The Night Before Read online

  “People are corny,” Ava agreed. She used to get embarrassed then angry when she was younger until she learned that people are going to judge, no matter what you have going on. It’s how too many people build themselves up, on the judgment of others.

  “Is he in public relations too then?” Elias was asking.

  “No, he’s an athlete. He plays basketball.”

  “Professionally?”

  Ava nodded.

  “Really?” Elias said, nodding his head, clearly impressed. That was pretty much the reaction of every guy she ever shared that information with. “What’s his name?”

  “Kyle Ramseur.”

  Elias’ eyes widened slightly. It was always questionable rather or not people would recognize her brother’s name. He’d been in the league for a while now but he was a six man and wasn’t necessarily on name recognition status with casual fans of the game.

  “Kyle Ramseur, who just signed to the Mavs?”

  “Yep,” Ava said, expecting to him to launch into a full-on conversation about him, or pretend vague disinterest so she’d volunteer information about him.

  “Cool. He’s having a good season,” Elias said.

  “He is,” she said smiling as she thought of Kyle, who said he was already liking Dallas a lot better than Orlando.

  “I’d spend summers out in Kansas with him. They lived in a town called Manhattan. When we got older, I’d talk my dad and stepmom into letting me travel with the team to his tournaments in Kansas City.”

  She laughed, memories of hot days spent with Kyle on the almost two hour-long bus ride into KC.

  “That must’ve sucked for him,” Elias laughed, glancing at her. “I’m sure he stayed into it with his teammates over you.”

  Ava shook her head. “I was kind of a late bloomer.”

  He raised a brow, allowing his gaze to roam over her.

  “I remember you in high school, Ava.”

  “Not physically,” she said rolling her eyes, though her body heated at the way he was looking at her. “I liked guys and all of that but not… I was never boy crazy like a lot of my friends were. My life definitely didn’t revolve around trying to get their attention.”

  “Because you didn’t have to work for it,” Elias surmised.

  She shrugged. “I was just interested in other things. Like, when I hung with Kyle, I was aware that I was traveling with a bunch of guys who girls drooled over but I was honestly more into the game. I used to think I was going to be a sports writer since I was too uncoordinated to play myself.”

  “But you ended up being a cheerleader—you couldn’t have been too uncoordinated.”

  “I could move okay but I wasn’t a ball player, at all. I actually only tried out for cheerleading because my friends and I— Ellie who was at the party—and this girl named Alaska, decided we wanted to blacken up the squad.”

  Elias laughed, furrowing his brow. “For real?”

  “Yep. Ellie always wondered why there were never any cheerleaders on varsity so we made it a point to try out,” she explained. “There at least twelve of us who tried out and five of us made the cut on a cheers quad of nine. We were happy with those numbers.”

  Elias grinned. “So, you were a little revolutionary.”

  Ava chuckled and shrugged. “Not really but you know,” she lifted her shoulders again, smiling.

  “That’s what’s up, though,” he said, glancing at her with appreciation. “Now that I’m thinking about it, the cheerleaders were extra blonde before you.”

  “They haven’t had an all-white squad since,” Ava said, unable to keep the pride out of her voice, even if the feat was relatively small.

  “What about you and your dad then?” Elias asked after a long second. “Are you two close?”

  Ava nodded, sipping from the thermos.

  “We are,” she answered swallowing. “He has his ways, obviously, but he was always there for me. He tried really hard to stick it out with my mom—tried to make up for his indiscretions. He really tried to make it work for our family. But… the heart wants what it wants. And his wanted Kyle’s mom. I can’t fault him for that. My mom is over it, and so am I. And as I said, he’s always been active in my life. I never felt like I came second or anything.”

  “You’re his only girl,” Elias said as if that explained everything. “My mom would’ve killed for a baby girl. I think she slick tried to turn my baby brother Matthew into one.”

  She laughed. He grinned, eyes on the road. “Had the little dude enrolled in ballet and everything. My dad came home and had a fit. Said no son of his was gonna be doing pliés.”

