My mouth drops open. “You really expect me to leave out the window?”
“You came in that way, right?”
“The trellis will collapse under my weight.”
“Maybe you should lose some weight.”
I bark out a laugh. “It’s all muscle, baby. I’m a lot bigger than I was at seventeen.”
Her gaze skims me from head to toe, lingering on my chest before it guiltily jumps to mine. “Yeah, you are.”
Normally I’d puff up my chest and tell her to get her ass over here, but she won’t respond well to that. “Talk to me.”
She shakes her head. “Not right now.”
“Come on.” I won’t beg.
I won’t.
“What else is there to say? Are you here to apologize? Or are you here because you want to fuck me?”
I actually flinch. “Maybe I want—both.”
Ava crosses her arms. “You can’t have it all. Not yet. We need to talk about—things first.”
“Then let’s talk.”
“Not tonight. Some other time.” She lifts her chin. Little miss stubborn. “You should go.”
A ragged exhale leaves me.
Fine.
I’m out.
Ten
Ava
“Would you like to hear how my evening went?” I ask cheerily.
I’m in my room the next morning after my run-in with Eli, on the phone with Ellie. She goes quiet for a moment, as if I asked her a trick question and she doesn’t quite know how to answer. “Um…okay?”
“Great! All right, picture it. I’m in my room, minding my own business and about to go to bed, so I can waste an hour on TikTok before I fall asleep, when I hear a knock. On my window. Mind you, I’m on the second floor,” I say.
“Oh, I know.” She sounds amused. Not freaked out or worried for me, which makes me guess she probably knows who it was knocking on my window.
“I throw back my curtains and I see Eli, just his head. He climbed up the trellis, Ellie.”
“Just like in high school,” she says, though I don’t need the reminder.
A sigh leaves me and I fight against the warm memories of Eli climbing the trellis and sneaking into my room back in the day. He was so bad.
And I loved every stolen minute I spent with him back then. It was thrilling.
Exciting.
“What did you do when you saw him?” she asks.