Kade held his breath and gazed at Bria. Her hands were balled up into loose fists, and she was staring somewhere distant, somewhere far away. To him it felt like he had lost her with that move. Her friends had gathered round the table again, totally getting over the whole thing, but she was still stuck in her little bubble, bewildered and pinned to the floor.

He couldn’t stand the idea of fucking up like that. He had made Bria totally uncomfortable; he could tell that from her pursed lips and twitching cheeks. “Are you alright?” he asked her, but she stuck to her silence and stormed out of the classroom. “What the hell just happened?” Kade asked himself. “Ava, wait for me here, alright?” he said.

“Don’t worry, we’ll take care of her,” Mrs. Baxter winked. “Trouble in paradise?”

“We’re about to find out,” he said, taking off after her. He followed Bri down the stairs, but she wouldn’t look at him. “Bria, Bria!” he called out her name, but she wouldn’t stop. At first Kade thought she was wandering around aimlessly, but then it occurred to him that she knew exactly where she was going. She hurried down the fire exit, shoved the door open and disappeared behind it. Kade hurried after her, following her down the flight of stairs and then stopping where she did. “Hey, come on. Talk to me,” he said, placing a hand over her shoulder. “I thought, I thought it’d make you happy … what I did.”

Bria stared at him, her eyes swelling up with tears.

“Wow, um. I’m really panicking right now, help.” Kade’s attempts to turn this into a joke weren’t really helping, but thankfully, he heard the door creak open, and there was Ava. “What, how did you get here?” he asked her. The little girl just smiled devilishly and turned away, as if to give them some privacy.

“You raised her well,” Bria said before bursting into tears again.

“Hey, hey. Talk to me,” Kade said, holding her face in his hands. At that point he just wanted her to pour her heart out to him, to tell him all those things that she never got to say.

“What’s the point?” she asked him, shifting around in her place. She was standing right in the middle of one of the tiles, fidgeting anxiously like a caged lion. “What’s the point of telling you how I feel?”

“The point is that I get to understand,” he said. “I get to know what goes on in your head before you go to sleep at night.”

“Oh, and what makes you think I’m willing to share any of that with you?” she asked, almost challengingly. Kade let out a frustrated sigh and started pacing slowly. Eventually he sat down on one of the stairs, and Bria shifted her focus to Ava.

“What’s wrong?” she whispered, pouting. Bria felt all warm on the inside. Damn, that cute little munchkin. I sure can’t say no to her.

Bria shook her head. “It’s not important,” she murmured. In the corner of her eye she could see Kade slumped down on one of the steps, pretending not to listen in on their conversation. Bri tried hard not to cry anymore, but she couldn’t help it. She couldn’t hold it back. Her eyes dripped with tears, and her walls, those walls that held her up just collapsed. Moment by moment, they fell. She just couldn’t keep her guard up anymore, she couldn’t pretend. Salty drops fell from her chin, drenching her shirt. Finally she pressed her head against the wall, trying not to draw any attention, but it was too late. Ava was already staring at her with those big eyes, concerned eyes, eyes that said “I love you”.

“Tell me,” the little girl insisted.

“I’m just a little bit sad, as you can tell,” she blurted, trying to control her sobbing. She was trembling. They were raw tears, raw emotions, feelings that she couldn’t get over just-like-that. She knew Kade was listening in on their conversation, but he wouldn’t dare look.

“Why are you sad?”

“Well, a long time ago, your daddy broke my heart.”

“How?”

“It’s not important. He just really hurt me, okay? And I thought I had forgotten about it, but it turns out I haven’t.”

“Oh,” Ava said, obviously confused. Bria couldn’t believe she was saying this to anyone, let alone a three-year-old, but the truth was that she was desperate. Years later, she realized that she was just as distraught as she was the day that Kade dumped her. She needed an outlet, she needed to pour her heart out. No matter how hard she tried to resist it, there was no escaping how she felt.

Kade overheard Bria talking about him, and it made his skin crawl. It made his skin crawl because he knew she was right, that what he did was horrible. To this day, he hadn’t apologized for what he did. The words “sorry, I still love you” were just clawing at his throat, begging to come out.

He could hear whispering, lots of it. What kind of relationship advice could my three-year-old possibly be giving right now? he thought to himself before letting out a long, frustrated sigh. He just froze there like a statue, trying to think of what to say, contemplating every possible scenario, which ranged from a slap across the face to a wedding in Cancun.

