With friends like these It was August 27. It was hot and sunny. Ava Fletcher stood in front of the brick building, skinny legs poking out of torn jean shorts, feet stuffed into a pair of ratty high-tops with one set of loose ties. Her painter’s hands were grasping a small potted plant, dirt spilling down the front of her t-shirt. She had cleaned up her act over the summer, enrolled in some summer classes and retaken the Spring classes she’d failed, but she was still Ava Fletcher, messy hair tied up in a bun, tendrils still falling out of the bandana she’d wrapped around her head in a failed attempt to keep the little bits out of her eyes.
She took a deep breath and looked down at the little succulent arrangement. She had spent a lot of time researching which flowers were appropriate to give when one was saying sorry, but she hadn’t wanted to give him roses or carnations--they were too romantic for her situation, she thought. Hyacinths were pretty and fragrant but some people didn’t like the smell and Ava didn’t think giving Arnold a plant that irritated his nose was a good move. That left tulips, however these were a spring plant and it was the dog-days of summer. And so she had agonized instead over the cacti and succulent department and wound up bringing home a couple which she had then repotted and arranged to bring to her former best friend’s home.
If he was there and willing to listen to her, that was. Her eyes traveled up the length of the reddish brown building again and her fingers rubbed against each other. She wanted to fidget, but she didn’t want to drop Arnold’s plant. Someone passing by her on the street gave her a weird look and Ava returned it with a shaky smile before climbing up the stairs to the building. When she got to Arnold’s apartment she shifted the pot to her left arm, raised her hand and knocked three times. She scuttled backwards, pressing herself against the wall opposite the door. She had never felt so nervous in her life.
The door swung open, but it was not Arnold who stood before her. His roommate Smitty, a gangly, somewhat greasy young man, offered a weak smile as he tried to decide if he knew who this girl was. Then the switch kicked on. “Hey, Arnold. It’s that girl you weren’t dating. And she brought some weird plant.”
“Not the single plant you’re familiar with, I take it?” Arnold joked as he came over to the doorway. Given his single girlfriend, there were plenty of girls he wasn’t dating. Smitty stepped out of the doorway to allow Arnold to stand there and peer into the hallway, their space cramped and poorly utilized by their furniture situation. He wore a black t-shirt and blue cargo shorts, a rather un-Arnold-like outfit very Muggle in its styling. But when he saw her, he smiled a smile that was very much Arnold, and it was instantly clear that he was still the same person.
“Ava!” he grinned, his tone merrily incredulous. He almost leapt into the hallway, quick in his movements but gentle in his grasp as he reached to hug her, not wanting to cause her to drop the succulent she carried. “It’s so good to see you!” he exclaimed, releasing her. “How have you been? Wait, duh, come in first, obviously,” he added as an afterthought, leading her into the apartment.
Inside, Collin sat on the couch, and Smitty had resumed his position in the bulky, ill-matching armchair. Their postures varied greatly--Collin upright and tense, Smitty hunched and pulled under himself--but their facial expressions were identically serious as they stared at the TV: it was a Mario Kart day. “Hey, guys,” said Arnold. “Hit pause for a minute. We’ve got company.” He glanced back to Ava, trying to assess her comfort level. She’d only met his roommates a few times, he thought, and didn’t want her to feel nervous. “Or else we could go for a walk?” he suggested.
Arnold seemed happy to see her, it was weird. She supposed she didn't think she was the sort of person to hold things against others either, and she and Arnold got along so well that it only made sense he was similar. But it was Arnold and she had been so bad to him, so bad. He should be angrier, had he started smoking regularly since she'd last seen him? It was plausible but she didn't think he was the sort to let himself go down the track she'd been down. One never knew, however--she was certain no one from Sonora would have pegged her as the type back when she'd been the little nerdy artist in love with one of her best friends and too shy to do any of it.
"Um," she shifted the plant between her hands awkwardly before thrusting it forward. "This is for you, an, um, a present. To, uh..." she trailed off, looking at his roommates awkwardly. "Can we go to your room maybe?" She didn't want to go for a walk, perhaps it would make things easier to say but if she sat down she'd have to force it all out. Going on a walk would only allow her to get distracted and she wasn't sure if she'd ever say everything she needed to.
She looked to the door she knew belonged to him, a wooden rectangle stuffed uncomfortably close between two other wooden rectangles, almost too thin to even call a door. Arnold followed her gaze, to no surprise. “Yeah, we can,” he said. He smiled back at his roommates as he led her into his room. “Carry on with the race, gentlemen.”
Arnold shut the door behind them. It was a cramped room even for two--he recalled how extra tiny it had seemed with his whole family helping him move in--which left Ava with the option to sit either in the plastic desk chair or on the bed. “I really am glad to see you,” he commented with a casual seriousness as he sat the plant on his desk, rearranging the mess already there so it could sit as close to the window as possible. He turned around to face her, leaning against the only bit of available wall, left arm raised and pressed against the back of the door.
