The noise the porcelain mug makes upon meeting the saucer reverberates around the house. Avery flexes her fingers on the velvet sofa, too aware, all of a sudden, of how hard she is gripping her teacup. Outside, the wind is howling, the house is warm.

Very warm. Which makes Avery think about the cost of heating in a house this big.

"Some more?"

"Uh, yeah, thank you."

She feels so completely inadequate, in over her head and awkward here. She can't stop looking around, can't take her eyes off of the marble floors and the plush carpet, the intricate detailing on the fine china.

Also, the reason for her visit makes her squirm in her seat.

Hello, you don't know me but I may or may not have broken your son's heart and I would like to know where he is now please?

But they haven't even gotten to that part yet.

The thing is, Avery is at the end of her rope. She has been cooped up in her house, thinking and rethinking everything relating to Felix and she just - she needs to see him. Or at the very least talk to him. Write him a letter. Something.

His number is out of service, no one knows where he is, or they don't want to tell her.

She had started wandering around Felix's neighborhood, feeling like a mad woman. She always had the idea in the back of her mind, of going into his house and begging whoever may open the door. But that was a last resort.

Which is precisely where she is now, sitting on a very comfortable sofa, drinking tea with Felix's mother.

They were in the living room, having had some half-hearted attempts at small talk, and all Avery could think was 'I've been here before.'

She has been there, and maybe she didn't sit at that exact same spot but she has been in that living room, and at the dining table, and in Felix's room. God, they were sitting in his bed, almost holding hands. He was so warm and soft.

She takes a sip of her tea, in an effort to stop the whirring of her mind. Mrs. Aveline, Anne, smiles at her. The silence is deafening.

"I must admit, I've heard so much about you in the past year," Anne says.

Hot blinding panic courses through Avery's veins. Surely, that can't be good.

"You want to know where he is," she continues with a raise of her eyebrows.

"I - yes, I do."

There is no point beating around the bush. She is prepared to get kicked out of the house any second now.

"Well, you understand why I can't tell you, then?"

Oh, God. She knows. She knows.

She knows everything and she hates Avery.

Her immediate thought is, 'It was that bad? That he had to tell someone?' Because she knows Felix is not really close with his mom.

But what Avery feels, is desperation. Maybe if Anne can see how sad she is, how much she regrets everything, she will tell Felix. And if nothing else, at least he will know that.

"I know - I said some - things but I'm really sorry. I just wanted to tell him that, and apologize. If he doesn't want to talk to me, that's fine, really, but maybe, you could just tell him, if it's not too much trouble, that uh, I'm sorry?"

What a disaster.

Avery can't even look up at Anne, this was the stupidest idea she's ever had. Out of the corner of her eye, she sees her put her cup down on the table and lean back comfortably with a deep sigh.

"Honey," she starts, "it's a lot more complicated than that."

"Okay," Avery says quietly. She doesn't need an elaborate story or some excuse. It's fine if Felix doesn't want to talk to her. She mentally prepares to get up and leave.

"I've heard so much about you," Anne says once again, which is devastating. Felix did nothing but run his mouth apparently.

With pink pouty lips.

That he uses for gossiping obviously.

Ugh.

"I'm sure you've heard a lot about Felix as well. About his past," Anne continues. Avery feels hot with shame.

"I - some things -"

Anne shakes her head, "People talk. Always curious."

Avery looks up at her and wonders for the second time in the past hour, just how much Anne Aveline really knows about her.

"I know, yeah," she says unsurely.

"Well, when we first moved here, I thought it was the perfect opportunity for Felix to start over," she pauses with a heavy sigh, "but that's what I always think anyway."

"Start over?"

"The place before here, people talked. Too much. It was a small town, we thought it would be better, but," she lets out a dark chuckle, "little did we know. Soon, we changed tactics, so to say, and moved here, hoping for less gossip. But here we are," she finishes with a little smile that is anything but pleased.

"I didn't know that you moved so much -"

"Oh! We did move a lot. Not that it helped anything," she says bitterly.

There is a loaded silence. Avery can feel Anne getting agitated and also that the issue at hand has more to do with just her. Anne can probably see that she is clueless, so she settles in comfortably and takes in a deep breath.

"Felix loves you very much, I hope you know that."

