The Night Before Page 3

  3

  Ava opened one eye-lid, testing to see if she was still alive. The car was dark and she couldn’t see much, so she opened the other eyelid too, breathing a sigh of relief. She hadn’t even hit anything- she’d just finally stopped spinning, thank the Lord. She looked around, her heart still thudding in her chest, though it did feel as though her adrenaline was starting to slow. She groaned aloud and banged her head against the steering wheel. She was in a ditch. Inhaling, she lifted her head, peering around her and hit the gas. The wheels screeched and the engine revved as if it really did want to move but nothing happened.

  “Crap! Crap! Crap!”

  She beat her fist against the steering wheel before taking a deep breath. Beating the steering wheel wasn’t going to do anything except hurt her hand. Besides, it wasn’t the steering wheel’s fault that she’d stupidly tried to drive in the middle of a full-on ice storm. Maybe she was like one of those dense characters in the stupid Christmas movies she used to laugh at after all.

  Quickly, she pushed open the door and stepped out into the freezing cold. It was the kind of cold that immediately made your face ache. The kind of cold that made your eyes tear. She imagined herself instantly freezing over like in that goofy end of the world movie with Jake Gyllenhaall, The Day After Tomorrow.

  She pulled the hood up on her too thin, leather jacket that really was mostly for just looking cute, not staying warm, and walked around the car to inspect the damage. Her car was slightly tilted in the ditch, but she hadn’t hit anything, so there were no dents. But her car was definitely stuck and would need a tow truck to get out. Stuffing her hands into her pockets, since she wasn’t wearing gloves, she attempted to climb out of the ditch, slipping and sliding in the snowy mud and grassy weeds before she was able to make it out.

  The snow was blinding, coming down hard, sideways, not in soft little pillow waves like on TV, darting her cheeks with tiny ice pellets. This snow was on a damn mission. She sniffed, looking back at her car to make sure the door hadn’t shut on her, and then peered into the darkened highway, careful to stand as far away from the asphalt as possible in case a random car or truck drove by, since she was sure no one would be able to see her dumb ass. She stood there for a second, then finally shook her head, and hurried back down the hill to her car, hopping back inside and shivering as she held her hands in front of the heater.

  She pulled out her phone, trying to think rationally. At least the heat was on but she’d left with only one-third tank of gas, figuring that she could fill up at the cheaper gas station, just a few miles outside of town. With no heat, there was definitely a chance that she’d end up freezing to death. Within in the next hour, probably. In an ice storm. On Christmas Eve.

  “Crap!” she exclaimed again.

  She looked at her phone, her eyes widening.

  “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

  The phone life was at three percent. She wiggled the wire to her car charger, then jerked it again. She pulled it from her phone blew on it like a Nintendo cartridge then put it in again. Nothing. Her heart, once again, kicked into overdrive. No phone meant no way to contact anyone. And she was at least fifteen miles outside of town. The snow was still falling relentlessly, as if it was on personal a mission to cover the entire town in as little time as possible. There was no way she could walk anywhere in these conditions.

  She sighed and called Ellie again.

  “Please pick up…” she muttered to herself, selfishly praying that Kendrick had said or done something stupid so that Ellie would’ve gotten mad enough to turn on her phone on like a sane person. She cursed when Ellie’s bubbly voicemail came on again.

  “Ugh, you suck Ellie,” she groaned.

  She stared at the battery on her phone. Two percent. Dammit. Dammit. Okay, what was the most logical thing to do here, Lord? She could call Triple A. But she wasn’t even a member any more— it’d expired last July, and by the time she used her phone to search for the number, talk to a customer service representative to order the service, and then tell them where she was, her phone would definitely be dead.

  She glanced out of the darkened window, rubbing the glass to see out of it better, though she didn’t know why. She couldn’t see jack shit.

  “Just do it, Ava, and stop being stupid.”

  She bit her lip and called the only other person she could think to call. He answered on the second ring, his timber warm and comforting when he said her name.

  “So, um, remember that ditch we were talking about earlier? Well, I’m in it.”

  4

  What in the hell was she thinking?

  Elias asked himself the question for the fourth time in the past sixty seconds, as he carefully maneuvered his dad’s F-150 through the snow-filled streets toward the interstate exit.

  This wasn’t cute snow, the kind that he’d maybe want to shoot later. Nah, this snow was destructive, falling almost angrily, like the apocalypse had hit. This kind of snowfall was a rarity in Georgia. It only happened once every seven years or so though lately, with global warming, it seemed more like every two years. His younger brother, Matthew, would argue it was the government’s weather machines that had it snowing like Wisconsin in the south. Matthew was all about a good conspiracy theory, though these slick streets had Elias leaning toward his line of thinking tonight. He squinted out the window onto the wet asphalt, turning his wipers up another notch.

  He couldn’t believe Ava actually got her ass in the car and tried to drive in this craziness. It was bad out here and freezing. And she was alone in the dark, on the side of the road in a ditch, with no phone because it went dead right as she was telling him where she was. He almost smiled as he thought about the first thing she said when she called him—she managed to keep her sense of humor, even in dire circumstances, he had to give her that.

