In Another Life

15 - "I'm tired of staying up all night with you on my mind"

15 - “I'm tired of staying up all night with you on my mind”

Ava was up earlier than necessary, way too heartsore about Adam leaving than she really had any right to be.

Despite the fact that he’d spent the night at Zoey’s, he’d still called her after his dinner and they’d spoken for an hour. Zoey’s boss had sent some work to be done for the next day so Adam had been cleaning up their dinner and ended up calling her.

“I don’t know if I should be offended or flattered that you called me to entertain you,” she’d replied when he’d explained why he was calling her and not spending time with Zoey.

He’d laughed. “Definitely flattered. I could have called anyone but I call your potato face.”

“Thanks for those sweet words. You need to stop though. Any more of that and I’ll get diabetes.”

When Zoey had eventually returned, Ava had felt like she was swallowing rocks when she’d said goodbye to Adam.

Maybe his trip would be good for her. Four months was a substantial time and she could use that time to get over him or at least gain some control over her feelings. Because this emotional train wreck that she was every time she heard Zoey’s voice or had to say goodbye to Adam was not in any way healthy for her.

Sighing, she shimmied into her jeans, slipped on a white t-shirt and tucked it in before shrugging into a baseball jacket. She loved this one mainly because it had the cutest metallic blue sleeves and went amazingly well with almost all of her jeans.

Her phone buzzed, kindly informing her that her Uber had arrived and she grabbed her backpack thinking that she might as well catch up on some work if she was going to be out the entire day.

It was a half hour trip and she was glad that she had a coupon because she needed to save some money if she wanted to have a good year. Adam was waiting, two steaming mugs of coffee in front of him.

He waved her over with a tired grin and they both mumbled greetings and silently drank their coffees, only speaking once the caffeine had kicked in. By then, their breakfast had arrived and the atmosphere had settled a bit, Ava pointedly ignoring his carry-on on the side of the table. Uncle Frank and Felicity would bring the remainder of his luggage when the family came to see him off.

“Are you going to continue staring at your waffles and ignore me until my parents come?” Adam asked, his voice breaking the self-enforced silence.

She finally looked up from her admittedly-delicious waffles and smiled wryly. “Even I can’t be silent for that long.”

“Ah she speaks.” He nudged her knee with his under the table. “What’s up? Is this just normal morning grumpiness or is something else going on?”

She couldn’t blame him for noticing that something was going on but it just happened to be one of her very bad days. She blamed PMS and she just knew that if someone said the wrong thing, she was going to cry.

She looked up at the ceiling and took a deep breath. “Can we be serious for a minute?”

Adam frowned and leaned forward. “Of course, blondie. What’s wrong?”

“Imjustreallygonnamissyou,” she mumbled, looking over his shoulder so she wouldn’t have to see his smug expression.

“What? Ava, you gotta actually say words for me to understand. I know they’re in there somewhere.”

She knew what he was doing, trying to rile her up but her eyes still rolled and lips quirked.

“I said, I’m just really going to miss you, dufus.”