Chapter 27
CHAPTER
TWENTY-SEVEN
AVA
“So, do you want to come to my place, or should I come to yours?” Myles asks as we cross the Turnpike Bridge over the Allegheny River. “I have a few phone calls to make, but I could pick you up after.”
Charleston is spread out ahead of us, shielded by the mountains. It’s such a tiny city with its sparse high rises. It’s more of a town, really. I think that’s why I love it so much.
“We’re spending the night together?” I ask.
“You’re still ovulating, aren’t you?” he asks mildly.
I lift a brow. “And if I wasn’t?”
I can’t see his eyes because he’s wearing sunglasses, but I swear the skin around them has crinkled. “Then I’d come over anyway and we could watch something together.”
My heart does a little leap. I can picture him on my couch, his long legs spread out, his feet on my coffee table. I’d be snuggled next to him while we binge watch the latest detective show on Netflix.
The image shifts. Changes. There’s a baby monitor on the table next to Myles’ feet. It crackles and a baby’s cry echoes from the speaker. He jumps up and winks at me.
“I’ll take this one.”
“So what do you say?” he asks, interrupting my extremely weird and embarrassing daydream.
“Come to mine. I need to do some laundry. And we both need to go to work tomorrow.”
“Yours it is.” He nods. “I’ll bring dinner.”
“Myles,” I begin, because this needs to be said. “You don’t have to come over if you don’t want to. You don’t owe me anything just because we did… what we did.”
He shakes his head. “Shut up.”
I try not to laugh. He’s so rude and yet so sweet. Such a lethal combination.
He drives through the historic district, weaving through cars parked on the road and the occasional kid throwing a football.
The parks are full of children, running around in shorts and t-shirts, enjoying the late afternoon sun.
It’s one of those perfect summer days that makes you nostalgic and happy at the same time.
He finds a space a few yards down from my house and pulls in, cutting the engine and climbing out. By the time I’m out of the car and joining him, he’s got my suitcases out of the trunk.
“Thank you,” I say, rolling onto my tiptoes to kiss his lips. “For everything.”
“I’m coming in,” he says, grabbing the cases. “If you try to carry these you’ll give yourself a hernia.”
“If you insist.” They really are heavy. Heavy as hell. And even though I feel it tarnishes my feminist card, I let him carry them up the stoop and into the house.
And then he carries them up the stairs and I follow behind, marveling at just how good he looks in jeans. Don’t get me wrong, the man is lethal in a suit, but in jeans he’s just…
The sound of my phone shrills through the hallway.
I run down to where I’ve left my purse and dig it out.
I don’t recognize the number but I answer anyway, mostly because I like to occupy scam callers so they don’t swindle somebody else.
My record for keeping them on the line is ten minutes. I’m hoping to beat that one day.
“Hello?”
“Is this Ava?” a woman’s voice asks.
“Yes, that’s right. Who am I talking to?”
“I’m Lisa, Raeanne Jackson’s daughter.”
The name rings a bell. I let it play around my head for a moment. “Raeanne as in my mom’s friend?” I ask.
She sighs. “Yes, I’m afraid so. I have some bad news.”
My mouth turns dry. “What kind of news?” I immediately want to hit myself for not calling my mom while I was away. Is she sick? Is she hurt? Worst case scenarios rush through my head.
“I’m afraid she and my mom have been arrested for indecent exposure. They were protesting naked outside of the governor’s mansion.”
“Indecent exposure?” I say faintly. Dear God, not again. What is it with my mom and streaking?
“I’m sorry.” Lisa sounds as resigned as I feel.
There’s a certain camaraderie in being the daughters of protestors.
“They’re at the South Central Jail. We need to go pick them up and bring them back for court tomorrow.
From what I can tell it’ll just be a fine, but seriously…
” She sighs. “Aren’t they too old for this kind of thing? ”
I run my hand over my face. I don’t know about my mom, but I’m definitely too old to be getting her out of jail. “South Central you say?”
“Yes. We’ll need to post bail so they can come home tonight.”
Of course we will. I think of my credit card and the bashing it took when I went on my extended vacation. I have enough money – I think – but it’s going to make things tight.
“I’ll see you there,” I mutter. “And thank you for calling me.”
“No problem.” Lisa sighs again. “Why can’t we just have normal moms?”
I think it’s a rhetorical question because she disconnects, and I’m left holding my phone and frowning.
Myles walks down the stairs and I blink because I’d forgotten he was still here.
“You okay?” he asks. “You look a million miles away.”
I take a deep breath. “I’m fine. But I’m going to have to take a raincheck on tonight.”
“Is there a problem?”
