“I don’t think you’re impossible to work for,” Ava said. It was just that her mother was so stuck in her belief that the only way to be successful was the Barbara Christensen way that she ignored other valid viewpoints. It was a discussion they’d had many times. “I think your work/life balance is out of whack. For example, when was the last time you went on a date?”
Her mother’s cheeks turned pink. “I could ask the same of you.”
There was no way she was telling her mother it had been just two days ago and that it had been with her only-for-another-six-weeks boss. Barbara wouldn’t understand. “Fine. We’ll drop it.”
* * *
BY NINE O’CLOCK, JILLY had excused herself to meet her latest suitor for a drink, but Ava remained at her mother’s, enjoying the company now that they weren’t talking about work or dating or Jake.
They shifted into the family room off the kitchen. It was smaller and less formal than the living room and was where the two of them usually sat when they were alone.
When she’d been a teenager, Ava used to lounge on the soft suede couch and do her homework with a movie playing in the background for company. When her mother got home, they’d watch television and chat, occasionally even eat dinner there when her mother was too exhausted to argue that dinner should be eaten at a dining table. It was the room that, to Ava, felt the most like home.
She settled into the cushions and sighed. She could hear the familiar sounds of her mother making tea. The clink of her grandmother’s white china pot as Barbara pulled it from the upper cabinet. The tink of the metal spoon against the mesh strainer as she put the loose leaves into it. The rattle of the china cups being added to the same tray as the teapot. And the whistle of the kettle when the water boiled.
“Here we are.” Her mother carried in the mahogany tray and placed it on the long coffee table that was only a shade or two darker than the tray. There were gingerbread cookies on a small plate along with a creamer and the sugar bowl.
Ava sat up and inhaled. The scent of Earl Grey filled her senses. “Smells great. Thanks, Mom.”
“My pleasure.”
Barbara sat in the high-backed, pastel blue velvet chair she always chose. It was oversize, making her look even smaller, but somehow it suited her. She’d had it recovered twice over the years, always in the same material and color. Though she’d never do so in company, Ava knew her mother liked to kick off her shoes and curl her feet beneath her when she read a book or watched television. Ava could remember finding her like that when she’d been little, and they and the chair had been crammed into a much smaller apartment, usually with a textbook in her lap and her glasses sliding down her nose.
They each doctored their tea according to preference. Ava added a splash of cream, while Barbara was content with a single lump of sugar. Her mother sipped once and then looked at her. “You’re going to see Dr. Merion tomorrow?”
“At eleven,” Ava confirmed. Dr. Merion had been her personal physician for the past ten years and worked at the same hospital as her mother.
“Good. I’m sure that the hospital in Idaho did a fine job, but I’ll feel better knowing that Marcia has looked at it.” Dr. Marcia Merion and Barbara were friends as well as colleagues, though Ava didn’t think their personal relationship extended past eating lunch together. “Have you met with the physiotherapist I recommended yet?”
Ava shook her head. “I can worry about that later.” Along with the black hair that was probably already sprouting beneath the cast. Sometimes Google was not her friend.
“We’ll see what Marcia says.”
Ava had no doubt that Barbara would mention it to Marcia before her appointment tomorrow.
Barbara sipped her tea and set the cup back into the saucer with only the tiniest of rattles. “We got off the topic of the festival earlier.” Yes, because Ava had changed the subject. “But I’d like to hear about it. You and Jake seemed to be getting along. What were you able to check off the list we made?”
Since Ava was pretty sure that the truth wouldn’t make her very popular, she blew on her tea and thought fast. “You know, I’m not sure I can remember everything without the list in front of me.” She should have listened more closely when her mother had been jabbering at her about it on the phone.
“Were you able to talk about your future at the station with Jake?”
Ava blew on the tea again. “No, we were swamped running to events and getting the stories cut for the station.”
She briefly contemplated telling her mother about Jake’s pilot, but in the end chose not to. While mentioning it would definitely please her mother and get her off the lecture of career advancement, it had huge potential to backfire. Barbara would want to know everything, would demand details and would ask about it every time she saw or spoke with Ava. Barbara’s examination of the facts would last long past this evening.
No, it was better for Ava to keep her mouth closed on the subject for now. She would wait until the pilot had sold.
“What did you check off the list, then?”
“Well...” Ava fumbled, trying to think of something that was likely to fit her mother’s idea of an appropriate and achievable goal.
“Ava?” Her mother had put down her tea while Ava had been thinking. “Did you use the list at all?”
“Not exactly.” The disappointed look on her mother’s face was worse than the annoyed one she’d expected. “Mom, we’ve discussed this before. I don’t like making lists and planning out every detail.”