  He’d been caught off guard by Ava’s presence at Kendrick’s party. He literally hadn’t seen her since high school, in person anyway. Social media made it impossible to be completely obscure, so she’d popped up on his timeline every now then, and when she appeared, he always caught himself smiling.

  Every dude in school knew who Ava Ramseur was. She was the girl everybody wanted—from the video game geeks, to the ball players, to the wanna be gangsters and the dudes like him, who didn’t really fall into any category at all, but wandered around trying on new activities and interests like socks.

  Ava was gorgeous, even back then. The kind of pretty that wouldn’t dull when she got deep into her 20s, like a lot of women who were cute as teenagers, but were only average as adults. And even from afar, she’d seemed… superior. Not conceited but more like she was too sophisticated for high school. That was it. At seventeen, he’d pegged her as pretty but kinda stuck up.

  When he saw her again tonight though, he briefly struggled to remember why he never tried to holler at her back then. Being stuck up wasn’t a real deterrent for his horny-ass teenage self. So why hadn’t he ever tried to catch Ava’s attention?

  “You remember what you were like in high school, bro,” Kendrick laughed when Elias asked the question aloud. “She wasn’t on your radar like that.”

  Elias laughed too because it was true. At sixteen and seventeen he was into the “fast” girls—the type of chicks his mom always warned him “better not come up pregnant.” The girls who let him get it in the darkened parking lot behind the rec center on MLK and who stole shit out of the Polo section of Dillard for him.

  But that was then. A lifetime ago. Holding Ava close earlier tonight while they danced felt almost like high school—familiar in a way that had him talking more than usual, teasing her, just to see how long she was gonna play like she wasn’t feeling him a little bit.

  Elias grinned to himself as he made his way onto the interstate, as faded images of Ava back then flooded his mind, mixing with the new ones he’d imprinted on his brain tonight after spending less than an hour in her company.

  He was only intending to flirt with h
er a little bit, kill a little time—get his mind off things he didn’t want to linger on this holiday.

  Last year, Christmas time had been rough. He tried to keep it moving, tried not to let himself be weighed down by memories and “what ifs” but his pain came through anyway. He was irritable and moody. Snappy with his staff. And when he came home last year, spent most of the time drunk. Nothing sloppy but definitely inebriated. Seeing Ava tonight—someone who had nothing to do with those memories, was refreshing.

  He figured she’d be game to entertain him, at least a little, since she was so obviously disinterested in what was going on around her. Her entire demeanor had emitted nothing but pure boredom from the time she arrived at Kendrick’s. She kept looking at her girl, who Kendrick had cuffed up in the corner and picking at her wavy hair as she people watched, brushing off dudes with polite but disinterested smiles.

  Elias had checked her out for a full half hour while he half-listened to his boy, JJ, tell him about his latest life dilemma with his baby mama, Melissa, a chick he’d gotten pregnant a few years after they graduated, and hadn’t quite mustered up the will to marry or completely let go. JJ was going on and on about Melissa’s new dude “being around his kid” as if he hadn’t had almost ten years to lock her down and avoid his current situation. JJ was cool but he was made of nothing but Newports and self-manufactured drama, and Elias was pretty much content to only vibe with dude once a year these days. Back in the day, in high school, they’d kicked it pretty heavy, both of them disappointing their parents with teenage boy shenanigans—selling weed, skipping school to play video games or sneak girls into JJ’s crib. It was only the grace of God that kept them out of juvie. That and JJ’s pops was a local cop, of all things.

  But once Elias got his head on straight, he knew that making a life in Macon wasn’t in the cards. It wasn’t just that he couldn’t find work— it was also that he knew if he stayed, he’d be stuck in rut. Trapped kicking it with the same dudes, who did the same things, making the same poor life choices because it was the only thing there was to do and no one seemed to want to know any better. He honestly did like the quiet life of a small town but… nah. He had to break out, and he felt it every time he came home and did things like hit up his cousin’s annual party, which is partly why he’d immediately noticed Ava when she arrived. After about twenty minutes of people watching and sipping her drink, she’d thrown him completely. She pulled out her phone and started reading. He had to go talk to her after that.

  And once he’ found out that she was reading The Road? That wasn’t ordinary casual reading. While they danced they got to talking about the book again, and once more, she’d impressed him by making an immediate comparison to Octavia Butler’s Parable series, which was one of his favorites. She’d wondered how much the author, Cormack McCarthy, was inspired by one of the most prominent black women sci-fi writers, and rather or not he’d acknowledged her influence at all. He realized Ava wasn’t stuck up, even a little bit. She was sophisticated but accessible. Like back in high school she maybe would’ve smoked out with you but chastised you for missing class because of it.

  And then, they’d started talking about entertainment and her job as a publicist at a women’s-centered cable network. Mostly, she worked reality shows and the occasional soap-opera drama, which he’d been somewhat surprised to learn she was disinterested in.

  “I’m only doing this until I can launch my own company and focus on things more relevant to my interests,” she’d told him as they swayed to the music.

  “And what’s relevant to your interests, Ava?”

  She smiled when he asked that, and it made him pull her a little closer as they danced.

