“It’s not jenky anymore. She had Jenny create her a whole new site with graphics and it’s pretty awesome. Did you know she gets more hits on that thing every day than the Seduction and Snacks website? I checked.”

Liz stops tapping her pen and stares at me.

“She also has a shit ton of sponsors paying her for ads now. She’s making more money on that blog than she makes here. This is what she’s always wanted to do. Can you understand that?” I ask.

I hold my breath, waiting for her to vault over her desk and choke me out. Liz scares me just a little bit, but I need to keep going and say everything I came in here to say.

“Ava is smart and amazing and this blog she’s doing, it’s not just a hobby. It’s something she really cares about and loves. She’s been working her ass off on this blog. It’s real for her. This is what she wants to do with the rest of her life. She loves shoes and clothes and all that other girly shit. Seduction and Snacks isn’t her dream, it’s yours. Her dream is to talk about all that girly shit and she’s turned it into a good paying reality. She needs you to understand and to give her your approval. I’m sure not everyone was on-board with the whole sex-toy shop slash bakery when you and Claire dreamed it up. How would you feel if the most important person in your life belittled your dream?”

I stop and try not to wince as I brace for the explosion from Liz that I’m sure is imminent. Maybe I overstepped my bounds. Ava is her daughter and who the hell am I to tell her what to do?

Liz is quiet and still for so long that I’m a little worried I might have given her a heart attack. When she finally moves, it’s to brush a tear off of her cheek.

Awwwww shit, I made her cry. This can NOT end well for me.

“She hates working here. I always thought it was because she was just being stubborn,” Liz says quietly.

“Well, she is a stubborn ass, but that’s not it.”

Liz glares at me.

“I mean, she’s an amazing, beautiful, wonderful, stubborn girl.”

She leans forward and rests her elbows on her desk. “You’re in love with her.”

“WHAT? How do you know that? I just figured that out myself,” I tell her in shock.

“Tyler, you came in here and pretty much told me I’m an idiot even though you knew there was a possibility I would beat the shit out of you for doing it,” she explains. “If that isn’t love, I don’t know what is.”

I smile at her. “See? I knew you’d totally understand how much of an idiot you’ve been.”

“I can still cut off your dick and make you eat it,” she states.

“Duly noted,” I nod. “It doesn’t matter, though, since I’m pretty sure she hates me.”

Liz shakes her head in disagreement. “Ava has spent every day since Christmas crying in her room. I don’t know what happened between you guys, but I’m pretty sure she’s in love with you, too.”

Ava’s been crying? Ava knows how to cry? I don’t even know how to process this information.

“I’m sure that has nothing to do with me. That’s all your fault for shitting on her dream,” I tell her.

“Don’t ruin the good thing we have going on here, Tyler. I have a letter opener within reach that I’m not afraid to use on your balls,” she threatens. “Even before we had our little fight the other day, she was a mess. I think she realized she’s in love with you and screwed up.”

Oh, God, please let her really be in love with me and I’ll never jerk off to another episode of MLP ever again. Maybe. Probably. Shit. I’ll try really hard.

“That fight was my fault. We got into it on Christmas and I sort of told her she was too scared to come out and tell you she doesn’t want to work here anymore.”

Liz lets out a low whistle. “Damn, and she didn’t punch you in the throat for that? She’s definitely in love with you if she let you get away with saying that to her.”

She stares down at her hands for a few minutes before looking up at me. “She really doesn’t want to work here?” Liz finally says with a sniffle.

I shrug. “No, she hates it here.”

Her lip quivers and part of me wants to get up, walk around the desk and hug her, but there was this whole thing with Gavin’s mom not that long ago where I sort of had the hots for her and that really didn’t end well and I can no longer even think about the word ‘cougar’ without throwing up in my mouth just a little bit. I don’t want Liz to get the wrong idea or anything.

I watch as Liz slides her laptop closer to her and starts clicking away on her keyboard. After a few seconds, her eyes widen and her mouth drops open.

“Oh, my God. This is her site? This thing is amazing,” she says in awe.

I quickly get up and lean across the desk. “Yep, see all those ads on the right side of the page? Those companies are all paying her money to advertise on her site. And they send her free shit all the time to try on and tell people about.”

Liz clicks through all of the pages and photos, making comments here and there. She stops when she gets to one picture and cocks her head to the side.

“Are you wearing a sparkly t-shirt, skinny jeans and black stilettos in this picture?” she asks.

“Hey, those pants were very slimming and if you’ll look at all the comments, I was told those shoes made my calves look amazing,” I tell her.

She clicks out of the picture and closes her laptop.

“I should probably cut off your balls for talking to me the way you did. I do have a reputation to uphold.”

I slowly back away from the desk and cover my junk with my hands.

Liz gets up from her chair and rounds the desk as I continue to back up. She moves faster and grabs onto my arm, dragging me towards the door.

“Oh, God, what are you going to do to me? You know what? I probably deserve it, just try not to leave any scars on my face. I’d like to continue with my modeling career on the side if Ava ever forgives me. She just got in this great hat that I really think would look stellar on me.”

We walk through the door and she continues to pull me down the hall and around a corner. She doesn’t say a word to me until we get to the opposite end of the building and we’re standing outside of a locked room. Liz pulls a set of keys out of her back pocket and unlocks the door.

“You are to tell NO ONE of this. This room doesn’t exist and this never happened,” she states as she pushes me into the room in front of her. “Tyler, welcome to the mas***bation room.”

It takes everything in me not to sink to my knees on the floor and start weeping.

“It’s real. I knew it. I knew if I wished hard enough and thought about it long enough, it would come true,” I whisper as I stare through the two-way mirror.

