Ava Spirini and Lincoln Waititi's Relationship

Ava Spirini and Lincoln Waititi’s relationship is bound to Kelly Waititi: he is her brother, and Ava is the friend whose history with Kelly also connects her to Lincoln. After Kelly’s death, that shared bond becomes both a source of recognition and a fault line. Ava and Lincoln move through grief, anger, intimacy, and estrangement without returning to the relationship they once had; by the end, they can imagine a future connection, but only on uncertain, gradual terms.

A relationship anchored in Kelly

Kelly’s death reaches Ava through Lincoln’s family. At 5:37 in the morning, Kelly and Lincoln’s father calls Ava’s father; seven minutes later, he comes into Ava’s room to tell her that Kelly has died. The loss is therefore also the event that places Ava and Lincoln inside the same changed world, though the evidence initially emphasizes the blow to Ava rather than showing the two of them grieving together. Ava counts thirty-one Sundays since the death, and each one seems to begin with the same pain. Their connection is rooted in this loss, but it is not simply a shared response: each has a separate relationship with Kelly and carries a different history with her.

Ava remembers an ordinary afternoon with Kelly in which Kelly altered a photograph and repeatedly erased and redrew a heart on Ava’s mirror. Only afterward does Ava wonder whether Kelly’s words and drawing had carried a farewell or an expression of love. That retrospective uncertainty matters to Ava’s relationship with Lincoln: he is not only someone who has also lost Kelly, but the person most directly tied to the family and memories from which Ava cannot detach herself. In later reflection, Ava identifies Lincoln as a link to her past, to childhood memories, and to Kelly. The bond persists even when contact becomes painful or unwelcome.

Grief, distance, and the birthday encounter

By Kelly’s birthday, Ava and Lincoln have not spoken for weeks. Ava has chosen to spend the day with Gideon, despite having initially planned to sleep through it, and is giggling with him over a movie when Lincoln arrives at her house with a can of rum and Coke. His unsteady entrance does not feel to Ava like a natural resumption of their relationship. She objects that he has been absent for weeks and tells him to go home; when he pushes past her into the house, she says she does not want to hang out.

Lincoln frames his visit as a way to celebrate Kelly’s birthday. He grabs Ava’s face and kisses her hard, and she pushes him away. Her refusal is explicit: she does not want to celebrate Kelly’s birthday with him. He throws the can onto the road as she shuts the door and shouts an insult at her. The encounter converts the birthday, which might have offered a point of shared remembrance, into a confrontation over distance, access, and what either of them can bear. It does not establish that Ava welcomes renewed intimacy; instead, it shows how easily their past and grief can make a sudden approach feel like an intrusion.

The formal: attraction and rupture

Their next significant interaction comes at the formal. Lincoln is dancing with a group of boys when Ava sees him; they exchange a grin, their first interaction since Kelly’s birthday. He had sent her a brief text a few days after that visit, but she ignored it. At the dance, their connection resumes through movement rather than explanation: Ava says Kelly would have loved the occasion, and Lincoln agrees. He draws Ava into an embrace while they continue moving side to side, a moment that feels to her simultaneously strange, safe, wrong, and comfortable.

Lincoln tells her he has missed her. He then spins her away, and Ava sees Gideon watching from the edge of the dance floor, visibly pained. The scene makes the triangle of relationships impossible to ignore: Ava’s bond with Lincoln is not confined to their shared past, because its present-tense intimacy affects her relationship with Gideon. When the confrontation escalates, Lincoln taunts Gideon with a crude remark about Ava. Gideon punches Lincoln in the nose, knocking him to the floor. As Lincoln reaches toward Gideon and threatens him, Ava kisses Lincoln hard. Lincoln initially tries to pull away, then kisses her back; Gideon runs from the scene.

The kiss brings physical closeness at the exact moment that their actions deepen the damage around them. Later, Ava recognizes that sleeping with Lincoln was not a good choice, while she regards ending her relationship with Gideon as the right decision despite the pain. This distinction does not erase her attachment to Lincoln or convert the encounter into a simple reconciliation. Instead, the formal shows how Kelly’s absence, Ava and Lincoln’s history, and their immediate choices become entangled, with consequences extending beyond the two of them.

An imperfect attempt at repair

After the formal, Lincoln brings Ava a bright yellow flower. She briefly wishes it had come from Gideon, yet finds herself unable to reject Lincoln when she sees him standing shyly with his hands in his pockets and biting his lip. Ava describes the history between them as a set of cords that cannot simply be broken. Her response holds resistance and attachment together: she wants to tell him to leave, but also recognizes how thoroughly he is connected to her memories and to Kelly.

Their conversation revises the terms of their relationship rather than restoring an old one. When Ava asks whether they will ever be friends again, Lincoln questions whether they were friends in the first place. Ava recognizes the distinction: he had always been Kelly’s brother, and then things between Ava and Lincoln became complicated. She asks whether they can become friends now. Lincoln answers that they might, one day, and agrees when she proposes taking things one day at a time. He admits that he is angry with his parents, Ava, and Gideon, but especially angry with Kelly, and that he has been taking that anger out on other people. His admission gives their conflict a clearer context without excusing what has happened between them. He apologizes, and Ava touches his shoulder.

A continuing, changing bond

At the gathering marking the first anniversary of Kelly’s death, Lincoln approaches Ava and hugs her so tightly that her feet lift from the ground. The embrace feels awkward, normal, and different at once. They have not spoken much in the intervening months, though he sometimes sends her a stupid joke and she replies. Ava comes to describe their connection as a complex bond that is neither quite friendship nor quite family. She does not regret what happened between them, but is not proud of it either; the formulation allows affection and regret to coexist without pretending that either cancels the other.

Ava continues therapy with Nola and understands that feelings themselves are not the source of trouble so much as the choices made under their influence. Her account of Lincoln fits that distinction: their history remains meaningful, but it does not require her to call every decision a good one or to resume a closeness they have not rebuilt. Her grief for Kelly likewise does not resolve into leaving the past behind. Ava believes she can move forward while remaining defined in part by Kelly’s death, and Lincoln continues to belong to that emotional history. Their relationship ends not with a restored friendship or a final severing, but with an acknowledged possibility: contact may continue, carefully, one day at a time.