  “Pop culture.”

  “I thought you were about to say something profound. You had me listening all intently for that?” he’d laughed, teasing her. “Isn’t that what you already do?”

  She’d wrinkled her nose in distaste, and he’d smiled because it was adorable and sexy, and all she’d done was make a face.

  “Entertainment is important too, especially in our pop-culture driven society. The things entertainment projects, the subtle way it influences our perspective… It might be one of the absolutely most important aspects of our socialization, in America at least, because everyone wants to think it’s innocent.”

  “The subtle is sometimes more powerful than the overt,” he’d offered, earning him an excited “Exactly!” from Ava.

  Most women’s eyes grew wider when they were trying to impart something they deemed important but not Ava’s. Hers narrowed a bit, lowered, as if under the weight of whatever she was about to say.

  “ I don’t want to just promote crappy TV shows anymore. I want to work with people in film and television who I feel are putting out great work that would be overlooked otherwise. People who are humanizing the stories and experiences of black people across the diaspora.”

  She’d proceeded to tell him about an Atlanta-based director she was working with her remotely on the side, to get her short film noticed. Her eyes lit up as she described the film about the alarming mortality rates of black women during child birth.

  “Black mothers are 12 times more likely to die than white mothers. Black people’s pain literally isn’t taken seriously by doctors. This film exposes that through this incredible story about a woman living in Atlanta who died two weeks after giving birth.

  He’d listened intently. Not just because the film sounded powerful, but because Ava’s enthusiasm made him want to hear about everything that excited her.

  He couldn’t remember feeling so drawn to a woman so quickly beyond sexually, anyway, in ages. Not since Janay. He’d been thinking about Ava non-stop since they parted ways. He even got all stalker with it, hitting up her social media pages when he got back to the house. He was kinda trying to talk himself out of being so intrigued so quickly. Social media usually always did it. People went out of their way to project their best selves but nine times out of ten, ended up doing the exact opposite—exaggerating their flaws because they were trying too hard.

  Instead, Elias found himself impressed all over again because as pretty as she was, Ava didn’t have a bunch of pictures posted of herself. Instead, she did things like take pictures of objects or things that she found interesting or took pictures of herself out and about on the scene she probably frequented for work but only made herself partially visible. Her pictures were artistic and showcased her creativity, not vanity. He realized, with appreciation, that she had a good eye.

  And then she’d called him and said she was in a damn ditch on the side of the road at ten at night. He narrowed his eyes, slowing even more as he approached the markers she’d given him. She said she’d made it just past the first mile marker before she started spinning.

  Elias spotted what had to be Ava’s car just a few seconds later and breathed a sigh a relief as he parked on the side of the road. He turned on his emergency lights and climbed out of his dad’s truck, the cold immediately hitting him, harsh and fast. Quickly as he could without slipping on the soggy, mud-drenched weeds, he made his way down the ditch, toward her car—a Toyota Camry that looked fairly new—struggling to see through the snow.

  He could barely make out her silhouette when he approached her window. He tapped on it quickly then stuffed his hands in his pockets, ducking his head in an attempt to dodge the combative snow fall. And she… rolled down the window. Like she was at a drive-through and he was here to take her order.

  “Thank God it’s just you,” she answered, heaving a sigh of relief, causing her breath to puff in the air. She had a stocking cap on pulled down low on her head and was wearing nothing but a leather jacket that he knew couldn’t have been doing much in the way of keeping her warm.

  “Hey,” he said, offering her a half-smile because he could see now she looked frightened. “You okay?” Her dark eyes were wide and wary, as if she were looking at an apparition.

  “I’m okay now that you’re really here,
” she answered, heaving a sigh of relief. He almost asked if she thought he wouldn’t show up but stopped when he saw her breath puff in the air, even though she pulled her head back into the car as she reached into the passenger side seat for her bag. He tilted his head, the rush of the falling snow beating against his back.

  “You didn’t have the heat on?”

  She shivered and shrugged, hoisting the bag onto her shoulder. “I was almost out of gas. I had to ration it.”

  She at least had the good sense to look ashamed. “Thank you for coming, Elias.”

  He grinned, though it was painful because it was so cold and his face muscles were practically frozen.

  “Come on before you turn into an ice cube.”

  He quickly opened the door for her, waiting as she rolled up the window once more and grabbed a roller suitcase from the front seat. He took her hand, helping her out of the car, and she fell against his chest. She looked up at him, her breath forming a cloud in the cold.

  “Thank you,” she said softly, again.

  “You’re welcome.”

  He could see his own breath brush against her upturned mouth, her chest pressed against his, rising and falling in rhythm with the snow. She stood on her tiptoes, pressing her lips against his cool cheek.

  “Come on,” he said grinning, sliding his hand to hers, “before we freeze.”

  He quickly made his way up the mild incline of the ditch, pulling her gently along with him. It was slippery though, and he pulled her close, pushing her in front of him with a steadying hand on her back so he could catch her if she started to tumble. They made it to his truck, and he hurriedly swung the passenger door open for her, helping her climb inside before he jogged around to the driver’s side and slid in, after placing her suitcase in the backseat.