Reasons

Part 5

The world owes you nothing. Be kind, choose love, and find your happiness, or it will slip through your fingers, unable to get it back.

Staring at the wall, Ava tilts her head slightly. She had put the last brush stroke on about thirty minutes ago, but she is wondering if the colors do go together. The mix of greys, browns, and blues flow across the wall in swirls and squiggles, not making any picture really, but just a design. She supposes she is glad that it was not a checkerboard or something with a lot of straight lines. She hates painting straight lines. Ava straightens and then tilts her head the other way. Perhaps she should put a swirl in this spot, it seems a little vacant. "Nope." Ava feels her voice, but she cannot hear it over the loud music. "Not going to do it. It is done, everything is put away. Leave it alone." Still, something is nagging at her. Did she forget one? Ava walks to the corner and traces the swirls across the length of the wall, slowly with her fingers. It would not be the first time she forgot something in one of her paintings, but usually, she found it quickly and no one else noticed. When she reaches the other corner, she decides it is indeed finished and turns her back to it. If she keeps looking, she will end up adding to it.

Out of the corner of her eye, she catches a figure standing by the stairway in the dark. She stifles a scream that creeps up from her core, but after a second the figure takes a step forward. If anything were in reach, she would throw it at him. "Good grief, Max!" She yells while feeling her blood boil at being terrified out of her wits. Ava looks down at her watch to see the time, before looking back at him with a glare and removing her headphones. "It is two in the morning. What the heck are you doing here?"

Max shrugs his shoulders with his eyes narrowing. "Jessica wanted me to check on you, make sure you weren't still here..." Ava starts to protest, but he stops her. "That was over three hours ago."

Ava's jaw drops slightly as she glares at him. "What have you been doing here for three hours?"

"Watching you." His answer is quick, having already guessed the question ahead of time. Ava freezes in complete horror, realizing he was watching her for three hours, without her knowing anyone was there. The corner of his mouth tugs into a smirk and it stays there. "You have some cute dance moves." Ava looks away from him and turns back to the mural, hoping to hide the fact that her face just flamed red. The panic and horror of knowing he was watching her be an idiot is overwhelming. "You have a pretty good voice too." Ava places her face in her hands for a minute, hoping her cool fingers will chill her blushing face. It does not. "Alright, I will stop teasing." She lowers her hands when she hears his airy laugh. It is a little less airy this time, and heartier, as though it was coming from deeper within. It is an intoxicating sound and suddenly she feels rooted in place, unable to move, and unable to look back at him. "I thought about what you said, about needing to find a purpose. Something that gets me out of the bed in the morning." Thump. Ava's heart pounds against her ribcage so hard she thought it might burst out and hit the floor. Choose me, Ava's inner voice screams. It may not be healthy, and she may have told him not to let someone else carry his life, but she still wants him to choose her. "I think you had the right idea in choosing something crafty."

Now, her heart plummets to the ground. He listened to what she said, and she hates herself for it. Forcing herself to put on a brave face, she turns around to face him. "What will you do?" Can he hear how much her voice is trembling? Does he see the longing her gaze? She has been trying so hard to bury it, but it is fighting her at every second. It is burning her from the inside out.

"Well, I talked to the General..." Even Max calls his dad the General. "He has some soldiers on the base that have been cleared by the base psychologist, but he thinks they are faking it. He wants me to go talk to them once a week, so I can go do that, but I think I am going to get into landscaping."