All four of us sleep until past noon the next day.

Ava is the first to wake up, and I know this because she’s the one who wakes the rest of us. She slams open the door to the bathroom that connects to our room, and Nua and I both jerk awake. He rubs his head. “Ugh.”

“It’s two in the afternoon,” she announces, and I laugh in exasperation. She says, “I missed a conference call, all because my mother didn’t want us bothering her while she hosted her intern for tea.”

“Stop yelling,” says Keol from the other room, his voice muffled through the wall, and Ava goes over to his little room and throws open the door. “Come on, up up up everyone, Bayan says lunch.”

She goes back through the bathroom, and Nua and I both sit up. Keol comes to his doorway, crossing his arms. His hair sticks up, and he coughs. “Not like it’s our fault.”

I shrug and brush my teeth. Keol skips that and just follows Ava down to the dining room, and Nua and I arrive a moment after him, while Ava is saying, “You could’ve just told us not to bother you.”

“Didn’t want to risk it,” says Miss Lilly calmly. “Ah, boys, come in, how was your rest?”

Neither of us answer. Keol just rolls his eyes.

I realize that I’m starving, and Bayan gives us food, not infested with medicine this time. We’re all done pretty quickly, Ava especially, because she gets a phone call that she immediately answers. She stands and leaves the room a little before I’m done, only stopping to turn back to Nua, plant a kiss on his cheek, and say, “Happy birthday, by the way.”

He smiles slightly, but it doesn’t quite reach his eyes, and Ava leaves the room. Miss Lilly says, “Twenty-one?”

Nua nods.

“Hm,” she says, and then leaves herself. Keol groans, leaning his head down to rest his forehead on the table. “I hate everything. Happy birthday.”

“Is it supposed to give you a pounding headache?” asks Nua bitterly, rubbing his eyes, and Keol shrugs. It looks weird from the position he’s in. I lean my head back and look at the ceiling, and then after a moment I stand and leave the room as well.

I’m assuming that Ava is making up that call she missed for work, and I don’t want to bother her, so I just go to the library and wander around for a little bit. Then I go back to my room and lie on my bed. I read two and a half pages before realizing that I have no ability to concentrate whatsoever.

Keol comes in then, and says, “Where’s Ava?”

“I dunno.”

Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

He sighs. “She stole my belt.”

I raise my eyebrows. He looks at me, and then leaves. Once he’s gone I look out of my window, over the backyard. Nua’s leaning against the stone fountain with a book, I can just barely see him from this angle. I can’t see Ava, though, and I go into Keol’s room and look out his window. There she is, on the beach, the jetties stretching into the ocean on either side of her.

I need to talk to her.

She’s standing on a rock, her sweater fluttering around her, and her hair blows back in the wind. She doesn’t look at me, but as I approach she says, “Aber.”

I stop, looking up at her. She glances at me. She’s wearing her bikini top under the sweater, and a thin skirt tied around her waist with what looks like Keol’s rope-belt.

She wraps her sweater around her more as the wind picks up. “Did my mother say you could come out here?”

“No,” I say truthfully.

She just laughs. “You’re promoting yourself to Keol-level?”

I don’t answer, and she gestures me up next to her, sighing. “You can be Nua-level, though. I’m sick of babysitting you.”

I laugh slightly, trying to balance on the rock, and she holds her hand out for me. She’s stronger than she looks.

“Why do you come out there so much?” I ask, and she half-laughs, half-sighs. “Oh, you know, fresh air. For the lungs.”

“If your lungs are so bad why don’t you quit smoking?” I mutter, and she laughs for real. “My lungs were sick-”

She stops, because I almost fall. She grabs onto my forearm too, adjusting her own footing, then finishes. “Before the cigs.”

“Hm,” I murmur, but I don’t think she hears, because by that point she’s let go of me and jumped off the rocks into the loose sand. I follow, trying not to wince when my toe scrapes against the rock. She wanders down the beach and I follow until the sand starts to squish between my toes. She steps on a seashell, then picks it up and studies it for a moment before tossing it towards the ocean. She’s close enough to the water that it lands in the waves.

The sun is starting to go down. It dips behind the house, casting a shadow that almost reaches us. She grins at me, coming back up the shore. Her feet are sandy and I can see her ribs when she takes a deep breath. Then she says, “What did you want?”

I look up at her, thinking of Abigala, but I can’t bring myself to say it. I stare at her a moment, and she looks back, raising her eyebrows, and finally I say, “Is Keol mad at me?”

And she laughs, shielding her eyes from the sun with her hand, and says, “I don’t know. But if he is, he’s more mad at me.”

“How is this supposed to work, then?” I ask quietly, and she comes towards me a little. “What?”

The waves crash behind her, and I say it again. “How is this supposed to work?”

She sighs, and then she shrugs. “Don’t think about it.”

“Don’t think about it?”

She nods, looking up at me from under her hand. “And don’t feel it.”

“I can’t do that,” I say quietly, and Ava laughs, taking another step closer, and says, “You’re gonna have to learn.”

I sigh. She looks down at her toes, and I do too, wiggling them in the wet sand, and then she raises her hand. I glance behind me, and see Keol coming down to meet us.

“I’d like my rope back,” he says as he approaches, running his hand through his already messy hair. Ava grins. “Come and get it.”

“Darling,” he says, his voice dry. “Not in front of the kids.”

Ava grins at me again, and Keol reaches his hand out for her, then smiles crooked at me as well. “Unless he wants to join us.”

“I think he’s good,” answers Ava for me, and I nod, looking back over the water and hoping that my cheeks aren’t flushing. Keol gives an exaggerated sigh of relief. Ava starts to follow him up back towards the house, tossing over her shoulder at me, “Come up whenever.”

I really need to talk to her. I really need to talk to her about Abigala, I really want to know what happened to her. She could be in danger, she could be hurt. She probably has no idea where I am, either. I want her to know that I’m okay.

Because I am okay. I’m better than I thought I would be in any marriage. I got lucky with my family; I got lucky with my wife.

All I need to do, I think as I sigh and turn around, starting to trudge up the beach back to the house, is remember what she told me. Love has nothing to do with this at all.