Chapter 10 Ava
I was sitting in class when I got the first hint that something was happening.
The usually dull, stale atmosphere of finance was almost throbbing in intensity.
I hated finance, but being an English major, my mom had convinced me that even editors needed to live in the real world, and a few backup courses in practicality weren’t such a bad idea.
She was wrong; they were a terrible idea.
Jett was in this class, I knew, but it was so huge I never usually saw him. Because he was probably getting sucked off in the back row, I thought maliciously. The only time I actively looked for him was after a game, checking to see if he took any knocks or dents that would’ve rendered him injured.
He was never injured.
As I doodled on my page, I did need to remind myself that I didn’t actually wish bodily harm on him. Well, not before Friday. Before the weekend, if he had torn an ACL, I would have felt genuinely sorry for him. Now I wanted to tear every ligament in his body and watch him squirm in pain.
Okay, Ava, that may be too savage, even for you.
The flower I was doodling had now become a little flower garden, and I was shading them happily as I waited for the class to commence when the seat beside me scraped back.
“We illustrating for children’s books now?”
Quickly, I sketched some headstones and looked up at my friend Wade, who watched with interest.
“You’re a sick fucker, Ava,” he said as he plucked the pen from my fingers and, in a few strokes, had added both our names to the gravestones. “Sweet and innocent on the outside with something sinister lurking beneath,” he teased.
“You know it,” I agreed as I turned the page in my notebook to a fresh one. “What time do you need me tonight?”
“Gig starts at eight. Need your pretty little butt at the van at a quarter to.”
“Cool.” I kicked my feet out in front of me. “I have to go to the print shop to pick up the flyers for next week, but they came out . . . amazing.”
“Course they did, my favorite artist drew them.”
I smiled at the compliment. I met Wade through an online ad last year. He played bass guitar in a country rock band and needed someone to design and distribute his band’s flyers and posters.
He was also the only original member in his band.
There seemed to have been a revolving door of band members, but only Sticks remained from the tail end of last year.
Sticks was the drummer, obviously. I had no idea what his proper name was — he was just Sticks.
Neither of them looked like country rock would be their jam.
Wade had a fauxhawk, neck tattoos, and several piercings.
His black gauges were usually the conversation starter.
I had looked him up on Facebook before I met him for the first time, and had drawn a few samples of heavy metal-themed posters.
He had laughed his ass off at my assumption, and we were pretty much friends from then on.
Sticks had long hair and also several piercings, and always wore a dog collar on his neck.
The dog collar and shorts were the only thing he wore on stage; he didn’t even wear shoes. Sticks was odd.
The band paid for the printing of the posters and flyers I designed for them, and paid me fifty dollars for every new design.
They played regularly twice a week in the campus bars and maybe an additional set in Cardinal itself.
Because Wade was always looking for variety, he had really pushed my drawing, always wanting something new.
He hated the mundane and comfortable. It was hard work sometimes, but it was fun, and we had formed a tight friendship.
Despite Wade’s need for change, one of the things that was steady was his girlfriend, Bea.
She was the complete opposite of Wade: long blonde hair that she always wore up, pretty dresses, not a piercing or tattoo in sight.
Day and night had nothing on those two, but they were absolutely perfect for each other.
Which gave me hope that opposites did attract and, in some cases, stuck.
“The natives are restless,” I said to Wade as he looked around the class from our usual corner in the large classroom.
“Hey, did you hear? Your favorite quarterback got mugged or something . . . I dunno . . .”
“Dante?” I gasped as my hand flew to my throat in horror.
“No, this school’s QB. Something was stolen?” Wade thought about it. “Who really cares?”
“Jett?” I felt my frown as I looked around in confusion. “Who would be stupid enough to steal from a Devil?”
“Dunno, and when did you start calling him by his name?” Wade looked at me with interest.
“I can’t call him cocky asshole all the time,” I mumbled as I resumed drawing.
“That girl almost decapitated me last week when she heard me,” I reminded him dryly.
The girl was obviously unhinged. No one, I mean no one, should react that violently to an offhand comment that the lead quarterback of the Saints was a cocky asshole who couldn’t throw for shit.