I’m so overcome with joy that all I can do is sing. “When you wish upon a dildo…”

“Oh, Jesus God,” Liz mutters as she backs out of the room while I continue to hum.

Dreams really do come true.

Chapter 27 – Friendship is Magic

“Alright, time to stop being a vagina. Get your ass out of bed and take a f**king shower,” Charlotte scolds as she barges in my room.

I stare at her in irritation as she goes digging through my dresser, tossing clothes at me.

“Oh, my God. I can’t wear that shirt with these pants!” I complain.

Charlotte turns around to face me with a smile on her face. “There we go, that’s the Ava I know and love.”

I roll my eyes at her and flop back down on my pillows. I’ve done nothing but mope around the house since Christmas and then it just got worse after the fight with my mom. It’s pathetic. I miss Tyler so f**king much and I want so badly to call him, but I’m sure he hates me. I haven’t heard from him since we fought in the yard. I’m a bitch and I’m never going to change.

“I have some news for you. You’re going to want to sit up for this,” Charlotte informs me, jumping onto the foot of my bed and curling her legs up under her.

“If it has anything to do with the fact that I’ve called off of work the last three days, don’t bother. I’ve already gotten an earful from mom about my responsibilities as an adult,” I tell her.

“Jesus, stop feeling sorry for yourself, asshole! You know you brought this on yourself, right? All you had to do was sit mom down and be honest with her. You’re good at telling people off and sticking up for others, why is it so hard to do it for yourself?”

I roll over and face the wall, not wanting to look at her while she tells me how much I suck. I already got that memo.

“Well, lucky for you, there’s no need to worry about mom. Tyler took care of it for you.”

I bolt up in bed and kick the covers off. “What? What are you talking about?”

Charlotte smiles and leans back against the wall casually. “Tyler marched into mom’s office this morning and basically told her off. He told her how smart and amazing you are and how your blog is your dream and she should be more understanding of what makes you happy. He actually made mom cry.”

My mouth drops open in shock.

“Why would he do that?” I whisper.

“Because he gets a sick thrill out of seeing her weep like a baby.”

I shake my head in irritation. “Not the crying, dick face. Why would he talk to her for me?”

Charlotte sits forward and tilts her head. “Um, probably because he’s in love with you, moron. He knew you needed a little push in the right direction, so he fought your battle for you.”

Charlotte grabs my cell phone off of my nightstand and thrusts it towards me. “Now, be a good girl, call him and tell him thank you and that you owe him an unlimited amount of bl*w j*bs.”

I start to reach for the phone but then drop my hand. While I am absolutely grateful that he did something like this for me, that still doesn’t solve our other problem.

“Charlotte, I don’t know. I mean, I can handle a lot of things. I HAVE handled a lot of things, but the My Little Pony thing might be pushing it. He may have saved my ass with mom, but that still doesn’t change the fact that this fetish or whatever you want to call it is just plain weird. There’s a thing called BronyCon, Charlotte. BRONYCON. I might have to dress up as a horse and go to this thing every year for the rest of my life. I don’t know if I’m ready for that,” I admit.

Charlotte pushes herself up from my bed and grabs her bag that she dropped by my door. “I figured you would say something like that, so I brought something that might help.”

She digs inside and pulls out a wrapped present, holding it up for me to see.

“You bought me another Christmas present?”

Charlotte rolls her eyes and tosses it to me. “No, that is the present from Tyler you never opened.”

I blink back tears and stare down at the gift, afraid to open it. In all the commotion on Christmas, I totally forgot that he got me something. I shoved it under the tree to open later on and, after our fight, I didn’t want anything to do with it.

“Well, open it!”

With a sniffle, I rip into the paper and stare in confusion at what I’m holding in my hand.

“Bronies: A Documentary,” I read aloud. “Seriously?”

Charlotte pulls a folded piece of paper out of her purse and hands it to me. “This came with it too. Sorry, I already read it.”

Snatching the paper out of her hand, I give her a dirty look before unfolding it and quickly reading through Tyler’s hand-written note.

“Look, I didn’t get this whole thing either, but after I read that note, Gavin sat me down and explained everything to me and then made me watch Tyler’s copy of that DVD. If I have to suffer through this documentary to try and understand a guy I’m NOT in love with, then it’s only fair you do the same since you ARE in love with him.”

Setting the note aside, I stare down at the DVD. “Charlotte, he thinks he can find his real dad at BronyCon. I want to support him, but that’s just too crazy even for me.”

She sighs and perches on the edge of my bed. “Ava, I think deep down he knows he’s not truly going to find his real dad there. You need to understand how important this is to him. You need to realize how much he just wants to know and understand where he came from. It’s a pipe dream that he’ll find his dad out of all of those people, but it gives him hope. No one has ever understood the whole Brony thing he’s got going on, aside from other Bronies. He just wants his real dad to be someone who understands him.”

Sixty minutes after Charlotte left, I’m sitting on the floor in my room crying harder than I’ve ever cried in my life. Friendship IS magic. Tyler is part of a community that believes in friendship and being happy, why is that so bad? People only think it’s weird because they don’t understand it, but these horses are role models! Fluttershy represents people with crippling social anxieties and Twilight Sparkle embodies bookish people without making them look like nerds. It’s genius!

It’s about people trying to belong! Sure, they dress up like ponies and there’s Cloppers and Furries and other things I don’t understand, but that’s not the point. These people don’t want to have sex with ponies or do weird shit with them. Okay, some do, but not the majority. Most of them are simply looking for friendship and a place where they belong, a concept I’m very familiar with. All this time I’ve been looking for a place to belong. My mom tried to make it be Seduction and Snacks and I was miserable. Fashion is where I belong, and talking to other people about fashion. Tyler found his place to belong a long time ago and who am I to discourage that?