Where was I again? Where had I been at that moment? After I had left my own home, I had aimlessly walked around. Time, energy, nor pain had been a factor - I had just kept walking and walking with no aim in sight, with no place to go. For all intents and purposes, I had been homeless and alone. I had nothing and nobody, aside from Ava. Once again, I had been lifted only to fall on my face, only to become a laughing stock for the world - a shining example of what one shouldn't become.
Sure, I had money and I had a house back in Dakota Springs, but what else existed within me? What else had mattered? Kylie had been dead. Maggie had been in rehab. I only had two people left in my life, Mack and Ava. Yet, had Ava been willing to even come near me after what she had seen and what I had said to her? Why hadn't she called the cops or ran off? Why had she stayed there? However, there had been something bugging me.
Why had she been following me around all night?
"Aiden. I'm sorry." Ava had tugged on the back of my hoodie as she tried to slow me down. Her breathlessness had become quite obvious. "Please just stop and listen to me for a second!"
I stopped, her inertia causing her to run into my back. "What?"
"You know I didn't mean for any of that to happen, right?" Ava's forehead pressed against my spine. "I'm sorry...sorry. I don't know what to s-"
"You don't have the right to say anything." I interrupted, looking up to find myself in the faintly lit parking lot of the mall - empty and void of life. The only life that had existed in the area was the two of us. The only sounds had come from us. "You wanted to see it, you wanted learn about me and what my family was like. You caused all of this and I was still the one that had to take responsibility for it..."
"Don't you think I already know that? I feel like I'm the worst person alive right now." Ava pulled my jacket downwards. "Why didn't you just fucking tell me something? Why did you put yourself through that?"
Just as I had began to speak, I had heard the deep, shaky exhale from Ava and then came a light sniffling. Closing my eyes, I sighed. What had I been thinking? This, in a sense, had been a long time coming. The only difference is that it had come in an unexpected form, rather than a timely split. The time where I would entirely close myself off from my parents had only been a matter of time. Why had I felt so disgruntled about it to begin with?
Had it been because of Ava? Had I been so intent on not letting her hear those things, that I had forgotten everything? Would it have mattered if she had known all those things? Would she have treated me differently, would she have pitied me? Would she have felt differently about me if she had known my past and the people in it? What would she say if she had known my father, or even Kylie? Had she ever treated me differently when she learned something about me?
"There is a lot you don't know about me." I responded indirectly to her question, pulling myself out of my hoodie and taking it from her hands. "If you want to know them, you're going to have to dig a lot deeper than my parents."
Walking behind Ava, I held the hoodie open and let her put her arms through it. "If...No, nevermind."
"It's fine. Go ahead."
Ava turned around, floating in the large jacket. "If...If I ask you about something, will you tell me honestly?"
Would I, or would I continue to lie my way through life, continue to lie to the people I supposedly love and care about? Would I continue a cycle of lies, and destroy any form of hope that stood in front of me because I had known that I would lose it sooner or later? What Ava had asked me was like asking if I would have killed myself instead of watching Kylie die, it was difficult to answer. If I had the choice, I would have kept her alive and I would have kept myself alive. However, reality is not made up of dreams or ideal choices. It is made of cruelty and protecting those close few.
Sitting down on the sidewalk, I nodded.
"Your real dad. Is that true, is he a criminal?"
"No. He worked for them, and he hid money for them." I answered the best I knew how, though that had been a good, summarized answer. "He set up fake shell companies and transferred money into them. He was paid to do that, I think."
"Where is he? Can you talk to him?" Ava kneeled on the asphalt. "May-"
"He stole from the wrong people, and he got caught. So, he decided to run and leave me and my mom with the hurricane of a aftermath that was the FBI, CIA, and Goliath." I interrupted Ava's obvious next question. "We were constantly under watch, by both the government and regular people. They all looked at us, and they all judged us. Anything else?"
Leaning back, my head rested on the concrete as I looked up into the night sky - well, that and a street light hitting me in the eyes. Stars lit the sky, much like Ava's eyes had always pierced through the night. It had be the same that as it always was; dull, bluish-gray, and faint of color. Had any of that been true? Had my mom truly felt that way - or had it just been a facade to drive me away?
Had I truly been dead inside? Did I have no ambition or future for myself? Did Kylie's death take away a vital part of me, never to be returned? That had been true. When Kylie had died, I had lost a large part of myself to something, and to nothing. I gave my heart to the world, all I had gotten in return was nightmares and scars, so to speak. The world, in that sense, had been Kylie. Metaphorically, the apocalypse had come and I hadn't made it out alive.
A slight rustling caught my attention as I saw Ava climb on top of me, her knees planted on either side. Her hands slapped the ground, landing next to my shoulders, leaving her holding herself above me. Through the darkness created by her draped hair, I could see her white teeth stabbing through it in the shape of a slight smile. Second by second, she continued to drop her head lower and lower, until her forehead met my jaw.
"Do you hate me?"
"...If I hated you, would I be here now?" I answered with another question. "You've seen me at something that was pretty close to my worst. If that didn't turn you away, I don't know what will."
"Wait, you were at your worst tonight?" Ava lifted her head as she brushed hair behind her ears.
"No. The hospital." I veered my eyes away from hers. "I was seriously about to go off that ledge, especially if you hadn't shown up...You always seem to show up at the right time."
Ava rested her head on my chest, her hair mixing together with mine. "I'll always try to be, you idiot pessimist. I'll be there when you want to jump off a roof again. I'll be there when you want to swallow a bottle full of pills, and I'll be there when you when you put a gun in your mouth.
You don't seem to understand that I want be with you. Not because I feel bad for you or because I like tattooed badboys with nothing to lose. I want to be with you because I li..I love you."
Ava rolled over, falling to my right side. "Tattooed badboys? Isn't that me, like, exactly?"
"That's not the point." Ava rolled her eyes. "After what happened to me with Jacky and Ryan, I never thought I would feel this way again. I never thought that I would feel the hurt of possibly losing someone, the pain that comes with caring about someone. I didn't think that was going to be me anymore."
"You aren't the only one."
It, while slowly, had come to me. Everyone had lost someone. Everyone has dealt with loss, with pain, and with death to some degree. How had those people come out okay, how had they coped with losing someone they loved? Had their love not been real, or had it been something entirely different? I had lost the love of my life, the woman who I had felt was my one and only had been killed by a speeding car - right in front of my eyes. Yet, I had seen others get up from so much more while I could barely stand.
Parents who had lost their children to perverts, to genocide. They had somehow found the will and the way, the path to getting back from the disaster that had struck their lives. What had made them so different? Religion? Strength? What had been their reasons to keep on living? Did they all have something in common, or would everyone find a reason to keep living, their own reason? Would everyone find their own reason to keep moving?
Had I found mine in Ava, or had this special feeling all just been a fleeting moment that would soon be crushed again by reality?
Throwing myself up, I pulled out a cigarette and lit it. However, just as I had looked up, I had seen a girl about Ava's age just staring me down. With wide eyes, the girl stood completely still as I exhaled the smoke in her direction. I had never seen her before, had she been a guest or relative of someone in this shithole, or had she just moved here and she had been lost? I brushed my hair back, taking another drag of my cigarette as I stayed just as silent as she was.
"Uh..I-I'm like seriously lost right now. You probably don't know her, but I have no idea where I am, so I guess it's worth a shot...
"Do you know a girl named Ava?"
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