I may have slightly downplayed his throwing skills, but I was having a private conversation with my friend, not plastering it on social media.
“Don’t tell me . . . you’ve got a crush on the quarterback.
Please, Ava, don’t do this to me.” Wade laughed easily.
“I refuse to allow you to become just another groupie. Groupies are for my band only.” Wade nudged me playfully.
“If it has to be a Santo, make it the brother or whatever the other big guy is.”
“Cousin. And Ash is the tight end for the team. I don’t know why I have to keep explaining football to you. You’re from Texas, for goodness’ sake, shouldn’t you bleed football?”
“I bleed rock ’n’ roll, as you well know.
” Wade plucked my pen from my fingers as he took my pad and flipped the page back to my previous doodle.
He added some music notes to the sky, and then beside one of the headstones, he sketched a quick ball.
He grinned at his work and proudly handed me the pad back.
An RIP was under the football, and I slapped his arm in protest.
“You’ll be under that headstone if anyone sees this,” I hissed at him.
“Guys and their balls,” Wade snorted. “Bunch of bullshit. Plus, football terms are so sexually driven,” Wade said as he stretched, almost knocking me in the face with his elbow. “Tight end, sack, muff, spearing . . . whoever invented this game was fucking horny at the time and needed to get laid.”
“So, you do listen, but only to the dirty sounding words?” I laughed at my friend. “You’re such a boy.”
“Sweet Ava, you say ‘spearing the tight end’ to me in any sentence, and I don’t give a fuck what you’re talking about, I’m listening.
” Wade winked at me before we were both giggling, trying to settle down as the professor came through the doors.
She looked frazzled, and as I watched her cross the floor, I wondered why she looked so .
. . disheveled. A few minutes later, Ash Santo strolled into the class, and I was pretty sure I wasn’t the only one putting two and two together and getting sexcapade as the answer.
“Only a Santo would fuck the teacher before an assignment,” Wade muttered to me.
“Devil,” I corrected him as I watched Ash take his time to climb the low-rise stairs to the back of the class. His last name was Santo, which meant he and the twins were untouchable. In my opinion, it meant they were dicks.
A dick that I had slept with, and if that didn’t make me the biggest fucking hypocrite, I didn’t know what did.
“Hey, why so sad?” Wade asked me. “I thought I warned you it was assignment day?”
Looking up at him, I forced myself to look happier. “You did, I’m ready to ace it, you?”
“Yeah, sure.” Wade rolled his eyes as he strummed his knuckles off the desk to a beat only he heard.
“I’d offer to help you, my friend, but we both know I need you for this class.”
“In that case, we’re both fucked.”
With the mood between us lighter, we turned our attention to the professor, who had finally started the lecture.
As she started running through what the assignment would consist of, I did wonder idly who would mug or steal from Jett?
He had been fine earlier. Wade nudged my leg with his to get me to pay attention, and it worked.
It really had nothing to do with me if Jett had something taken from him.
Nothing at all.
* * *
Arriving home later that afternoon, I heard her voice before I’d even come up the steps to our apartment.
Mia was practicing. I hated to disturb her when she was practicing, so I always tried to make as little noise as possible.
Dumping my bag, I started getting stuff from the fridge so I could make dinner.
Mia never ate properly unless I cooked. She went through fad diets constantly, and before freshman year ended, she had given up solids and was on a liquid diet. Not the fun kind either.
I had done a store run recently, though, so hot chicken was on the menu tonight.
Knowing she would complain about the carbs from the bread, I was making it with white rice instead.
Still carbs, but Mia had a love-hate relationship with bread, and currently she was in hate mode.
How anyone could choose to hate bread I didn’t understand, but there were some crazies out there.
Listening to her sing as I cooked relaxed me.
Mia had the most beautiful voice and had been so happy when she got accepted into the music program to do a Bachelor of Arts in music with a side helping of computer science.
I never questioned her minor. She was good at design and was eager to learn code, or something equally mind-numbing . . . mind-numbing to me, anyway.