  Ava laughed again, waving her fingers in front the heating vent, not for the warmth, but for something to do with her hands.

  “She didn’t try the whole athletes need to know how to balance argument? Like how football players practice ballet?”

  “She tried but Matthew’s never been into sports. He wasn’t even playing ball or anything close to it at the time, so it was like, dude was only in ballet. Dad was like, nope, and it was a wrap after that.”

  Ava laughed again, and Elias chuckled along with her, warming her insides.

  “Would you let your son do ballet?” He smirked and she arched a brow.

  “I mean, I wouldn’t put him in the shit. But if he came home and said that’s what he wanted to do,” Elias shrugged. “I’m not about hindering anyone’s progress.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “I’m for real,” he insisted, smiling that half-grin that made her palms a little sweaty. “Following your path is important.”

  Ava smiled, biting the inside of her lip.

  “So, what about you? Do you want a house full of boys too whenever you have kids?” she asked.

  If she wasn’t staring at him so hard, she would’ve missed the subtle change in Elias’ expression, the tightening of his mouth, the way his jaw slightly twitched.

  Ava sat up in her seat slightly, staring at him. If this man had kids and was ashamed to claim them….

  “Do you have kids or a kid?” she asked, trying to keep the emotion out of her voice.

  “Had. A daughter… She died at three weeks old. SIDS.”

  Pain coated his words, his deep timber suddenly heavier, and he swallowed, his gaze still on the road. Ava’s heart dropped and immediately, uncontrollably tears welled in her eyes. The hum of the Christmas music was still circulating in the cab as she released a slow breath. She couldn’t burst into tears like a weirdo and make the situation even worse but she wanted to.

  “I’m so sorry, Elias.” Her voice was quiet, restrained when she finally trusted herself enough to speak.

  He twisted his lips, releasing a breath, when she passed him the thermos, her fingers brushing his. He accepted it, taking a sip of the hot chocolate, with one hand on the wheel. The gesture was as natural as it was intimate and Elias’ eyes said he felt the same when he looked at her again. The energy shift in the cab was palpable. It charged before, with the physical pull they had but now, the connection felt emotional. She could only imagine what losing a child was like. How do you ever mover past that? What kind of strain does that put on—

  “We didn’t work out,” Elias offered, already in tune with her thoughts again. “Her mom and I. After that we just…fell apart.” He shook his head. “It was rough.”

  “How long were you together?”

  “Five years. We stayed together for one after we lost the baby.”

  “I bet that put a lot of stress on your relationship,” Ava offered aloud, biting the inside of her lip.

  “It did,” Elias admitted, glancing her way. He squinted at the night road. “People always talk about there being a reason for everything.”

  “I think that’s bullshit,” Ava interjected quietly.

  Elias briefly met her eyes. “Exactly. I still haven’t figured out the reason for something like that. Drove myself crazy trying to figure one out.”

  He shook his head, his eyes faraway.<
br />
  “You know I kept buying stuff for her? For six months after we lost her, I just kept buying little things. Pacifiers, baby bottles, lotion, almost every time I went to the store, I’d just find myself in the baby aisle, like a… compulsion.”

  Ava bit the inside of her lip, studying his profile. His gaze was heavy when he glanced at her, almost as if he was expecting judgment.

  “Finally, one day it just clicked, that she wasn’t here and I had to move on.” He paused, pulling in a breath, his eyes on the blackened, snow-filled sky. “Some things just are. And you just gotta learn to deal. Either that or succumb.”

  Ava leaned her head back against the seat cushion, expelling a breath. She turned her hand up on the seat between them and he placed his in hers, drawing a line across her palm unseeingly with his rough fingertips. Like he was soothing her after having told her something so heavy. He looked over at her and smiled, their eyes locking for a weighty second before he returned his attention to the road.

  “Yo, I take it back,” Elias said after a few long seconds of them both remaining quiet, lost in their separate thoughts, as he rubbed the pad of his thumb absently over her wrist. “This is the best Christmas jam ever.”