And that, of all things, is what makes Avery break down. She can feel the tears coming and there is nothing she can do about it. Nor does she want to.

The past month, and the one before that has been spent mostly crying anyway. Avery has always been a huge crier, at the movies, reading a book, watching commercials, minor inconveniences or arguments, anything. She feels like the tears are always there, just below the surface.

She is thankful that Anne doesn't comment on it now, when she just passes Avery a napkin and waits silently.

I love him too, she wants to say. I'm in love but more than that, I love him. It's devastating to think she never told him that. She thinks back on all those times he was trying to say it, before he left, on the sofa, she knew deep down what he was trying to say. But didn't.

"I'm guessing you know about him? Xander?" Anne asks after a while.

She nods, wanting to laugh. Yeah, I know who he is.

"I don't know how much Felix told you, but Xander has been in our lives for a very long time," Anne says, something uncomfortable in her voice.

Avery wipes at her face with the napkin one more time, clueless as to what to say.

Anne looks away and out the window, with another sigh. "To tell you the truth, Avery, I didn't know," she pauses. "I didn't know what was going on at the time or I would have put a stop to it. By the time we found out, it was too late."

Avery looks up at her, "Too late, how?"

Anne turns to her now, her expression unhappy and slightly distressed.

"Felix was fifteen when he met Xander. Or rather, when our families started doing business together. Xander's family was with us for dinners, family trips, holidays," she shakes her head slowly like she can't believe it.

"I thought... Well he is a nice boy, he can be a bit of an older brother to our Felix," she laughs, "you see, Felix was so sensitive, such a sentimental boy, maybe because he grew up with me and his sister mainly. But I thought, having another guy, someone older, would be good for him. Of course, I would have never thought my Felix would do anything like what happened eventually."

Anne stops talking, reaches for her cup and swirls the tea in it for a few seconds.

Avery is about to throw up.

"What happened?"

Anne turns to her completely, eyes boring into hers. "I need you to understand that it happened without my knowledge and definitely without my approval," she takes a deep breath, "Xander was twenty-six at the time. They started seeing each other obviously, kept it a secret for a year and a half, you can guess whose idea that was. Felix knew that we would never permit such a thing."

"He - he was twenty-six?"

"Yes," Anne sighs, "he had graduated from college, learning the ropes at his father's company, traveling. He was supposed to take over the firm, but as you know, that never happened."

"But - I don't understand - how would he -" Avery says desperately and realizes she has started crying again.

"Nothing to understand, darling," Anne shrugs. "When we found out, I was devastated, we told Felix to break it off immediately, but he wasn't having it of course. They ran away," she says, her voice cracking. She puts a hand on her chest.

"Can you imagine? My sweet boy, only sixteen, running away with this - this man - and when he came back, a year later, he was different. There was something different, I could tell."

She reaches for the glass of water this time, still shaking her head. Avery can't stop the shaking of her hands.

"He told me he didn't want to make a scene, and that - that it was on and off," she says, trying to remember anything else Felix might have mentioned.

Anne snorts, "Right, he didn't want to make a scene. He threw so many fits, breaking everything, running off, claiming they were in love, and yet in front of our eyes, he was changing. My sweet little boy was gone. He was more - aloof now, he didn't care. Something hardened.

"He became scared of Xander, always trying to please him in some way, reading into his every word, his gestures. It was sad. You can't imagine how sad it was to watch, to witness. I tried to talk to his family, but they brushed it off. Said that they couldn't make their son do anything, just like we couldn't make ours.

"It went on for a while, then Felix came to us one day and told us that they had broken up. I thought it was over. It was a phase and finally, he was moving on. And it could have been, probably, if Xander left him alone."

Anne shrugs, closing her eyes for a moment.

Avery's brain is whirring, trying to make sense of all this information, trying to piece it together with what she already knew.

"He was stalking Felix," she says, barely a whisper. It's not a question, she is sure of it.

Anne nods, "For years. We kept moving, changing phone numbers, getting the police involved. All pointless. He finds him sooner or later. And Felix," she pauses. "He has been miserable, for so long. He paid for his mistake, I thought, he learned his lesson. But the first few years, he kept going back. He is easy to convince, so impressionable," Anne says, voice laced with disapproval.