Although, if she had, she would never have ended up alone on an icy street in Rockdale. But then, she and Jake wouldn’t have connected, either, so the trade-off seemed fair.
Barbara shook her head, her perfect blond hair swinging back and forth before settling back into its original style. “You do know this cavalier attitude won’t take you to the next level in your career.”
The tea burned Ava’s tongue and she put the cup and saucer down. “Do we have to talk about this right now?”
“Yes.” Barbara looked at her pointedly. “If you plan ahead and position yourself properly, you get promoted. I think we should make a list for you now.”
“No.” Ava waved her cast. “We’re having tea and relaxing. We’re not making any lists.”
“I don’t understand why you’re so resistant to this idea. You were happy to make lists when you were younger.”
“I was never happy to make them,” Ava pointed out.
“Regardless, you can’t deny their usefulness. I started making them just after your father died.”
Ava had once tried to point out that perhaps this need for lists was a way for Barbara to control her life, but her mother had refused to consider that as even the remotest possibility.
“I would never have gotten through university with a young child without them, and I certainly wouldn’t have found any success in my career if I had just let things happen.” Barbara looked at her sharply.
Ava felt like one of those worms that the neighborhood kids were eyeballing just before the first incision. “I’m happy, Mom. Doesn’t that count for anything?”
“Of course it does. I want you to be happy. But how happy are you going to be if the station decides to downsize and you’re laid off because you didn’t make sure they recognized your worth?”
“That isn’t going to—”
“You have to rely on yourself, dear. It was a lesson I had to learn at a young age with a sm
all child. I don’t want you to end up in the same position.”
“I’m not going to, Mom.” For one, she already had her education and a good job. Two things her mother hadn’t had when she’d needed them.
“You don’t know that. Things happen, Ava. I never expected to end up a single mom. I just think—” The sound of Beethoven’s Ode to Joy swelled through the room.
Ava blinked. “What is that?”
“My phone. Excuse me.” Her mother was already moving to the small green dish in the kitchen where she kept her keys and phone. “Hello?” Ava watched her smile, say something low into the phone. When Barbara looked up and noticed Ava watching her, she blushed and moved into the living room, out of eavesdropping range.
Odd.
Ava thought about getting up and pretending to get something from the fridge so she could hear, but decided against it. It was probably just a call from work. She didn’t think anyone else called her mother. And the relief at getting off the hook about the list making made her unwilling to do anything that would incur her mother’s irritation.
She bit into her second cookie and wondered if she could get away with sneaking out if she told her mother it was on a list. Probably not.
“I apologize for the interruption,” Barbara said when she returned a few minutes later.
“No problem. When did you change your ringtone?” Better to introduce a new subject in the hopes that her mother would forget about the previous one.
“My what?” Barbara sank back into the chair looking young and graceful. Whoever it was obviously hadn’t called with a crisis.
“Your ringtone. It’s playing classical music now. I didn’t set that up.” What was wrong with the Black Eyed Peas?
“I am capable of learning to change the phone’s settings, dear.”
Ava laughed. “Since when? The only time it changes is when I do it.”
“Well, it’s changed now and without your help.” Barbara was holding her tea, but not drinking it.
“I’m impressed. So who was it?”
“Just a friend.” Her mother made an airy motion with her hand and went back to holding her cup. “Nothing important.”
“Then why did they call?”
“To discuss some plans we’d made.”
“You’re acting skittish,” Ava said. She swallowed the last bite of cookie and focused on her mother. “Why?”
“I’m not acting anything,” Barbara said, and if it wasn’t for the small tremor in her hand, Ava might have believed her.
“Then why are you avoiding the question?”
“You know, you’re a very good reporter. However, I don’t like it when you interrogate me.”
“Please, this is nothing compared to what you put me through.” There was a reason Ava was a good reporter. She came by her ability to suss out questions and secrets naturally.
“I don’t interrogate. I merely show interest in your life, and I never push.”
“You always push.” Ava could think of a million instances. When she’d been fifteen and out past curfew and she’d called with a story about falling asleep on a girlfriend’s couch and would it be okay if she just stayed over? Her mother had asked a few question and then said no, somehow intuiting that she hadn’t been at the friend’s house but with a boy instead.
Or the time Ava had said that she’d been studying for her university finals at the library when she’d really been at a party all night. Her mother had made a few noises and then written out a study schedule for her that Ava had to mark off at the end of each night. Plus, a list of how this would ensure that she kept a high grade-point average. Ava had aced her tests, but was it really any wonder that she hated those lists?
