Trespassing

Trip's POV

Here we were again. Ms. Coleman's office hadn't changed in the space of four days. I could see some more stacks of papers, but nothing ultimately new. The blinds were half open like when I'd first been here. Thick clouds hovered Manhattan in a sad tune. My fingers drummed to the beat of a song I listened to this morning. I couldn't get the drum out of my head; the lyrics hadn't even stuck for more than five minutes, though. I wasn't alone. Sure Lydia sat across from me, but beside me, sat a girl I had been unable to get out of my head since the night I took her home. Ava Wellington was a mystery. She could vary from happy, free, to an uptight, well-behaved girl who would rather kick me in the balls. I couldn't figure her out. Ava acted far off, closed from me at first. Then she got comfortable and I saw a whole new version of her—I liked that last one. It wasn't fake, overproduced, controlled or manufactured. Right now, she was holding back, her poker face played everyone—including me—like a champion. I just didn't understand what she was so desperately trying to hide. Alright, we both were in this situation because we refused to talk to our therapist, I just didn't think I put in such a big effort. I wanted to talk to someone. The more time I spent with her, the more I wanted to tell her... she was normal, she wasn't sucking up to me. I had never met anyone like her before.

Our eyes lifted on cue as Lydia coughed shortly.

"Well," our therapist began looking from me to Ava. "Did you two get together outside these walls?"

I hoped two times counted. "Yes." We both answered.

Ms. Coleman smiled like the cherished cat. My eyebrow lifted, there wasn't a wince. The bruising had pretty much vanished. It hadn't stopped Lydia from commenting on the dark shade around my left eye. I deflected the question, obviously, she dropped it.

"Good," she wrote something in a notebook. I would give anything to see what; I think Ava was dying to know, as well. Her hands had to be sweating from all the twisting her fingers were doing. "Do you have anything you want to talk about?"

She was for real, I realized. We were going through all of this because we didn't want to talk. Was she dense? You'd think someone who had so many Harvard diplomas knew better than to ask stupid questions.

"No." We could've belonged to a quire. I chuckled spying a glance at Ava's pink cheeks.

"I see," Lydia nodded calmly, her smile never flattered. Was smiling non-stop part of the job requirement? If so, she did it damned well. "Why don't you tell me how you spent your time together, then? Can you do that?"

All four of my molars ground together when Ava nodded transfixed on the photographs hanging around the walls. They weren't anything special to me, just a bunch of different places—different sights. When she came back, her chocolate eyes met Lydia's wise gray ones.

"I guess." She looked at me before going on. I shrugged giving her the green light. Inside I was fidgeting incredibly—I didn't want to stand in the way of Ava's progress, if this was what this was but... I was afraid where it would lead. "We were together two afternoons, not for long, though." She said rather quickly, the dark haired woman nodded letting Ava know everything was alright.

"Where did you meet, sweetie?" Ava was going to tear her fingers apart if she kept bending them in a 90 degree angle. She was too nervous.

Cursing myself, I stepped in sitting up a little straighter.

"The first time we met at my house—"

"His bedroom's a whole apartment." I snorted as she added that piece of the puzzle.

"Yeah," I supported. "And we met a day after that in a... bar." Ms. Coleman's eyebrows furrowed. "It's from a friend," more like a drag-racing buddy, but who cared about details? "It was closed and he let me use it."

"Huh-uh," Lydia's pen-ball hit the surface of her notebook, pensive. "What were you doing in a bar, exactly?" She laced her hands in front of her chin, resting it on them.

My troublemaker smirk took up my lips, I kicked back in the chair showing myself to be extremely relaxed.

"I'm sure you can reach a conclusion on your own." I challenged with a brief lift and scrunch of my eyebrows—it was a tick whenever I wanted to suggest or emphasize something. Out of nowhere, my bicep was smacked.

"Don't you have any manners?" There she was: the Ava that talked down to me like I was just another bystander. Another person, she didn't care about status. "He thought it would be brilliant to pour our hearts out while using alcohol and a deck of cards." Her voice carried a disgust I didn't quite understand.

"You thought it was a brilliant idea when we were playing." My eyes slit carefully at her.

Her crossed arms accompanied the hard set of her eyes.

"I spent the next day regretting every second of it, like it wasn't enough to pre—" I moved around in my chair turning to face her.

"Enough to what, dear?" It was Lydia who asked, I wanted to know too. Sue me for being curious.

Ava scratched her temple. The straight hair around her face didn't sit right with me. a few days ago I'd seen traces of waves, they were tiny, but they'd been there. Today... there was nothing. It was plainly straight. It wasn't her; it didn't match Ava at all, because if she was anything it wasn't straight or plain, in more ways than one.

"I... had a quiz." I didn't think it was a lie, just that there was more. I wasn't going to push. Who was I to do that?

Lydia made an understanding sound in her throat before turning her attention to me.

"Did you two get drunk?"

"No," I hadn't. "She got tipsy, but it wasn't because we drank a lot—she's a light weight. I was fine, so I drove her home."

