Everything Leads to You(95)

“Yeah,” I say. “It feels good.”

They make me a little later than I had hoped to be, but I’m still the first one to arrive. I park and unlock the door and step inside, once again amazed by how different it looks from a week ago, and how, somehow, even with no budget and very little help or experience, I was able to make it look exactly as I hoped it would. Too soon, I hear another car pull up and stop. A door shut. Footsteps. All I wanted was a little time alone before everyone rushed in, but I guess everyone’s excited and nervous and ready to begin.

There’s a soft knock, followed by the door swinging open. It isn’t everyone. It’s Ava.

“Hey,” she says. “I wanted to catch you before we started.” She takes a breath. “Thanks again for coming with me yesterday.”

“Thank you for wanting me to.”

She nods, brushes a strand of hair off her face.

“How are you doing?” I ask her. “After everything?”

“Well, I didn’t sleep very much,” she says. “I was up all night thinking.”

“About Tracey?”

“Yes,” she says. “But also about you. That night when I came over, after I saw Caroline’s death certificate, you asked me what I hoped to get from everything. And that hurt, because it was obvious, wasn’t it?”

I shake my head.

“I don’t know,” I say. “I must be missing something because it isn’t obvious to me.”

“I was doing it for you,” she says. She smooths her hair behind her ear. She takes a breath. “I have so much more than I’ve ever had,” she says. “I know about where I come from. I have my own apartment and I have Jamal, who I know will be my friend forever. I have money. I have this movie, and all the possibilities that it could open up if I do well. But still. It’s hard to let go of what I was to you for a little while. I’ve never been anyone’s great mystery before. I doubt I ever will be again. It’s not even what I want for myself, but it felt amazing, to be that special for a little while. For you to think I was that special.”

“But you were more than that to me,” I say. “The mystery was just how we started.”

“I know that now. But I panicked. We saw Lenny and he explained all these things I’d always wondered about but all I could think was that I wasn’t ready yet. I didn’t want it to be over for you.

“Look,” she says, and her words come faster, more urgently. “I don’t know how you feel. But I just want to say this, and maybe it will sound incredibly egotistical or absurd but I’m going to say it anyway.”

I can feel myself stop breathing.

She breathes deep. Says, “I can’t stop thinking about you. I don’t want to stop thinking about you. And you’re this incredible person who does all of these amazing things. You have this job I didn’t even know existed and everyone talks about you like you’re a genius. You should have heard them this morning going on and on about this set, and it’s all so deserved. I mean, all I have to be is decent today, because this room all by itself is enough to break hearts. And you have this beautiful life with your parents and your cool older brother and Charlotte and all your movies and records and insane knowledge of the city. When I said those things about myself compared to you, when I talked about your perfect life, what I was trying to say was that I wanted to feel worthy of you. The problem was that I didn’t. But even though it’s only been a week since then, I’ve figured a lot out. It might sound crazy, but even though you’re this incredible, artistic genius of a girl, I do feel worthy of you.”

I shake my head because I can’t believe she’s saying these things.

“Of course,” I say. “Of course you are.”

Everything feels fuzzy. Like there’s humming all around me, and there is no way that she is saying these words to me but here she is, saying them, looking at me with those green eyes that I’ve been trying not to look too far into for all the weeks I’ve known her.

“But, wait,” I say. “What about if you get famous?”

She shakes her head and laughs.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“When everyone knows about Clyde and—”

“I’m not going to tell people about Clyde. I got some answers, and I got the inheritance and for those things I’ll always be grateful. But I don’t want anything else out of it. I don’t want the world talking about him and my mother.”