“I don’t push,” Barbara repeated, her pale eyebrows rising in challenge. “For instance, did you know that your tone of voice changes when you talk about your new producer, Jake?”
“It does not.”
“It does.” Barbara nodded sagely. “And you blush.” Ava raised a hand to her cheek, which was undeniably warm. “Yet, I didn’t push you tonight when it was clear that you didn’t wish to speak about him.”
Ava looked down at the table and tried not to fidget.
“I thought so.” Barbara placed her tea on the table and crossed her arms. “Are you interested in him?”
“Mom, no. We’re friends.”
She could feel her mother continuing to study her. “Are you sure?”
Sure that there was only one right answer to the questions. “Yes.”
“Ava, I know that it can be difficult to meet people when you work long hours, but starting a relationship with a colleague has the potential to be disastrous. You need to think about your career.”
She looked up. “I am, which is why we’re just friends.”
Barbara shook her head. “Just see that you’re careful. You don’t want to throw away your career over a handsome face.”
“Who said he was handsome?”
“Oh?” Her mother tilted her head. “So you are interested in discussing it?”
Touché. Ava rose from the couch. “No, I’m only interested in my bed tonight.” With Jake in it.
But she kept that last part to herself.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
JAKE WAS SWAMPED MONDAY and Tuesday but managed to get his head above water long enough on Wednesday to insist that Ava have dinner with him. After pizza, they’d had a hot-and-heavy make-out session on her couch. Which he was still thinking about Thursday morning.
Luckily, there were a million things to do at the station, which kept him from walking into her office, locking the door and initiating another session.
He’d set up a phone interview between Harvey and Hanna. On top of that, he was juggling his day-to-day activities and trying to help Tommy improve in his new role as cohost. The kid wasn’t horrible, wasn’t even bad, he was just a little flat.
Not for the first time, Jake thought about how much easier it would have been to promote Ava. She would have been able to slide in seamlessly and hold her own with Danica. But Jake still felt there was gold to be mined from the Tommy and Danica pairing. Or maybe it was just that he saw a bit of himself in the young eager-to-please kid and he wanted to help Tommy achieve what he hadn’t: making his family proud.
Tommy had a head start on him in one aspect. He didn’t feel the need to do so by working outside the family business.
Jake spent the rest of the day working in his office, stopping only to refuel with a stale cheese Danish that was in the break room and massive amounts of coffee. The show ran smoothly though Ava wasn’t in attendance. She didn’t have a story on the evening program, but she often hung around anyway. He tried not to be too disappointed that she hadn’t tonight.
By the time he got home that evening, he was tired and starving. There was nothing in his fridge but one sad little lime, club soda and ketchup. He found some bread in the freezer and seriously considered making a ketchup sandwich. It covered grains and vegetables. Sort of.
His culinary experiment was interrupted by the ringing of his phone and Loverboy singing about working for the weekend. He answered it before the song got to the part about going off the deep end. But by the time he hung up ten minutes later, he’d felt as if he’d fallen off it anyway.
He stared at the phone, then at the table. Then got up and stumbled to the high cabinet over the fridge where he found half a bottle of tequila and a cut-glass tumbler. Thirty seconds later he was ba
ck at the table with an empty tumbler and a slightly emptier bottle.
He started to think about it, decided he wasn’t ready and poured himself another shot of tequila.
Was this really—
No. Not yet. He gritted his teeth, poured another shot, eyed it before adding a little more and then slung it back. The liquor burned a path down his throat and into his bloodstream. It didn’t feel good, but it was better than he’d felt a minute ago.
A half hour into his solo party, his vision was fuzzy around the edges, his stomach was on fire and his fingers were twice their normal size. Or that’s what it felt like when he tried to navigate his cell phone with them. He closed one eye, which helped considerably.
Aba? Where you at? Home?
Aba? Excuse me, but who is this?
Who was Aba? Was she trying to be funny? And why wasn’t his phone playing Loverboy anymore?
Huh? My phones is playing the wrong song. What happened to the work song?
Broaden your music horizons. That is Matthew Sweet’s seminal hit, “Girlfriend.” I personalized my number when you were snoring on my couch last night. You’re welcome.
He didn’t snore, did he? Didn’t matter. He wanted to see her.
What are you doin’?
In a cab on my way home. Just finished having dinner with Jilly.
Good. He squinted at the clock on the microwave. It was only a few minutes past eight. If he put his shoes on right now, he could be at her place by eight-fifteen.
Comin’ over. Be there in 10.
I don’t recall inviting you.
That Weekend... Page 16
