Ava Spirini and Lincoln

Ava Spirini and Lincoln’s relationship is shaped by the death they share: Kelly Waititi was Lincoln’s sister and Ava’s best friend. Their closeness begins in grief and sometimes eases its pressure, but it also becomes a source of confusion and hurt. Neither can separate their intimacy from the person they have lost, and the relationship’s eventual form is neither a lasting romance nor a clean estrangement, but a complicated bond that remains part of their lives.

A Bond Formed in Grief

After Kelly dies, Ava and Lincoln begin texting about the things people say and do around them, then start spending time together. Ava feels that Lincoln understands her grief in a way other people do not, though she is uncertain whether she likes him romantically. His company briefly makes the rest of her life feel less overwhelming; being with him brings back, in altered form, some of the relief she associates with the time when Kelly was alive. That comfort is inseparable from its cause: Ava recognizes that their relationship would not have begun in this way if Kelly were still there.

Their connection also grows within a family home that Ava already knows intimately. She visits Kelly’s house when Tina is absent because Tina has become difficult for her to face since the death. Ava once felt that Tina was almost another mother, but now suspects that her presence recalls Kelly and pains Tina. She misses both her friend and the familiar life attached to the family, and continues to feel at home in the house even as she knows that her visits, and her growing closeness with Lincoln, could upset Tina. Grief thus draws Ava toward Lincoln while making their relationship difficult to acknowledge openly.

Intimacy and Uncertainty

Ava and Lincoln’s early encounters move between flirtation, joking, and physical closeness, without a settled understanding of what they mean to one another. Ava wonders whether Lincoln likes her, but does not know whether her own feelings amount to romantic love. She sometimes turns to their flirtation because it offers a break from the pressures of school, her father’s concern, and the continuing sadness of Kelly’s death. The relief is real but temporary: being with Lincoln can make other troubles recede without making them disappear.

Their different expectations become increasingly apparent. On one occasion, Lincoln invites Ava to spend time with him, and she understands the plan as simply hanging out. Their disagreement unfolds in a public shop, where the conversation grows tense and other customers pass between them. The argument continues in the car, where Lincoln drives in a way that makes Ava uncomfortable and struggles to explain what he wants. Ava sees their dynamic as the opposite of her quieter, less charged interactions with Gideon: with Lincoln, shared history and expectation can turn quickly into flirtation, frustration, and uncertainty.

Even after such friction, attraction brings them together again. In a later encounter, a kiss intensifies until Ava becomes conscious of the situation and decides to leave. At another point, she intends only to spend time with Lincoln, but does not stop him when he kisses her. Afterwards, she feels regret and sadness alongside the knowledge that the intimacy itself had felt good. This contrast is central to their relationship: the experience can offer immediate closeness while leaving Ava distressed about what it means and why she is seeking it.

Kelly’s Absence Between Them

Kelly is present in their relationship even when neither speaks about her. After one encounter, Ava asks whether Kelly would be angry with them. Lincoln initially dismisses the question, and Ava presses him because she wants to know whether he is troubled by their intimacy too. His response becomes an accusation that Ava failed Kelly, invoking Kelly’s trust and love. The charge devastates Ava and turns an already complicated relationship into an open confrontation over responsibility and grief.

Ava responds by admitting how deeply she misses Kelly and how much she believes both she and Lincoln have acted badly. She describes their intimacy as something bound up with pain, not as proof that either of them is simply happy together. Lincoln, in turn, acknowledges that he misses Kelly and believes she would have hated the way they were fighting and treating one another. For a moment, they recognize their shared grief; the exchange then opens into Lincoln’s own despair about whether he will ever recover. Ava comforts him, and when Tina enters the room, she takes over that care, holding her son as he cries. Tina’s arrival makes visible the larger family loss surrounding Ava and Lincoln’s private entanglement.

Separation and an Enduring Connection

Ava later understands sleeping with Lincoln as a poor choice, though she does not treat that judgment as a reason to deny the complexity of what happened. In therapy with Nola, she considers how grief can influence decisions without making every feeling itself wrong. Her reflections distinguish this relationship from her later decision to end things with Gideon, which she comes to regard as the right choice despite the pain it caused. The comparison clarifies that Ava is learning to assess relationships by their consequences and by what she can live with, rather than assuming that intense feelings make a choice right.

By the time Kelly’s family and Ava gather at the park to mark a year since Kelly’s death, Ava and Lincoln have not been speaking much. When they meet, Lincoln hugs her; the gesture feels awkward, familiar, and changed all at once. They sometimes exchange texts, and Ava imagines that they will retain a bond that is difficult to categorize, somewhere between friendship and family. She neither regrets what happened nor feels proud of it. That unresolved assessment preserves the contradictions of their history instead of turning it into either a romance or a cautionary tale.

Ava continues therapy and recognizes that grief remains present, even when it does not dominate every moment. She does not believe that loving Kelly means she must move on from her; instead, she comes to think of herself as moving forward while carrying the loss. Lincoln belongs to that continuing history: their relationship arose partly from the vacancy Kelly left, and its later, less intimate form still reflects the ties they share through her. Their connection offers no simple repair for grief, but it endures as one of the complicated relationships through which Ava learns to live with it.