Although we may currently be with someone, we all have that secret love that never dies. It’s just second nature to love them, to wonder how they are, where they are, and if they still love us. They are our soulmates, and it doesn’t matter if we’ve married someone else, and it doesn’t make that marriage less significant. That kind of love can’t reconnect until we’ve grown and lived other lives. When you’ve loved someone for years or even decades, you harbor a deep and everlasting ache within the bottom of your soul.

There are those like Buddy (played by the adorable Bruce Allen) who cannot fool themselves into believing that ache will go away. He never married, never loved another. There was no replacement for Ava (played to perfection by Marie Fitzgerald) — although, as Buddy remembers, there was plenty of skirt-lifting.

The story begins with Buddy moving into the very same retirement home where Ava lives and, fatefully, right next door. And Ava is pissed! Her blood pressure reaches a boiling point as she screams “Stalker!” across the courtyard and her daughter Suzanne (played by Scarlett Ridgway Savage, also the playwright) escorts her back into the house. Buddy, used to Ava’s abashed forwardness, claims “oh yeah, she fucking hates me.”

Half of the hype is figuring out why Ava is so hell-bent on hating Buddy. The other half is figuring out what Molly (Audrey Roulleau), Suzanne’s daughter and Ava’s granddaughter, has come home to tell the family. She’s arrives with pierced and tattooed Brandon (Joel Smith), who Suzanne and Ava believe to have knocked up Molly. By intermission, we’ve figured out both and are left listening to Puddle of Mudd’s “She Fucking Hates Me” on repeat.

After about four repetitions, Suzanne and Molly return to the stage with Molly offering to talk about her news and Suzanne saucing up and “too busy” to talk. Molly, Brandon, and Ava take off to search for new AA groups for Ava (who is a recovering alcoholic), leaving Suzanne to pick Buddy’s brain and uncover the truth about his and Ava’s history.

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Through Buddy’s stories we discover that he’s been silently in love with Ava and made choices that ruined his career and future because of it. What we don’t know is whether Ava ever loved him. She has spent many years hating him, but was it just to bury her love?

It’s far easier to be angry than to admit regret, which is the case with Suzanne and Molly as well. After hearing Molly’s news, Suzanne displaces her parental regret into festering anger for Molly, which erupts when Molly calls her out on it. Brandon mediates as the two ram their pretty redheads together. With both the Molly/Suzanne argument and the Buddy/Ava misunderstanding, a little honesty and forgiveness mends the communication gap.

Scarlett Ridgway Savage’s characters are very well developed. Ava, Suzanne, and Molly share the same sarcastic sense of humor where Ava can refer to Molly as a crack whore and neither Suzanne nor Molly are affected. Every other sentence is a punchy jab — very Gilmore Girls-esque. These women know each other very well. Buddy and Brandon, though separated by several decades and sexual identity, get on like old pals. Savage shows us that age needn’t affect our relationships.

Nor should time. By the end of the play, you learn that Buddy’s long-lasting ache for Ava’s love was worth the wait. You see, love transcends time, sarcasm, and death wishes.

She F*&#ing Hates Me | Through March 26 | by Scarlett Ridgway Savage | directed by Ralph Morang | West End Studio Theatre, Portsmouth, NH | 603.969.2087

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Amy Martin: amartin@thephoenix.com