The Fight of Ambivalence ~ Harry Styles

23 - Borrow

Are secrets ever worth it? Do they ever really help anyone or does it only create more problems?

Sheila does a good job at avoiding Ava for most of the week. She really doesn't know what to say. It's not that Harry is more important to her or that she doesn't care if her relationship with Ava ends, she just really doesn't know what to say to make her understand.

The thing is, you can't make anyone understand anything. It's not something you can force on someone, you just have to explain yourself and hope for the best.

That's what she's planning to do. She's going to at least try to explain it so it makes some sense, but it feels like she's handing Ava a file that's redacted all the important information. How is Ava supposed to understand that?

She finds Ava to be the only one in their apartment on Monday afternoon, so she musters up all the courage she can and goes into their room to try to talk this out. She goes to speak and then freezes, pacing around the room pretending to put away some laundry.

It's never been this hard to talk to her. Not even when Sheila broke Ava's favorite mug or got a stain on the dress shirt she borrowed for an interview. They were always able to talk about everything, even the things that you don't tell most people. She hates that she's the reason why this is so hard now.

"Are you okay?" Ava asks, interrupting Sheila's deep train of thought and making her jump.

"Yeah, um, I guess. I don't know," Sheila says with a sigh.

"You've barely been around. I just wanted to make sure you're okay. You can still sleep here you know," Ava says.

"I just wanted to give you some space," Sheila replies. "I didn't want to make you uncomfortable."

"I still care about you. I don't want you out of my life, but I want to know what I did to make you stop trusting me," Ava says.

"Ava you didn't do anything please believe me when I say that," she begs.

"What am I supposed to think?" Ava asks.

Sheila sighs and says, "It's complicated. I'm not ready to tell anyone who it is so I haven't talked about it because it's easier for me. If I knew it was going to hurt you I would have thought of how to do it another way."

"Why does it need to be a secret though?" Ava presses.

"To protect him," she says quietly.

Ava looks at her confused and asks, "From what?"

"He's a bit older than me so it might not look right I guess," she says.

Ava narrows her eyes and asks, "How much older?"

"Not too much. Less than 5 years actually it's just not the right time for us to be public," she says.

"Okay, but why didn't you just tell me that?" Ava replies.

It's a good point really, something Sheila wishes she had thought earlier. Maybe even making someone up would have been better, she's not sure.

"It's weird isn't it?" Sheila asks.

"Well it's not the norm, but I accept that. That's much easier to understand than you hiding from me and never being home," Ava replies.

"I know. I'm really sorry," she says sincerely.

"I get trying to protect the people you care about," Ava presses.

"I know. Thank you and I'm really sorry," she replies.

"Can you stop lying to me now? Is there anything you can tell me about him?" Ava asks.

"Well, he's tall-" she starts, but Ava cuts her off saying, "I love him already!"