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Chapter 4
Ava pushed herself hard. She had the treadmill up to ten, the highest speed, and the incline at half that. The sweat dripped off her as her feet pounded the belt. The timer sounded, so she lowered the incline back to normal and the speed to a near-walking pace. She needed to cool down before she stopped her workout.
Her sports bra was soaked, and she wiped at her taut stomach as she walked. Over the past year, she had pushed herself to become a hard body. She still had her curves, but her muscles were lean and well defined. When she returned to her Cousin Robert’s gym, she always ran to Sunset and then back to her apartment.
Her running was on top of the cardio and weight training that helped her reach a solid one hundred ten pounds, which made Robert very happy. After Xander had left, she barely tipped the scales at ninety-three pounds, a weight that was alarming to her and her family. All of her ribs had been visible, and she had lost all muscle definition. When she arrived back to New York, Robert got her back into shape within nine months including a healthy weight gain of seventeen pounds.
Last year she made the decision to become stronger and healthier. Robert trained her so that she now ran almost five miles a day and weight trained. She hadn’t eaten fast food or had soda in eight months. Her diet was strictly clean eating with plenty of organic foods. Sam told her that if she ate a burger, she would probably crumple up like the wicked witch of the west.
She saw a lot more of her best friend, Samantha, now that she was dating Robert. Sam had had a tumultuous five and a half years with Justin Ellis and his constant inability to grow up finally got to her. He was thirty-two, and all he wanted to do was drink every weekend. She tossed him out of her apartment when she came home late one evening from work and found him playing poker with seven of his buddies.
They had trashed the kitchen, and the place reeked of cigar smoke. That was five months ago and during a get together at the Keene’s house, Robert (who had been holding a torch for Samantha for several years), finally got up the courage to ask her to dinner. Samantha had readily agreed to go out on a date with him, and to her surprise, she fell for him quickly.
Ava could understand why. Robert had the qualities that a woman looks for in a man. He was intelligent, hard working, caring, kind, honest and had a great sense of humor. The two were inseparable since they started dating and they had mentioned engagement more than once. Ava was secretly thrilled that Sam would be related to her and hoped it would come true.
She finished her workout and took her backpack out of her locker. She wouldn’t be showering before she left because she was going to run home. In the heat of mid-June, she would be soaked with sweat by the time she made it to her apartment building, though when she was there in the winter, it was easy to run every day.
She slipped the backpack over her shoulders and started a slow run, picking up speed as she continued down the block. The heat emanated from the sidewalks, and she felt sweat begin to drip off her face. Her body was gleaming with it when she walked into the lobby of her building. Even at the early hour of seven, it was very warm.
Ava ran fifteen extra minutes today in anticipation that her workouts would be limited in Georgia. She was leaving in two days and knew that if she did run, it would have to be in the dark or just at the crack of dawn. The heat was almost unbearable at this time of year, and she would probably resort to swimming in place of running.
Later that day after studying, she popped into the office, only going to eighteen to see her Uncle Daniel who had several gifts for the twins and William. The door to his office was open and his secretary, Annie, was not there. She must have gone to lunch. Daniel was working at his desk, paging through one of his law books. He looked up and smiled when he heard her enter.
“Ava, I was hoping you came by today. Mavis gave me those gifts over there. Are you going to be able to take these on the plane?” He gestured to three shoebox sized wrapped gifts.
“That shouldn’t be a problem. I can put them in one of my suitcases. I hope they aren’t fragile.”
Daniel chuckled, “You forget I went through four children. Fragile is not a word that should enter a child’s vocabulary until they are adults. These are nice and sturdy.”
Ava’s interest was piqued. “What did you get them?”
“We found a shop when we were in Maryland that made wooden toys. The boys each got a truck set. The dump truck even has a lever that dumps. For Elizabeth, we got her a block set.”
Elizabeth had exhibited an aptitude for building even when she was a baby. She would stack blocks, snap together Legos and use other types of items to put together structures. Even her books were used to construct forts or dollhouses.
“She will like that very much,” Ava said.
She scooped up the packages from the couch and balanced them on her arm. She would probably have to take two tonight and the other tomorrow unless she wanted to kick them home, but then decided to take all three and just take a cab. She balanced the boxes in a stack carefully as she exited the building and flagged a cab.
The day she was to leave was a Friday, and the city was extremely busy. She waited for a cab to pull up curbside to her building. She had a 4:30 flight from LaGuardia and hoped the traffic wouldn’t be that horrible yet. She checked her watch. Three hours until my flight. The plain yogurt and apple that she had consumed earlier churned in her stomach.
She started to have feelings of anxiety that she hadn’t had for a long time. Two things were bothering her. One, was the fact that she would be going home for a week, making her vulnerable to the questioning of her family. Two, was the fact that she would be returning to the place it all fell apart with Xander. She tried not to think of either of those things.
After boarding the plane, she settled into her middle seat. She was flanked by an elderly woman who had fallen asleep before the plane even moved and a young male college student who couldn’t seem to stop looking at her out of the corner of his eye. Ava ignored him and tapped an email to her brother on her cell phone, sending it just before the flight attendants made the announcement to shut off all electronic devices. She put her phone in the magazine sleeve on the seat in front of her until she was allowed to use it again.
Mid-flight, the college student finally got the nerve to start talking to her. She tried not to engage him in conversation by answering his questions with one word, but he couldn’t take the hint. He was a handsome boy with a square jaw and a small scar above his eyebrow. She tolerated his questions until he asked her how old she was.
“Much too old for you,” she said.
“No, come on, you aren’t that much older, are you?”
She decided to counter his question with a question. “How old are you?”
He thought about the question for a minute. “Does it matter? We are just two people engaging in conversation.”
She was starting to become irritated.
“If that is the case then this part of the conversation is over.”
