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Damien doesn’t question why they’ve skipped Zurich and have instead elected to fly straight home, to Vegas. Deborah had been wondering if it was cruel of her to only tell Jimmy, Marcus and Ava about her plans, but she’s rather glad for it now. Less to explain, when she tells him to book a jet.
And God, what a relief she didn’t tell DJ. She would have never made it out of the country.
Ava settles into the plushy seats of the private jet, her sleeping mask already primed and ready on her forehead.
“Man—that baguette was super nice, credit where credit is due—but I can’t wait to be home and have a good ol’ Wonder Bread sandwich.”
Deborah sighs, but it’s performative more than anything. “I don’t know why I try. I should have fed you escargots.”
“What’s that, some type of fancy dessert?” Ava asks.
Better to save that one in case they ever make it back to France, Deborah thinks, and elects not to answer.
“Oh, by the way—”
Ava starts rummaging through her tote, emptying it out unceremoniously on the table between them. Tangled earphones, hair ties, a half-eaten Snickers bar—seriously, can this girl finish anything?—and a charger that has seen better days, cracked so badly that the copper wire is showing in several places.
She grins when she finds what she’s been looking for. It’s a bundle of… something, wrapped in an old French newspaper, and Ava beams like the Sphere when she hands it to her.
“For you.”
Deborah raises an eyebrow. “What’s this? Fish for on the way?” she drawls, although mercifully, the paper is odorless. “I know this isn’t our usual jet but that doesn’t mean they don’t have food options.”
Ava snorts a laugh. “I know better than to buy you food. Open it.”
The thin newspaper tears easily, but there’s a bunch of it, so Deborah rips with abandon, letting the shreds fall on the floor of the plane.
Until she pulls away the last layer.
Deborah can’t stop her heart from skipping a beat.
The Meissen salt and pepper shakers they’d seen in Paul Bert Serpette—one shaped like a man, wearing a typical French, bicorne hat; paired with a woman, wearing a simple white cap—they feel heavy in her hands.
“You didn’t.”
Ava looks characteristically smug. “I mean, they were looking kinda lonely in that shop. I felt like they’d fit better with all the other shakers in your kitchen.” She wiggles her eyebrows. “One big happy salt and pepper ethnostate.”
“So that’s what you were doing this morning.” Deborah chuckles. “I knew you wouldn’t be caught dead ‘going for a run’—I just figured it was code for finding someplace to get high so you could sleep through the flight.”
“Hey!” Ava protests. “I could be a runner. All the hot guys are on Strava nowadays.”
“Oh, good, so they’re more than capable of running away from you.”
Ava doesn’t even acknowledge that comment, opting instead to—predictably—go back to tooting her own horn. “I even haggled the lady for ‘em,” she shares, smug, “got it down to 375 euros, babeh.”
Deborah rolls her eyes and stops fighting her smile quite so hard. “Wow. It’s a wonder you’re able to sleep at night, after swindling that poor woman out of her wares.”
“Out of everyone, the French know how to take care of themselves,” Ava fires back. “If the antique dealers of Paris ever feel like they’re not appreciated enough, it’s pitchforks and torches in that bitch. I ain’t worried.”
Well, she isn’t wrong. Deborah looks at the shakers again.
A tentative feeling unfurls in her chest, airy and fluttery and tender—she has to repress the deep-seated urge that still resides inside her, telling her to squash that feeling and laugh it off.
Deborah doesn’t let it. This time, she basks in it.
“This is really kind, Ava,” she says, aware of how small her voice sounds. “Thank you.”
“Look, Deborah.” Ava grabs a hold of her hands with her own, gargantuan, annoyingly smooth ones, covering the shakers. “I had an idea. What if you keep one, and I keep one, and then when you finish treatment we’ll let them reunite? It’d be something to look forward to.”
Her eyes are big, greenish pools filled with so much hope that Deborah can let herself believe, just for a second, that which Ava has seemed so stubbornly convinced of for this entire trip: that together, they can overcome just about anything. Even this.
Deborah sighs, letting herself bask in that feeling; wondering, not for the first time, how exactly Ava can be so determined.
“Oh, honey.”
The sentiment is too sweet, really. Deborah supposes she ought to stop being surprised whenever Ava does something so unbearably kind for her—although it is par for the course, at this point. It doesn’t always feel deserved.
She owes Ava so much already. Deborah wonders how she’s ever meant to pay off that debt. Perhaps she could Klarna it.
“It’s funny how you think I’m letting either one of these be left lying about in that pigsty you call a room.”
“Ah—probably the right call,” Ava agrees, grinning like she expected nothing less. “Josephina thinks I eat too much sodium already.”
“You do—and besides.” Deborah looks down at the delicately painted porcelain shakers in her hands, before glancing back up at Ava. “It’d be cruel to separate a pair.”
The words hang there for a bit, in the stale, cabin air.
Their eyes meet and they share a smile. It never fails to be comforting, knowing that Ava parses exactly what she means.
“Alright, alright, you win,” Ava concedes easily. “Although I will definitely be using them for that first celebratory steak once you’re better.”
Deborah feels, not for the first time, stupidly relieved they never boarded that train.
“Sure, honey.”
“Anyways,” Ava goes on, settling in for real now; she collapses her chair and stretches, showing off her milky stomach under her black ‘I heart Paris’ tee. “Did you bring any benzos or am I gonna have to go on a Sleepytime tea bender?”