"How responsible of you, Trip," I tipped my head to her. Ava rolled her eyes I smiled at her. "And how unlike you, Ava," I drew my shoulders in so I wouldn't let out a laugh. A piece of my brain told me I'd get smacked somewhere else, I didn't need more bruises. "Why did you go along with Trip's idea?" She was playing this against Ava. Who could blame the lady for trying to gain some advantage over the situation? We were keeping her from doing her job, weren't we? I wasn't stupid. I have problems, by what I'd seen of my partner, she did too. It didn't mean that I needed to be fixed. I wasn't a broken down clock that stopped working. Everything in me functioned perfectly, I had secrets, problems like everybody else in the world, still I didn't see them here getting "treated".

"I just wanted to do something... something I wanted to do." My frown couldn't harbor my confusion. Something she wanted to do? Wasn't that what she did every other day?

As my blue eyes stilled on her she withdrew into her hair.

"You wanted to get drunk?" Her jaw line grew tighter. "It's okay that you did, honey. You're a teenager it's normal." I bet a lot of Mommies and Daddies were glad this woman wasn't working as a school shrink, she was telling seventeen-year olds it was A-Okay to drink. On the other hand, I was beginning to like her.

"I don't want to talk about it." Ava said suddenly frontal. She made me swallow thickly. The glare in her eyes was harsh. Lydia glanced down at her watch. "You want to know what I learned from Trip, right?" My eyes flickered softly between the two women in the room. This wasn't awkward at all. Ms. Coleman gave a little nod. "He can handle drinking a lot," I smirked inside my head. "He's very popular with girls," Ow... but true. "And he gets into fights. There that's it, that's all I know. I have nothing else to say." Basically, she didn't a have a nice word to say about myself.

"What about you, Trip?"

My gaze flickered to her, absently I scratched that leftover scar from the car crash.

"Huh..." I didn't have much on my radar when it came to Ava. She interested me since I first saw her in the waiting room. I didn't think I was any closer to breaching her defenses. "Ava doesn't like me much, I guess." Yep, she thought I was a good for nothing rich-boy who slept with any model-slut. "She has ideals that I don't follow." Lydia leaned forward a little, she could beg me to elaborate I wouldn't do it. "She likes the skyline from my balcony," from the corner of my eye I saw her inhale deeply. She thought I wouldn't remember. One point for me, I'd say. I knew what her parents did but so did Ms. Coleman... "Her clothes, she doesn't like to dress in fancy brands. I think her Mom likes how they look on her or somethin'..." I ended up uncomfortable scratching my head. The sudden ambiance next to me was tumultuous.

While Ava appeared terrorized with what I said, our therapist seemed fascinated with the information. What was so interesting about it? Yes, for me it was cool that I'd met a girl who didn't need high-fashion to feel fulfilled—

"That's a surprise to me." Lydia said at last. I got the sudden need to look over to Ava—I widened my eyes. I don't think her chest was moving. It was like she wasn't breathing at all but it couldn't be—she was alive, sitting, staring at the room like it wanted to swallow her whole, but she was there. "You have to be the first model I met who doesn't like clothes, pricey ones at that."

Everything within me stood still. I was the one not breathing. The process of understanding what Lydia said was going slow, I couldn't wrap my head around it quite yet. I don't understand why it bothered me this profoundly. It shouldn't. I knew this girl for two weeks now, I'd talked with her four times and none of our conversations had exactly been friendly. Still, it feels good having someone to talk, doesn't it? My mind whispered opening old wounds. Wounds, I would rather leave alone to heal. I guided my gaze to her, thinking about her smiles, laughs, confessions—they hadn't been many, but had any of it been true or was she just like her? Catherine swam from the depths of my heart. The same had happened in Central Park when Ava asked about my girlfriends.

Drawing in a shaky breath, I swept a hand through my hair. Get your shit together, Harrington. Nodding quietly to the voice inside my head I chilled Ava with a vicious glare. She jumped.

"You're a model?" I bit, my fingers curling into the hazel locks, reaching their roots. Why did it matter what she did? Why did I care?

Ava regarded me softly, taken aback. It was the look little innocent girls wore in their first day of school when they were left on the playground to fend for themselves, when they heard the noisy school bell for the first time.

"I am... sort of..." She cleared her throat out. It sounded like something was blocking her airways—like she was choking. Guilt? I was pissed.

"Either you are or you aren't." My gritted hiss was the only thing left before I slammed the door in my exit.

The secretary, whose name I had yet to learn, gave me a deer-caught-in-headlights gaze as I stormed passed her desk, going through the exit guarded by two exotic plants. The fury I was walking with seemed old and new—all wrapped into one. I thought—maybe—this wasn't actually real. I wasn't walking down to the elevator—I hadn't heard Ava was a model, something I hated with every fiber of my body. There was the possibility of this being a dream—I was going to wake up any second. So I waited. I went down the stairs instead of the elevator, biding my time, wasting my anger. I crossed the small lobby. I pushed open the door.

Rain drops fell on my nose. It was raining? My eyes blinked. I didn't wake up.

