Episode 469: Stupid Boy

"I screwed up on purpose," Sebastian admitted, after a late lunch. They were sharing a lounger on the beach house’s porch. And she’d worked up the courage to ask about that night, that horrible night he’d stood her up.

"Why?" Ava asked, her voice whisper quiet, tears gathering in her throat and eyes as she remembered. She raised her head to meet his eyes. He looked so sorry; she hated to harp but knew it was something they both needed. "I thought if you had dinner with my mom, she’d see what I saw, but then you didn’t show up and my mom…"

He nodded, scrubbed a hand over his face. "Of all the gutless things I’ve ever done, that’s the one I most wish I could do over… It’s the same reason I was playing around with Lila when you were all I wanted from the minute I laid eyes on you. I was fine whenever you and I were flirty and fun, I knew I could do that, that’s all I’d done my whole life. Make Ava smile; make her laugh, yeah, definitely. I actually thought I was good for you sometimes, that I helped you get a minute away from your heavy life."

"You were a lovely escape at times," she agreed.

"But at other times I was an ass. Specifically every time things got too serious, when it felt like I might actually have to step up and prove I could do a relationship better than my parents, or that I could take the leap Justine did. And that night I knew you expected me to prove myself to your mom, I wanted to, I really did, but I didn’t think I had it in me so I just said screw it and why bother trying and so I went clubbing instead."

"Clubbing." She’d never known where he’d been that night. He’d gone clubbing on the worst night of her life. He’d been clubbing when she’d found her mother lying there, when she’d desperately needed his arms around her.

Episode 470: This Love