“You know, Daddy never makes me sad,” he heard Ava say. Rubbing it in her face much? That’s my little girl! It never occurred to him how much Ava truly loved him but then he spotted her peering at him a bunch of times, her eyes so full of life, their blue hue carrying all sorts of emotional currents. Kade felt like he was drowning in his daughter’s eyes. Bria whispered something back but he couldn’t hear it; Are you ladies done with your chit chat? He stared out the broken glass window instead.

There wasn’t much to look at besides a bunch of kids playing basketball downstairs, but they didn’t go to Ava’s school. They were playing in the street, passing what looked like a sockball to each other, breaking the first rule of basketball because the ball didn’t bounce off the ground. Kade watched them attentively, eventually drowning out everything else. Bri and Ava’s conversation faded into the background and all he could think of were those boys, skidding across the floor with their worn out shoes, hugging themselves every now and again to keep warm.

Kade felt grateful. A couple of years from now, when she was old enough to play sports, he said he would buy her a basketball and a soccer ball and a pair of ballet shoes. He said he would buy her the world because she deserved it. Kade must’ve heard Bri sniffing a couple of times and that was when he rose to his feet, went over, and sat next to her. She wouldn’t look at him at first and when he looked closer he saw that her makeup had streamed down her face.

“Well, this is embarrassing,” she said, brushing the hair from her eyes. Meanwhile Ava was waddling around like a not-so-clueless penguin.

“It’s okay,” Kade said, feeling the urge to stroke her hair but refraining from it. Just as he was about to touch it Bria closed her eyes and cocked her head towards him, which gave him the green light to pet her a little. He twirled one golden lock around his index finger, let it go, and then moved on to the one next to it. “How come you never told me any of this?” he asked her.

“Told you what? That you broke my heart?” she said with her head tilted to the side. “I’m sure if you followed me on Twitter at the time you would know that I’ve spent months doing nothing but listen to sad Nickelback songs.”

“No, I mean,” Kade said with his finger raised in the air. “How come you never reached out to me afterwards? You never called, you never texted.”

“It’s because you fucking got married!” Bri said, her eyes fixated on his. “Sorry,” she whispered, covering her mouth with three fingers. “But what was I supposed to do, you tell me? What was I supposed to do?”

To Kade it sounded like a cry for help. He had no idea she was feeling this way. All of a sudden he saw a fierceness in her eyes that he’d never seen before. It was all a part of her, a part that he’d never come across. “You’re right, you’re right,” he said, cupping his right hand and putting it over hers. Her fingers curled a little and it was almost as if he could feel the adrenaline course through her veins.

“I’m pretty sure she’s bored of us,” Bria said, turning to Ava, whose attention had shifted to the boys playing in the street.

“I’m going to spoil her so much,” Kade said, smiling to himself. “I don’t want her to miss out on anything.”

“How could she possibly miss out when she has an awesome dad like you?”

“How are you this good?”

“What do you mean?”

“After all this time, you’re still good to me. You still want me to be happy.”

“Come on, Kade, if you knew me at all you would know that I’m not the type to wish ill upon people.”

“I mean, I never thought you were wishing ill upon me,” he said, squirming in a joking way. Suddenly this reminded him of the way the two of them used to joke in high school. “Doesn’t this remind you of something?” he asked, looking around.

“The stairwell!” she clapped.

Kade was catapulted back to a simpler time, a time when kids used to skip class to make out in stairwells. He and Bri were those kids. “Oh, God. Remember how smelly that place was? I’m pretty sure that was the only spot that Denny the janitor didn’t know even existed.”

“I mean, if he knew it existed he would’ve never left it like this. Do you not remember how spotless our school was?”

“Pretty spotless,” Bri said, nodding solemnly.

She felt like she was in high school again. All that was missing was the occasional cigarette and the fishnet leggings. Back in the day Bri tried so hard to be rebellious but it never really worked out for her. Kade, on the other hand, was your typical bad boy and she’s always found that a bit intimidating.

“I’m sorry, Ari,” Kade said. It had been a while since he last called her that.

“It’s alright, K-dog,” she teased. It had been a while since she last called him that, too. The whole football team called him K-dog but he absolutely hated it when the name caught on and the next thing he knew, everyone, teachers included, were calling him that.

They sat in silence, listening to the sound of the wind and the kids playing. Ava’s laughter echoed across the walls, mimicking the laughter outside. Bria found herself lost in the sounds, the spirals of happiness, and Kade’s eyes. The world around her seemed to slow down, treat her differently than it did the past couple of years. The air felt gentler and her thoughts didn’t bombard her as they used to. This was a moment of peace, one that she appreciated more than anything. The sun peeked above the horizon causing red streaks to cut into the darkening sky. Ava’s brown hair flowed free around her face and a slight smile curved her lips. She had the appearance of someone completely at peace, without a care in the world; a child.