  He released her hand and reached to turn up the radio, bobbing his head. Ava laughed, though she regretted the loss of contact, slight as it was.

  “You can’t be serious. ‘I Saw Mama Kissing Santa Claus?’” Ava asked wide-eyed, willing to lighten up the mood and play along with him.

  “It had all the elements of a classic—hurt feelings, infidelity, mama creepin’, son snitchin’ about what he saw goin’ down in the living room…” He took a swallow from the thermos and passed it back to Ava.

  “Um, you do realize that Santa was his daddy, Elias.”

  “Nah.” Elias shook his head, his dimples peeking out, making her tingle everywhere. “Mama was creepin’ on Christmas.”

  “No, she wasn’t.”

  “Yep, listen—” he inclined his head toward the radio and widened his eyes as a young Michael Jackson sang about mama kissing Santa under the mistletoe on the Jackson 5 record.

  “I’ve heard the song a million times. Santa was his daddy.”

  Elias shook his head. “Nope, not buyin’ it. She was creepin’.”

  “Whatever,” Ava said, laughing as Elias dropped another sexy grin on her.

  “Oh! I almost forgot,” she exclaimed, digging into her purse and extracting the cookies she’d taken from her mom’s house. “I have cookies for the hot chocolate.”

  She grinned and passed one to Elias.

  “Wow,” he said, around a mouthful of cookie a few seconds later. “You made these?”

  “I wish. My mom did.”

  “Damn, I was about to propose if you told me you made these cookies, Ava.”

  “You’d marry me for a cookie?”

  “For a cookie like this, hell yes. We could work out the rest.”

  Ava laughed, shaking her head as Elias dropped another half-grin on her as he chewed.

  They were approaching town and Elias pulled off the exit, heading in the opposite direction of her mom’s place, which was close to the small college where she taught, toward the affluent section of town.

  “What do your parents do?”

  “My dad is a retired army general and lawyer. My mom owns a couple of daycares in the area.”

  “Did you ever think about following your dad into the military? Or was photography always your thing?”

  “Photography was always my thing. I just didn’t know I could actually make a living from it. Didn’t know anything about how to go about it. So, I enlisted in the army straight out of high school. It didn’t work out.” He pushed out a chuckle and shook his head.

  “What?” Ava asked, reading his rueful expression. He glanced at her, biting the inside of his cheek as if debating on if he was going to continue.

  “I ended up getting put out. Got caught with some weed,” he admitted, grinning as he shook his head. Ava’s eyes widened.

  “What’d your dad say?”

  “Nothin nice,” Elias said, chuckling as he glanced at her. “I think he knew that that wasn’t the life for me though, so he got over it… eventually.”

  “You really were a bad ass.”

  Elias grinned. “Took me a minute to find my lane.”

  “And now you’re in it? Your lane?”

  “Yep. I made my mistakes early. I’m glad I got that outta my system back then. Nothing worse than a grown ass man still wandering around, not knowing what he’s here for.”

  “Ain’t that the truth,” she said, thinking of her own path. Her career was settled for the most part, but with men? Now that was a different story. “There’s nothing worse than a person, man or woman, who doesn’t know who they are. It’s stressful, dealing with people like that.”

  Elias glanced at her. “Sounds like you have experience.”

  “My ex was a lot like that.” She grinned and shook her head. She hadn’t meant to blurt that information out. “He’s an actor and I think trying on all of those different personalities and characteristics started messing with his brain. He was always searching for something, externally.”

  Elias glanced at her, and once more the words were leaving her lips, uninhibited.

  “He’s the lead love interest on the show Angel Hunter, about the black-girl superhero? It’s on the network I work for.”

  “I know it’s huge,” Elias said, glancing at her before returning his attention to the road. “But I haven’t really gotten into it yet,” he admitted.

