This is L.o.v.e. like it should be

LII. Sunday Again

It was past midnight. Ava was in her bed, looking at the ceiling, sleepless. Tried as she might, she couldn't shake the thoughts of Julien. The more she tried to forget his very existence, the more she needed make sense of all that had happened between them.

It was clear to Ava that she still had some feelings towards him, even after such a bad breakup and even after what she saw at the beach house, some part of her deep down still longed for him, but she knew he was bad for her. Like a bad addiction.

Ava looked at the floor, where she had dropped the picture of him in front of that building. That photo haunted her dreams, made her uneasy, but she couldn't stop looking at it.

As she lay there restless, she kept remembering all those occurrences in their past relationship that she never payed attention to before. All those strange behaviors, unexplained absences, late nights he spent working that. But above all, she remembered a shirt she had found under his bed one night. A woman's shirt that did not belong to her but she never had the courage to question Julien about, she just convinced herself it belonged to a maid or maybe he let some friend borrow his apartment while he was away.

"That stupid shirt...", she whispered, covering her eyes. She was finally coming to terms with what she had made excuses for in the past three years. His distance, his excuses and even the way he made her feel guilty... It all made sense. He had played with her heart and her heart had played her mind. And worst of all, she could feel Phoebe knew all along: Julien had been unfaithful.

"I was the only one stupid enough to not see it...", a tear rolled down her face, as anger was swelling and taking the place of all that sadness. She was angry at Julien for his actions, for cheating and deceiving, but she was mainly angry at herself, at her own blindness.

Her head turned towards the window. She could no longer see the moon in the night sky. The digital clock on her nightstand showed 2 a.m.

"ARGH!", Ava screamed covering her face with a pillow, so no one would hear it. "Did that bastard ever love me? Were all his words lies?"

Ava looked once again at the clock. It was Sunday, she knew exactly where he would be at that time. He would be at his beach house, maybe accompanied by one of his lovers.

Ava wondered if those girls knew what they meant to him. She then realized even she did not know that. How many were there? Were they just casual encounter or something more? Did they know about her? Maybe Phoebe wasn't the only one that knew. Maybe Ava was the joke in this twisted tale, and Julien and his girls were having a big laugh at her expense. Hell, even the groundskeeper of one of the Bardi's houses seemed to know about the affairs.

"Enough!", she said, furious.

She had reached her limit, so she got up and changed into the first set of clothes she found in the closet, she grabbed her car keys and, as quietly as she could, she reached the front door and got in her car.

"This is it, Ava.", she spurred herself on. "You will confront him and maybe save another fool like you in the process."