"But he was so young -" Avery starts.

"He should have known better," Anne cuts her off with an air of finality. "He was brought up in a loving home, we have always been so understanding -" she stops herself. "Anyways. What's done is done. This was the longest it took for Xander to find him. So I thought we were finally safe. No more dealing with this mess, no more seeing my son falling apart, having panic attacks because of all the rumors Xander spread about him, all the gossip and the bullying. But he showed up once again. And so he had to get away for a while."

She looks at Avery now.

"You understand why we had to take him to Cyprus, right, dear?" she asks.

Avery stares back, clueless. "Yea - yes I understand."

"It wasn't me trying to sabotage whatever you two had, as Felix tends to think," she rolls her eyes. "He kept going on and on about it, good lord, and I thought I heard enough in two years. Apparently not. He said he wouldn't come with us, as if we weren't going for his sake. So that he could get away from this - this curse that has been following us for the past 7 years and then we thought maybe Xander would stop. That he would get bored and leave."

She shakes her head. "How stupid of me, I know. But I was desperate. And then the stunt he pulled, hours before we were set to go? Saying he wasn't coming, storming off the house. Thank God he came to his senses, returned just before the plane took off. But he really put us through it. And that's how I know how much he cares about you."

Avery can't look at her, instead keeps wiping at her face. It feels like she will never stop crying.

"I - we just started talking this year," she begins, voice shot.

He couldn't have cared that much, she wants to say. Please tell me he didn't.

Instead she rambles on, "I didn't know. I'm so - so sorry, I didn't know any of this -"

"Honey, it's okay," Anne says with a deep sigh. "He is clearly ashamed about all this, not without reason," she says tilting her head knowingly. "Also, you may have started talking this summer, but I've been hearing about you since the day you moved here," she says, with a small smile.

"But he left, we - we had a fight, and he left and I don't know where he is."

"We also had a fight. To tell you the truth, I doubt he is ever coming back."

Avery looks up at her, shocked, and sees that Anne is staring out the window once again with a pained expression on her face.

"He is not?"

"I'm afraid not."

"But - but where would he go?"

"Well, he's been talking a lot about London lately. Don't know why, he didn't like it that much on our trips. But you never know with him and all his passing fancies," she shrugs.

There is a loud cracking of thunder outside, the sky getting darker with stormy clouds. Avery feels a headache coming on. She can't think, or sit there any longer. She wants to walk outside and cry and cry and scream and cry some more.

So she tells Anne that she needs to go, thanks her, and they both get up. Anne starts to walk her to the door, then stops halfway.

"Oh, one more thing before I forget. There is something I need to give to you, Felix got you this thing in one of the islands in Cyprus, wouldn't shut up about it, but then forgot to give it to you, I guess. We've been cleaning out his room, and trying to find your address to send it to you."

She calls out to a Ms. Baldwin, who brings out a small bag.

They walk to the door, Anne offers Avery a ride but Avery turns the offer down, saying that she wants to walk.

"Are you sure, honey, it is about to rain?" Anne asks, eyeing the dark skies suspiciously.

"Yeah, it's okay," Avery says, shoving Felix's bag inside her sweater, before zipping her coat up. She won't be able to stand one more bad thing happening to whatever's left of Felix.

"Thank you. For talking to me," she says, and means it so much.

"No problem at all," Anne says with a warm smile, something akin to pity in her eyes, "And, honey, please don't be hard on yourself. None of us can compete with Xander, neither his diseased love nor the damage he caused."

Avery stands there for a second, feeling her eyes water again. "Goodbye."

She turns around and starts walking out of the estate. A flash of light, then the loud thunder. She picks up the pace.

As she is about to exit the iron gates, she hears her name being called out and turns around.

It is Ms. Baldwin, running towards her in a raincoat. When she reaches Avery, out of breath, she shoves a piece of paper in her hand and smiles.

"Mrs. Aveline sent this for you." Then, after a pause. "Good luck."

Avery looks at the woman, then the paper in her hand. She can barely mutter a thank you before Ms. Baldwin sets off hurriedly toward the house again.

Avery reads the address on the paper, then reads it again. And again. She lets the tears fall freely now that she is alone, puts the paper in her pocket. She runs all the way home, laughing and crying all at the same time.