  “It’s a mostly female viewership,” Ava said. “It was kind of an experiment to see how the network would do with a show based on super heroes, especially one who’s a black female, but it’s really taken off. Anyway, when things went south, it got pretty tough.”

  “Work relationships can get messy,” Elias said knowingly.

  “I was actually with him before he landed the show. I started at the network, and a couple of months later, he got the part. I never directly worked on Angel Hunter but… yeah. It was hard when we broke up.”

  “How long ago was that?”

  “About three months ago.”

  Elias nodded, his eyes on the road. Ava bit the inside of her lip, wondering what on earth had possessed her to share all that information about Ty. She took a bite of her cookie, chewing silently as she looked out of the window.

  “I almost got cut dating a co-worker back in the day,” Elias told her after a few long seconds.

  Ava smiled as she swallowed. “You broke her heart?”

  “And she broke the windows out my car.”

  Ava’s eyes widened and she covered her mouth with her hand as she laughed. He chuckled along with her, shaking his head.

  “Damn, player,” she teased, her smile still wide.

  “Nah, she ain’t have to smash the windows out of my Acura, man. I liked that car. We weren’t serious enough for all that drama.”

  He grinned and finished off his cookie, and Ava’s gaze was drawn to his lips… again.

  “The things that are often conveniently inconsequential for men, mean a lot more to women. Maybe your relationship with home girl didn’t mean much to you but she was obviously really emotionally involved to get that violent.”

  “Sounds like your rationalizing crazy, Ava.” His voice was warm and husky and she bit the inside of her lip as she met his brown eyes.

  “I’m just offering an alternative perspective.”

  “Okay.” He grinned, eyes still on the road.

  “My situation was pretty rough, honestly,” she admitted. “I didn’t smash the windows out his car, though. And we were serious. Looking at wedding rings serious. Five years of my life serious.”

  She thought about the groupies she ignored as Ty shot to stardom as the show picked up. The late nights. The overlooking. The accommodating and adjusting and the bending she did to make their relationship work.

  “We
broke up because he got another woman pregnant. Now they’re engaged.”

  She said the words quickly, in a rush to get them out and off her tongue, surprised again that she was blurting out info to this dude she didn’t even know like that.

  “I’m sorry that happened to you.” His voice was low and comforting, like his eyes when he looked at her.

  She forced a smile.

  “Oh, the irony, right? I spent my entire early adult life trying to avoid a situation like my parents’… and yet…” She waved a hand over herself. “Isn’t it ironic?” she sang, mimicking Alanis Morissette.

  He grinned, and she smiled, shrugging. “But it’s all life, right? Learn the lesson and keep it moving.”

  Elias smiled, his gaze turning thoughtful as he openly studied her.

  “So, this dude. You over him?”

  Ava jerked her head up at Elias’ sudden inquiry, her brow creased in mild surprise at his directness.

  “Yes.”

  He narrowed his eyes a bit as if she said it too hastily to be believable.

  “These past few months let me breathe a little,” she admitted. “I got to see how much we relied on our work to be the focal point of our relationship. But I think it’s more the idea of failure that made me so upset about us being over. I spent a lot of time building that relationship, working on it. Always thinking that if I gave a little more, compromised a little more…” She stopped, looking out of the window. “And now, it’s like, yes, I have the life lesson and all of that jazz but what about the time? Ya know?”

  She looked at him again and Elias nodded, a slight smile on his face. “I feel you.”

  “It made it harder because everywhere I looked, there he was.” She shrugged twisting her lips, as she looked down at her hands, thinking about the public pregnancy announcements on the blogs and websites, stories that she thankfully didn’t have to work, but knifed her in the gut anyway.

  “It woulda been easier if I didn’t have a constant reminder of my failure but…” she shrugged again. “It is what it is.”

  “Your failure?” Elias raised a brow, glancing at her.

  “You know what I’m saying,” she said dismissively. “Like I said, it is what it is.”

  Ava met his discerning gaze, before peering out of the window silently as they pulled further into town, noting that most of the businesses in the area thankfully had power.