. All four of them. Martha had already asked to get the night off from work.
“Shit,” Ava said. She looked at each of her friends. “Someone tell me what to do. I need someone else to make the decision for me.”
“No, you don’t,” said CJ. “What do you want? We’re with you no matter what.”
Ava stared at her nuggets. The coating was starting to turn white and rubbery where the fat was congealing. “I have to do it,” Ava finally said. “Jordan’s right. I’m always going to wonder.”
Martha couldn’t help but feel like this was a terrible idea. There was a good chance that it would make everything worse, not better. She knew she couldn’t say that, though, so she reached across the table and took Ava’s hand instead. She squeezed once. Ava squeezed back twice. Her grip was strong and it made Martha feel less worried. Only slightly, though.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
WYATT WATCHED out the window of CJ’s car as the trees became thicker and the scenery grew more and more unfamiliar. “You’re taking me into the woods to murder me. That’s the surprise, right?”
“Happy birthday,” she said.
“Well, even that would be better than the celebration with my friends last week. So I say cool. Let’s do it.”
“Why?” she asked. “What happened?”
“Oh, nothing terrible,” he said lightly, as if to brush it aside.
CJ turned the car down another densely wooded road, and he glanced back at her.
“Seriously. Where are you taking me?”
“I told you,” CJ said. “It’s a surprise. What happened with your friends?”
He gave a noncommittal shrug. “It was fine. They all tried very hard to say all the right things. It was very polite.”
“Oof.” CJ had spent enough time around him now to know that the politeness was the worst. No matter how people intended it, Wyatt always read it as an expression of pity. She looked over at him and he smiled warmly, distracting her so much that she almost missed her next turn. “Sorry,” she said as she took the corner a little too quickly.
They were so far outside the city that some of the streets didn’t even have signs. CJ eventually turned onto a long gravel road. She looked over and found Wyatt staring at her. “Thank you,” he said.
“For what?”
“For this. Even if you are taking me into the woods to murder me. Thank you.”
CJ was positively giddy about the present she’d found for him. She’d originally bought him a book about Franklin Roosevelt, The President in the Wheelchair. But she was thankful that she’d skimmed it before giving it to him. She thought it would be empowering, but it turned out that her history class had gotten the legend of Roosevelt wrong in a lot of ways. He was a man who was very much not at peace with his limitations, going to great lengths to hide what he saw as a weakness. The prologue went so far as to say that in today’s world, a man in a wheelchair would likely never be elected. CJ wanted to burn that book.
Loose gravel crunched underneath the tires until they reached the end of the road. She turned into a dirt driveway. At the end of it was a rustic red barn. “We’re here,” she said.
Wyatt read the white letters that were painted across the barn. “Cross Creek Ranch Stables?”
“It’s an adaptive horseback riding facility. Surprise!”
He seemed confused. “For the kids?”
“No,” CJ said. “For you. Happy birthday.” She turned off the car and faced him. “I heard you when you said that you missed running. I get it. I get it on such an insanely deep level. Anyway, I was doing some random googling and I stumbled onto this.”
Outside, a handler was leading a chocolate-brown horse