“Nothing I can’t handle.” There’s no way I’m telling him about this. He’ll want to help and I don’t want him to. He has enough problems with his own family. He doesn’t need to add mine to the mix.
“Are you sure…”
“I’m sure, Myles.” I give him a soft smile. “I’ll see you at work tomorrow, okay?”
His jaw tics. “Okay. But if you need anything you know where I am.”
“I appreciate it,” I whisper, because I do. I appreciate everything about this man. I lift my head to kiss him because I need him to know it. “Thank you for everything. It’s been amazing.”
“Thanks to you.” He pulls me closer, kissing the corner of my mouth, my jaw, my cheek. “You made everything bearable.”
“Are we talking about the sex now?”
He grins. “No. That was unbearable.”
My mouth drops open and I push him. He doesn’t budge an inch. “Stop that.”
“I’m not going to stop anything,” he murmurs. “Especially not touching you.”
“You’ll have to stop it at work tomorrow,” I remind him. “That’s how rumors start.”
“We’ll worry about that in the morning.” He shrugs. “I guess I should go home and do my own laundry.”
“You don’t know how sexy that is. Will you strip down when you do it?” I ask, teasing.
“Why would I strip?”
“Like that guy in that jeans ad from years ago,” I tell him. “And also because it fuels my fantasies about you.”
“In that case, I’ll definitely strip.” He kisses the tip of my nose. “Call me later when you’ve done what you need to?”
I grimace, because I know I have a long night ahead of me. “I’ll definitely try. And send me a selfie of you doing the laundry. I need to know that you’re keeping to the plan.”
“Only if you can tell me why you’re being so secretive.”
“I’m not being secretive, I’m being discreet. It’s different.” I pull away from him, wishing more than anything that my mom knew how to dress appropriately. “I’m sorry to ruin our plans.”
“I’ll survive.” He checks his watch. “Talk later, okay?”
“Okay.”
“I don’t understand it,” my mom says. “How can a human body be indecent? It’s perfectly decent. It’s natural, there shouldn’t be a law against showing it off.”
“It’s not natural to dance naked around the Governor’s Mansion and chant that he’s a…” I try to remember the exact phase. “Mother forker.”
“We didn’t call him that.” Mom’s nose wrinkles as though I’m the one who’s been arrested. “We said he was assaulting Mother Nature.”
“Same thing.”
“No it isn’t. We didn’t use vulgar language.”
This is the thing about my mom. She’ll do something crazy like run naked around a mock-colonial mansion, then bristle when you use a cuss word in front of her.
It’s just one of the many ways I’ll never understand her.
She’s a law unto herself and gets furious when the real actual law stops her from doing what she wants.
“You can’t go around taking your clothes off every time you want to make a point,” I tell her.
“Why not?” She frowns. “I think we made our point perfectly. Did you see the photographers outside the jail? We’ll be in all the papers tomorrow. If it gets more attention to our cause then I’ll strip off every day.”
“Please don’t do that.” I rub my palms against my eyes. “I need to work. I can’t spend all of my time and money bailing you out.”
“I told you I’d pay you back,” she says testily.
“You don’t need to. They’ll return it if you turn up to court tomorrow.” I frown. “You are going to court tomorrow, right?”
She glares at me as though I’m being stupid. “Of course. There’ll be journalists there. Raeanne thinks we should strip in court but I’m worried that they might sentence us to six months in jail. I think we’re better off protesting outside of the penal system.”
Thank God for small mercies. I shiver at the thought of my mom serving time in prison. Not so much for her but for the other inmates. They’d all be begging for an early release to escape her.
“But you’re going to keep your clothes on in the future, right?” I ask. “Because if they catch you again they won’t go so lightly on you.”
“Of course,” she huffs. “I’m not silly. And anyway, Washington DC doesn’t count, does it?”
“What do you mean it doesn’t count?”
“It’s a different jurisdiction. So we’d start again with a warning, wouldn’t we? Raeanne and I always strip naked when we’re protesting in DC.”
“You did it once, Mom. And you got away with it. You won’t next time. And there’s no way I’m driving all the way to DC to bail you out.”
She waves her hand. “What else did you have to do tonight?”
“Laundry.”
She smiles. “Then I saved you from yourself. You’re so serious, Ava. You need to lighten up a bit. You know what you need?” she asks, looking at me critically.
I sigh. “What?”
“Some good sex.”
“Mom!” My jaw drops to my ankles. “You can’t say that.”
“Of course I can. I’m old not decrepit. I know the power of an orgasm.”
My stomach turns. These are words I never want to hear my mom say. I consider putting my hands over my ears and singing loudly. “Please stop now.”