Ava was laughing too, looking down at something on her phone while standing near the deck stairs.
I stepped through the doorway.
At almost the same moment, Ava stepped backward.
I turned.
My shoulder barely caught her arm.
The pitcher shifted in my hands, and ice clattered sharply against the glass.
Ava spun around so fast that I nearly apologized before I even understood what had happened.
Then she shouted, “Don’t ever touch me again!”
The backyard went quiet.
Not gradually.
One second there were several conversations happening around me, and the next I could feel every pair of eyes turning in our direction.
“Ava, I’m sorry,” I said immediately. “I didn’t see you.”
That should have been the end of it.
A simple collision.
An apology.
Maybe an awkward minute while everyone moved on.
Instead, Ava’s eyes filled with tears almost instantly.
“You always do this,” she said. “You always try to get close to me when nobody’s looking.”
I stared at her.
My stomach tightened because the accusation had changed.
We were no longer talking about my shoulder accidentally bumping her arm.
She was suggesting a pattern.
Intent.
Something secretive.
Something I knew had never happened.
Daniel put down the grill tongs and walked toward us.
“What happened?” he asked.
For half a second, I felt relieved.
I thought he was actually going to ask.
I thought Ava would tell him I had bumped into her, I would apologize again, and Daniel would calm everybody down.
Ava looked at him and said, “She shoved me.”
The words landed harder than her scream had.
“I didn’t,” I said.
Then I looked directly at Daniel.
“Daniel, it was an accident.”
He had known me for years.
He knew how carefully I had handled things with Ava.
