you stand there waiting, she turns & walks away; & you discover that timing is everything

He wanted an out. He wanted Sophie to wake up so he could excuse himself, or Claire to show up with an emergency (as selfish as that was), or to, better yet, wake up from this complicated nightmare that might have once been something of a dream. Because he didn't deserve the woman in front of him after all those years pining for the woman he had left standing uncertainly on his doorstep.

Darling.

He clapped two hands over his face, tugging them almost violently from her grip as he breathed shallowly into them, because he would not let himself break down in front of her and make her feel like she had to attend to him while he was busy ruining the good thing they had.

"I think I need to take a step back."

The words hung in the air, muffled against his hands but not distorted to be unclear. His hands slid from his face, catching every nook and cranny of sunken tired eyes and crevasse of smile and frown lines, until they hung loosely at his sides, his eyes slowly moving to reach his.

"From us."

His voice caught and he lifted his hand to press against his lips, stilling them, because it wasn't fair to her.

Nothing about this situation was fair.

Why was he so panicked? Avery could never have imagined Teddy this way, and yet he was ripping his hand away from her like she'd burned him. She retracted her own arm, closing one hand around the other in front of her stomach as she stepped away and stared at him. It was like someone had replaced him with someone different and broken and scary; thank Merlin Sophie wasn't there. She would've been distraught.

Not that Avery didn't feel that way herself, after he spoke. And he had to add that on. Had to specify. Clarify.

Wait, what? No. It didn't make sense. What did that mean? She was so certain that he cared about her. About Avery Bishop, nightmare that she could be. About Avery Bishop, who loved him. Who was in love with him. And yes, there was a difference:

When he was in the room, her feelings were so often dictated by the look on his face - the approval or lack thereof. She had waited for him, watched for him, lived for the look on her daughter's face when he walked in to see her and the knowledge that Sophie had all but claimed him as theirs. Sophie was possessive, while Avery couldn't allow herself to be that way. Not openly, anyway. But he had been theirs. And Avery was his, regardless of whether or not he wanted her.

She was his and he didn't want her. Didn't want them. ...Who wouldn't want Sophie?

None of the waiting, watching or anything else ever happened consciously, of course. It just crept up on her sometimes; it just registered when she'd been missing him too long and something reminded her of him and she realized how much it hurt to be away from him now that she finally felt like she had him. But rather than going out of her way, she had waited. Waited and let him do the work, which was ridiculous, she realized far too late. Why had she made him work so hard for it? Because she'd been hurt? His whole life had been hurtful.

Her eyes had glazed over, and she only realized it once she needed to blink and everything snapped back into focus. She was staring at the arm of the couch now, though not on purpose, and her expression was entirely blank: the one look that Robin had feared. It didn't belong on Avery Bishop's face. Yet there it was. And so, when she finally opened her mouth, her tone matched it perfectly. She wouldn't register it until she replayed the night in her head for the umpteenth time, but her breathing had leveled out as well. Her singularly dangerous defense mechanism had kicked in and she didn't even know it.

An hour ago, things had been fine. So it had to be because of Bernice.

"... Who is she?"

It wasn't fair, but none of this was fair. So she didn't feel bad about it. Surely she had the right to know? Otherwise why would he have come here looking like that, only to break her heart?

It was seeing the light leave her eyes, seeing her retreat from the present and into her own head, where he knew thoughts were not always kind to her. And then - everything was gone. No trace of a smile or a tear, no anger or fear - nothingness. For a woman who wore nearly every victory or worry on her face, whose heart so often dangled from her sleeve, this non-expression was horrifying and alien and it made him crave a time turner. If he couldn't change the course of the night, maybe he could just remove himself from the situation entirely, since it was so clear now that he had only made everything worse.

"It's not because of her-" he began, before realizing that wasn't fair. If Bernice had not shown up, there would have been no change of heart or thought. He sighed. "I'm sorry. I just..."

He took a deep breath and continued, backtracking in magnificent fashion. "Bernice has been one of my closest friends since school. She was the only one who seemed to understand my weird brain for a very long time and-" He sighed. "I had always fancied her. Thought I was maybe... possibly..."

The words 'in love' did not need to be said. They fell heavier than silence.

"She's never thought of me in that way. Until recently, apparently, when she and her longtime girlfriend broke up. And, Avery, please," he said, his eyes almost pleading as he finally looked at her again. "You have to know that I care about you. So much. And I want to do this right, because you don't deserve anything halfway. And I need to at least get my head straight and make sure Bernice doesn't mean anything if I'm going to be the person to give that to you."

She was listening, though it may not have come off that way. Avery couldn't bring herself to look at him for a while, but that had more to do with her response to what he'd said than the actual words. Because he contradicted himself so much that she decided he was just lying to her. But she wasn't sure which part was untrue. She wasn't crying, which was kind of bizarre considering how much she wanted to. It would feel bad at the time, and probably not much better afterwards, but she just had this pressure in her head and wanted it gone.

Wanted him gone.

It was the bit where he said how much he cared about her -- that was the one that made her flinch a little too hard, and drew the emotion back out of her. And it honestly wasn't pretty. Her features sort of pulled all together as though they wanted to collapse in on themselves, and she just shook her head. Because what was she supposed to tell Sophie? This was too confusing for a girl her age. And we both know, reader, that her only solution would be to let Sophie blame her instead of Teddy, and she never needed to know about Bernice.

"He not here? But he loves me. He has to come."

"He does, baby, you're right. But the thing is, Sophie.. He just, he doesn't love me. So he couldn't stay."

So present-day Avery didn't feel like she had much of a choice. The longer he stayed the more it hurt, and she had never been good at feeling hurt. So although it took her a couple moments, she got her head on straight enough to finally speak up. And Robin would've been proud of how strong she somehow managed to sound when she did so:

"Okay. But I think you need to leave now."

And she left it at that. Because if he had always fancied Bernice, then what hope was there really? Always implied up until that very moment. So always, for him, must have included her. Must have existed despite her. And that was just far too painful. She would be angry at herself later for not yelling at him. For not asking why the hell he had bothered with her at all if he loved Bernice and evidently wasn't certain that she didn't have any hold over him anymore. Surely he must have been thinking of her the whole time. If you loved someone, that was how it worked. He couldn't have both at once, and clearly didn't because Avery was somebody he cared about and Bernice was someone he had pined over since school. Somebody he loved, even if he wasn't brave enough to finish that sentence. If seeing her caused this, what would've happened months, a year down the line?

Probably the same thing, she would muse afterwards. So, actually she was right not to yell. There was no point.

He wanted to argue, but he wasn't sure with her. He wanted to tell her he couldn't leave until she understood how important she was and how this was all a formality, which of course only begged the question... why? It was a question she had every right to ask and a question he didn't have a shadow of a response. All he knew was he couldn't risk continuing things with Avery if there was any chance that Bernice would wander into his head. Until he knew there was nothing, confirmed what he mostly understood, he couldn't risk hurting her more.

But wasn't he doing just that?

His gaze dropped and all the air in his lungs left him. He reached up and rubbed his face, roughly, rubbing away the sting in his eyes and the clenching in his jaws.

"I'm so sorry," was all he managed to say, his voice tight in his throat as he turned and left, barely fighting every urge to turn back.