Ava smiled back at his roommates shyly and followed him, watching as he arranged the plant on his desk. "I'm glad to see you too," she said. "I really, really am. And I'm really, really sorry about um, about last year." She looked up at him from her place on the bed and then back down again at her hands.
"I'm not entirely sure what was going on last year, I guess I just... I made friends with some people and they liked to do things that I had never done before but I was just missing everyone so much and I never said anything about it before, but I almost didn't go to university, you know. I saw my mom over the summer, right after we graduated. And she didn't come and so I went to see her, but we had this awful fight and you know, I don't think she ever cared about me.
"Anyway, I was upset and I missed Emrys and Ji-Eun and Chloe and- and Emery, and Charlotte didn't love me-- my mom, not Emrys' girlfriend, and these guys they just, they knew how to take all that pain away. And then I met Lauren and she was great and she really made me forget and... I think I loved her, Arnold, I really think so. The way she made me feel, like I was the only girl in the world. She made me laugh and she showed me all kinds of new things and her poetry made me cry and..." she sighed and frowned again.
"But she left me, she left me to go back to Virginia, the state, not the girl, and I just didn't know what to do anymore. I failed my Spring semester, did you know that?" Ava laughed, it was a weird, sad laugh that didn't really suit her. "I did, and then we had that walking date, in the park, and it was raining and I was hungover and if I'm being perfectly honest probably a bit stoned too, and I went, but then I saw you there and you had an umbrella and I just felt so, so horrible for always canceling on you and never telling you I wouldn't show up because you would always come even after all those times I stood you up and...
"I'm just really sorry," she continued. "You didn't deserve that, I should have been better to you, it wasn't fair of me. I left you just standing in the rain and I didn't text you-- I mean my phone was dead so there was no way I could have texted you even if I wanted to, but I was afraid because I saw you and I realised I wasn't me, at least not the me that I knew. And I went home, I retook my classes and I passed and I took more classes and I'm better now, I feel better and I'm doing better, I'm doing so much better and if you still have room for me in your life, I'd um, I’d like a second chance." She looked up from her twisting fingers to Arnold, searching his face expectantly.
It broke his heart to hear how much Ava had suffered, and how much she had gone through alone. Or, not quite entirely alone, since she did say she had other friends at their school, but without them, without Emrys and Ji-Eun and Chloe and Emery. Without him. Arnold still considered Ava his best friend, even with the distance she’d placed between them, and he hated to hear how much she’d been hurting. He wanted nothing more than to sweep it all away and make everything okay, erase the memory of the pain, since it had mostly passed but clearly still weighed down on her, and since he didn’t have the opportunity to save her when she was in the throes of it.
Admittedly, he’d been a bit angry when she’d first started breaking dates. Arnold was angry a lot, a quick glance at his hands reaffirmed; his scarred knuckles had healed, but he could still see the marks, mostly because he looked for them. But he’d not stayed angry very long because it occurred to him that something had to be wrong. Ava was Ava and, while she could be a bit flighty at times--intelligence and airheadedness were not mutually exclusive, as he had seen that she was both at different times--she would not cut him out of his life over nothing. He just wished now that he’d fought harder to stay in her life, force his way into her day-to-day. Do something.
“I’m not giving you a second chance,” he said after a moment’s delay, “because you haven’t done anything to ruin the first one. You don’t have to apologize for being in a bad place. I get it. I’m honestly just glad that things are getting better for you. I’m sorry I wasn’t there more.” He paused to force a joking tone, although it fell a bit flat, wounds still too fresh. “And hey, if you want to compare notes on having a garbage parent, I’m always available. Literally always.” His humorous tone strengthened. “I’m a double-major. I don’t sleep.
“So don’t sweat it, okay?” he smiled. “Just keep improving. Keep getting stronger. If you really feel like you need to make something up to me, that’s how you can do it. Got it?”
Ava’s heart just about stopped when Arnold first began to speak. The blood rushed loudly in her ears, her thoughts were speeding through her brain a million miles a minute. Of course he wasn’t going to give her a second chance, it was true, he just hadn’t wanted to scold her in front of his friends, he breath caught and her eyes felt suspiciously wet. But...what was that? It was the weirdest feeling, one she hadn’t ever felt before, but Ava’s heart swole and her chest felt like it was bursting. And then, she really did start crying and she leaped off the bed, hugging Arnold tightly, banging them both rather harshly against his door.
“Got it,” she mumbled into him. So what if her mom and Emery and Lauren didn’t love her? She had a best friend who did and who needed love when there were friends like Arnold?