(hopefully) knew nothing about me or my past or the moments that led me here. It felt like a blessing. Until I was sitting in that confined space with no way out, and I couldn’t ignore the way his forearms looked beneath his rolled-up sleeves or the way his large hands wrapped around the wheel. And I definitely couldn’t ignore the way his eyes drifted from the road, lower, lower, until they focused on my legs, and guh!
It’s so pointless. Stupid, really.
“No, you wouldn’t, Ava,” Trevor says, hopping down from the counter, and I can feel his pity from across the room. “You’d make a great girlfriend because you’re a great girl. You just—”
“I just what?” I interrupt. “I just need to find a few extra hours in the week, so I can make time to hang out, go on dates… no. It wouldn’t work. And I don’t want it to, so there’s that.”
Trevor watches me warily. One second. Two. Then he nods, slow, as if afraid to say anything else.
I make my way over to him and place my hands on his back, pushing him toward the living room. “Will you please go and relax. Let me do something for once.”
He grabs a beer from the fridge before taking my instructions.
We eat dinner at the table—just Trevor and me—and we laugh, and we talk, and we go back to who we were before. Before the weight of uncertainty and responsibility crashed into us, wave after wave of hopelessness and desperation. We become people again, individualized by what little hopes and dreams we have for the future. And when we’re washing up at the sink once we’re done eating, I look outside, see the fireflies glowing like embers searching for freedom.
“They’ll be gone soon,” I murmur, motioning toward them. “They’re so beautiful.”
Trevor takes a moment, watching them with me. Then he settles his hand on my shoulder, presses his lips to my temple. “I’m glad she was here to see them this year, Ava. I’m glad we all were.”
Trevor’s fallen asleep on the couch, hands on his chest as he breathes to a steady rhythm. But even with his eyes closed, muscles relaxed, his brow is bunched, as if his troubles never truly leave him. There are electrical plans scattered on the coffee table, his laptop sitting atop them. I go to close it but freeze when my gaze catches on the screen. There’s a picture of his ex, Amy, with another guy’s arms wrapped around her. She’s smiling as if their heartbreak had no history. I look over at Trevor again, at the stress lines that mar his youthful face, and my chest tightens. Heat burns behind my eyes, my nose, and I cover my mouth, so my single sob doesn’t wake him.
Amy had been his girl two weeks into college, and if I ever doubted that true love existed, I’d go to them. When my fourteen-year-old self questioned life, I’d go to them. Not just one or the other. But both of them. They were a team, a fortress, a love so strong I thought nothing could break them. But I did. I broke them. I still remember listening in on Trevor’s call to her—he here and she in Texas—the way he struggled to get through his words without his voice cracking. “I can’t come back,” he’d told her. “And I can’t hold you back because of it.”
I sat in my room that night, tear after tear, cry after cry. Hopelessness swam through my veins, pulsed through my airways.
I see the empty bottles of beer on the floor, and I fight to keep it together, to contain my emotions. To conquer them. Tears stream down my cheeks, and I hold back my cries. But it’s useless. I’m too far gone, and I wasn’t built with the strength my mother holds. Trevor wakes, and he’s quick to sit up. To notice my anguish. “Hey,” he coos, his arms around me like a shield. A protector. Always. “Ava, it’s okay. What happened?” I cry into his chest, tears of self-loathing soaking into his T-shirt. I can’t speak; I can’t say the words.
Remorse.
Regret.
Guilt.
He holds on to me—my Knight—and I try to remember why it was I called him. Why amid the darkest and most terrifying moment of my life, I couldn’t fight my need for him, for anyone, just so I wouldn’t have to go it alone. It had been a year since his father had walked out, a year of