"Hey, Trevor." Ava opened the door to the studio.
Following behind Ava, I opened the door to see a large room with what appeared to be a freshly cleaned floor. Inside, an older blonde sat at the front desk. Clearly, she had been something of a pretty face to keep around any possible male clients. However, the one thing that I had immediately caught was the home-ishness of the small building. It had radiated a welcoming vibe to those who walked in.
"Hey, kid." The man I assumed had been Trevor came out from another door. "Oh? Did you recruit someone?
Another older woman came out from the back, a rail-thin redhead adorning glasses and tied up hair. In a loose pink shirt and a pair of black shorts, she walked up to Ava and I, looking up at me without any sort of hesitation in her eyes.
"Go change, Ava. Kai's gonna be here soon." the redhead mumbled, refusing to leave eye contact with me.
Ava stood, looking at me for a moment before walking off towards a door that I could have only assumed to be a locker room of some sort. Following Ava's disappearing act, the woman pulled up my shirt, appearing to study my torso and then my arms. As though I had been a model of some sort, she studied my body - circling me a few times before sighing softly. Had I been introduced to a family of cannibals?
"Thin, tall, and seems flexible. Nice, natural posture, seems in relatively good shape...The tattoos can be covered up, and his hair looks good on him." she spoke, seemingly to the man who had spoken to Ava. "I think she found us a good one here, he definitely has a dancer's body."
"This is my wife, Molly, and I'm Trevor." he offered his hand, approaching me without hesitance. "Sorry. She's a bit of an oddball, but Molly really is a good person."
"Oddball? I'm not as weird as Kai, at the very least." Molly answered confidently. "Anyways, I want to see if he has the head and sight for danci-"
"I'm not a dancer, and I don't intend to be." I interrupted her. "I'm just Ava's boyfriend, Aiden - or Cyrus - whichever you want."
All of a sudden, I had three pairs of eyes on me. They all looked at me quizzically, as though they had just seen and heard something completely miraculous. Thankfully, another couple of people walked through the door - a young Asian guy and a dull looking black-haired teenage girl. She had given me a fierce glare, exposing some emotion from what appeared to have otherwise been quite a monotonous face.
The Asian guy, who seemed to just ignore my existence, walked past me and through the same door that Ava had walked through. Had this been the place that Ava loved so much? They all seemed so weird, yet they had no problem with showing it to anyone and everyone. Why? Why had they all been so okay with being so open about themselves? Why had they not been afraid of being judged?
"Clear the floor." Molly yelled. "Ava and Kai are up first."
As suddenly as the room had quieted down, the music had turned on and loudly blared throughout the studio. Simply, Ava and Kai had seamlessly moved to the right - together, as one - all in one fluid motion. As the music grew more complex, their dance followed with Trevor shouting out the next step. However, I hadn't been focused on their dancing, or even her partner. It had been Ava, she caught me like a fish to a hook. I could only see her smile at that moment. Her smile had said everything, presenting all of her passion for what she had been doing.
It was something I had been unable to understand at the time. Passion, the love of doing or being something. What had been so special about dancing? What had been so special about doing anything? Why had people loved something so simple? Why had people loved anything at all, when they knew that they would one day lose it? As I watched Ava dance with the young man across from her, I felt as though some distance had been put between us. Had she been slowly leaving me, heading towards better things?
That smile felt so far away.
"So, you're the boyfriend?" Molly asked. "I thought she'd been acting differently lately."
"Yeah?" I distantly replied, watching Ava. "Did I live up to something?"
"You remind me of flower in a tornado. You're frail." She responded with a brutal amount of honesty. "Maybe that's what attracted her to you. Ava is such a strong girl; even with everything she has been through, she can still smile like that. I wouldn't have blamed her if she had turned out like you or Hailey."
Somehow, even as off of the wall as it had been, she had made a lot of sense. There was a brutal truth mixed in with her metaphorical words. I was weak, I was very much like a flower ready to be ripped away with the storm. Ava, however, had been everything I wasn't. She had the strength to carry on through adversity, she had the toughness to take everything life threw at her, and she had the resiliency to smile through all of it. I had no business being in her life, yet she wouldn't have let me leave without saying a word.
"I know, you're right about everything. All I'm ever going to do is drag her down." I sighed. "I don't deserve her, and I never will. But I can't help myself, I want to be around her and I want to be with her. I'm getting this nagging feeling that if I let her go, I'm going to be left with nothing but myself."
"That so?" she asked. "Sounds like you're in love."
"You're acting like that's a first for me." I laughed, almost painfully. "You don't get as fucked up as I am without doing that."
"You're that childish, eh?" She jumped up. "Meh. You're still young. You'll get it sooner or later. Hopefully sooner."
Love? Hadn't that much been obvious, to both me and Ava? I thought it had been clear to not only us, but everyone else. What had she meant by what she said, that I was in love? That I was childish? If I was in love with Ava, then what were Kylie and Maggie? Her words had done nothing but confuse me. Had I loved Kylie? What if I hadn't, what if all of this pain was for naught?
Had I lived with all of this pain for no reason at all? Had I lead Maggie around in circles, when she could have been making her own life better? As I stood in that very studio, I felt myself sink into a black hole. Emptiness. Hollow. The very darkness I had been so afraid of returned with a vengeance.
It was funny. All of this time, I had thought I'd finally found a place where I could say I understood the things around me. Yet, all it had taken was a single sentence to make it all crumble - to make it all fade away. I had fooled myself, through and through. Everything was going to get better, that I was going to be in a better place. Finally, I thought I would have been able to move on.
Except that was the case. The pain, the emptiness, and the darkness had all led me to a shining light. They had made the person, for better or worse, that I was at that moment. I was with Ava because of those moments, those events, those fleeting memories. Darkness would come and go, as would everything else. Except for someone like Ava. I had been ready to give myself up and let her lead the way - hopefully to a better place.
"Did I say something wrong?" Molly asked, setting her heel on the chair.
"...Not really." I cracked my neck. "I can see what you're doing."
"Eh? So, you aren't as dumb as you look. Interesting." she snickered. "Why haven't you said it, then? You scared?"
"Yeah, honestly." I mumbled. "When the only two other people you've loved are dead and in rehab, I think you'd be too."
"Seems like you figured out what I meant pretty quickly." She looked at me, and then back at Ava. "Okay, I'll be honest. Ava's been telling me about you for a while, and I've noticed that you're pretty dense and never say what you actually feel."
Dense? How much had Ava told her, and in how much detail? Peeking out of the corner of my eye, I watched Molly as she watched the sweat-drenched Ava continue to dance with a strength I hadn't quite seen from her, at least at that extent. Molly had a small grin, starting at the corner of her mouth, and looked as though she had been about to speak.
"Did you feel that little twist in your stomach when Ava started dancing? That was her showing you how much she loves doing this, and how much she appreciates you supporting it. I'm going to say this once, and I'm putting it as simply as possible: tell her how you feel, and don't hold back."
"Why are you telling me all this?" I asked. "I was planning on it, at some point."
"At some point, he says." she laughed. "You, yourself, know that you won't do it unless someone pushes you. This one's free."
Had she echoed what Ava had told me earlier, and more? From the way she had danced, to what Ava had been doing with her, she had spilled it all to me. Why had Ava spoken to her instead of me? Had Ava trusted this woman so much as to completely pass me for advice or honesty? No, It was a bit more simple than that.
Ava had been just as bad with words as I was.
___
New character soon, maybe? \'o'/
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