I pressed into the glass door feeling out of place, a fool for ever being on board with this stupid program. My parents didn't want to deal with me because I was a mess, they kicked me into therapy. I shook every last clinical shrink, but not this one. No, she had to care and persist. She had to piece the shards of my soul and heart back in the right place—I bumped my head into the glass. In came Ava with her sweet approaches and 'hellos', her hot-and-cold mood swings, that for some reason, drove me into overdrive and made me… made me crave more of her.

Thick nails dug into my forearm. A tug later I was stumbling inside the building. I tossed the drops of water from my hazel hair before taking in her face.

"You're pissed off because I didn't tell you I modeled? Like you told me what you do in your free time—oh wait! You didn't need to, I saw—"

I exploded. It didn't even mean this was all for her, it wasn't. I couldn't distinguish my bottled up anger.

"You don't know the first thing about me—who cares about what people hear and read? My birth date? Congratulations. My favorite color? We can be friends. Trip sleeps with models everyday of the week—oh you're a model? Jump in my bed." Ava glared at me shocked. "That's what you and everyone else knows about me and you think all I am is a womanizing-bad-boy. Well, it's not." I kicked the elevator door resting my forehead on the cool metal. "Because my parents are filthy rich I'm not entitled to privacy, I never was! I don't get asked about the photographs or all the shit they print out—they don't ask me if it bothers me or not. They just print it. So, I decided to give them something interesting to write about. It doesn't mean I like the attention." All my life was nothing but a show for everyone else. I was an actor on a daily stage my parents had built. "I thought you were different. I thought you were a normal girl who liked keeping to herself—with some issues—but I thought you were the closest thing to normal. But you're not. You're just like every other girl who comes to me so I can get them an interview with my Mother." I felt a chill ran up my spine—she was right there in front of me, hand hovering next to my cheek, dropping slowly. I looked to the window and could see the red hand print sticking out.

"You're an asshole!" She yelled, hair cramming her face. "You don't know anything about me, either." Ava's chest rose and fell to an abnormal rate.

I hesitated talking. She'd slapped me, I found in me to whisper above her harsh breathing, "I know you voluntarily expose yourself."

Her face became sullen, her eyes slit viciously.

"Voluntarily?" She laughed. Not that nice sing-song laugh I'd heard four days ago, though. It was dark, lost and... her eyes were getting really red. "I hate being the center of attention. I like photographing things, people even—not the other way around..." Crap. Trip, you really are an asshole. Tears were swimming near the brim of her eyes, I caused it.

"Then... why do you do it?" I proceeded more cautiously trying to avoid the awkward crying fit. Ava's tears didn't back down just because my voice did.

"It makes my parents happy." The six-billion dollar answer to the six-billion dollar question. Parents. Everything revolved around them—mine and hers. Our problems seemed to come from the same place. How different could they be? "I'm a lie—I've been a l-lie and..." I watched as the gorgeous, strong girl I knew Ava to be crumpled—the same person that seconds ago slapped me. "I've be-been living a lie—it's not who I am, it's not who I want to be... it's not..." she racked through her hair, eyes closed. Tears rolled down, they rolled to her chin, they dripped and continued on as I stared feeling misplaced. I looked at her sensing despair, anger, all the types of sadness I knew ran through her at some point. She shook her head, her shoulders shook from the racking sobs Ava tried to keep inside. I didn't understand why it was so important that she was a model to her parents—I didn't need to. I only knew she hated the thought of it.

My hands reached for her arms. Chocolate eyes glared through torrents of water, still she found it in her to push me. I got closer. She hit my chest, I let her. When she saw that wasn't changing my mind, Ava lifted her head.

"I don't need your pity." She said. It didn't sound half as loud as it should have.

I shook my head.

"It's not," I breathed. Ava's hands got sluggish until the hitting stopped completely. "I get it." I did. Did Ms. Coleman know our problems matched? Was that why she proposed that deal? Whatever the reason, I was glad. Because the thought of anyone else seeing Ava such a mess... I couldn't handle that. "It's like a giant hole swallowing every little moment of happiness, nothing can fill it, you can't stop thinking about how you'd love to snap your fingers and change your life around." She stopped sobbing as badly, her lower lip spluttered a little. My fingers trembled before touching the surface of her face—it was soft, creamy. Its color was olive, like mine. There was no make up on. I almost smiled, I never met a model who didn't wear make up every instant of their lives. After brushing a couple of wet trails my head lowered, tilting. "I get it." I repeated sincerely.

What did I do now? I thought aimlessly. Ava was letting me be close to her without accusing me of wanting to go to bed with her, I didn't feel like ruining this. My blue eyes jumped as something slithered over my chest, around it. Her face vanished from my hands, burying itself between the space of my neck and shoulder. What went around me were her arms. I was stunned, even more than I had been after she slapped me. For a minute, my hands stayed limp then I touched her shoulders, her back, rubbing circles slowly, softly. Ava sniffed gripping me harder.

"We can be a lie together?" I rasped, afraid to speak normally.

"Just stay quite, Harrington..." She ordered. I smiled having heard a choked chuckle in between.