A Promised Fate (14 page)

“So? Come on.” She moved her hips forward, then back,
then forward again in a seducing, perfect rhythm. I wanted her
badly, to rip her clothes off and take her up against the wall and
she knew it.

I locked onto her wrists again, rolled her off me
onto her back and straddled her thighs, pinning her down.

“What’s gotten into you? You’ve never been like this
before.”

The tops of her cheeks flushed and I smiled down at
her and kissed the corner of her mouth.

“There are twenty or more people down the hall just
thirty feet from the door. The answer is no, Ava. I’d like to think
that we’re a little classier than that.”

“You’re turning me down?”

“No. Never. I am postponing. There’s a
difference.”

“To when?” She pouted.

“To when we are home and alone and I can take my
sweet ass time kissing every single inch of you.”

“I don’t think I can wait that long.” She moaned, bit
her lip and tried to push her hips up against me.

“Stop it,” I laughed. “You are a freak! A deviant!
You’re trying to bring me over to the dark side!”

“No I am not!” she laughed back. “I
just
need
you.”

“I am here, Baby. But we need to put the horse before
the cart. We're in a house full of family and friends. Your mind
just went somewhere incredibly dark and scary. We need to take some
time to heal first and then you can rub your body up against me any
way you want … when we are alone and in the privacy of our own room
at home. OK?”

She bobbed her head up and down with pouty eyes.

“I am going to let you go now. I trust that you won’t
attack me and try and rip my clothes off after my back is
turned.”

She flashed a smile and I let go of her wrists then
eased off her lap and offered a hand to help her sit. She fixed her
tank top, covering her exposed belly and then the neckline so her
chest wasn’t popping out in an alluring and too-inviting way. Ava
ran a finger around the bottom of her lip, removing any leftover
lip-gloss.

“Your hair certainly looks like we just screwed.” I
ruffled her now tangled mop of waves.

“Ari!” She was either appalled at my choice of words
or was a very good actor. Her mouth hung wide open and her hand
slapped against my shoulder with a loud smack that was bound to
leave a welt. She yanked her hair tie off her wrist and threw her
hair up in a messy uncombed bun.

“That doesn’t look any better,” I teased, and she
slapped me again ... but this time it was in playful fun.

I zipped and buttoned my pants, straightened my shirt
and ran a hand through my hair. Ava re-did her hair in the mirror,
removing the hair tie and finger-combing through the locks until it
was smooth and pretty again.

“Are you alright? Do you need more time?” I asked
before we exited my old bedroom.

“I'll be okay.”

“No one out there will ever judge you, you know that,
right?”

“I know.”

“They love you. All of them. Everyone
understands.”

“I know.” She shrugged in an uncomfortable
fidget.

“Did you take your meds today?” She hated that I
asked her almost as much as I hated the need I felt to ask.

She didn’t answer me and instead buried her face into
my chest.

The crease in my forehead deepened, “Are you sure
everything is ok?” I tried to pry her back to look in to her eyes
but she resisted me.

We walked back towards the kitchen hand in hand with
Ava a step behind me. Most of the family was seated at the table
and my mother and aunt were busily placing platters of food in the
middle of the group.

My mother saw us first and she came to Ava’s side,
wrapping her arms around her shoulders. “Baby, I am so sorry. I am
here for you if need me.”

“Aggie, I’m alright. Stop. Don’t
worry about me.” Ava slipped away from my mom’s hug and my mother
frowned deeply. Ava copes with her problems differently than the
rest of us. If anyone in our family is ever in need, we immediately
turn to one another for support and help. Ava is the opposite. She
pushes people away and hurts the ones she loves the very most. When
she works through a stint of depression, she gets angry. She lashes
out at people and hurts their feelings. When she really needs
someone, she chooses to isolate herself instead of reaching out for
comfort and when people try to help her, she kicks them away. My
mother understood this about Ava. We had
all
learned it, the hard way, but it
didn’t make the rejection from her any easier.

“Mama!” Max hollered at Ava from my dad’s arms across
the room. We gasped at the sweet, perfect, lyrical sound of his
voice. My dad set him down and Max ran to her side and hugged
her.

“Say it again, please,” she whispered to him.

“Love you,” he said instead and my heart smiled.

“I’ll join you in just a minute.” I kissed Ava’s
cheek and disappeared out the back door to the sun porch before she
could stop me or ask where I was going.

My cell phone was in my pocket and I pulled it out
and thumbed through my list of contacts. The phone rang three times
before someone answered.

“Hello, this is Ari Alexander, I am terribly sorry
for bothering you, I am trying to reach Dr. Phillips on behalf of
my wife, Ava.”

“Oh, hi Ari.”

“Hi, Mrs. Phillips. Again I am so sorry to bother you
on a Sunday.”

“He gave you our number to call anytime and he meant
it, you needn’t apologize. Unfortunately though, Robert took the
grandkids sailing this afternoon. I expect him home within the
hour. Can I have him call you back?”

“Yes, please. I would really appreciate it.”

“He has your number here. I will make sure he
receives the message and he’ll call you back after he’s home.”

“Thank you.”

“You’re welcome, Ari.”

Hanging up the line, I took a few quick calming
breaths and returned to the kitchen. All the plates sat empty and
everyone waited on me to return and join them.

“Sorry to hold you all up.” I slid into my seat.
“Let’s eat.”

No one said anything. They all understood what I had
been doing and who I had been talking with. Everyone knew but Ava
and my heart ached for her. I was betraying her by calling her
doctor behind her back. At times, she has gotten very angry with me
for doing this, but if I didn’t do it, she wouldn’t go and she
needed to get a little extra help. I needed her to get the extra
help.

“Ari,” my mother placed a bread knife down beside me,
“would you slice the bread please? Ava made it this evening.”

Tradition in our family is that whoever bakes the
bread, the spouse then slices the bread. The ritual started at my
grandparents' wedding. My Yaya Elodie had been nervous the evening
before her wedding day and stayed up baking bread -- kneading dough
has a certain stress relief that a person can’t get anywhere else
with clothes on. She had so much bread the next day that they
served it with the meal and my Papus Cal insisted on slicing every
piece for her. Guests at the wedding said that the one little act
of slicing bread exemplified the perfect type of love and
commitment to one another that was needed to make a marriage work.
The Alexanders, all of us, have practiced the custom ever
since.

The warmth from the bread and the delicious scent
wafted in the air as I sliced through Ava’s crusty psomi loaf.

Psomi is my favorite. Whenever Ava is put in charge
of a dish, she always makes my favorite. She makes my favorite
potatoes, my favorite pie, my favorite vegetables. It’s always what
I like best and I love her for that. She makes me feel special in
some silly way.

“Looks good, Baby.” I glanced down at her as she
fidgeted with the napkin on her lap.

Plates were filled up with caprese chicken, roasted
potatoes, couscous, vegetables, and Ava’s bread. A weird tension
made conversation uncomfortable. Ava squirmed and she pushed her
food across her plate.

Rory, who still wasn’t speaking to me, did me a
massive favor and eased the strain by talking about the baby.
Everyone joins the conversation when the baby is brought up and he
knew that topic above all else would lighten the mood. Rory could
always be relied on for breaking the ice and smoothing the
path.

“Ava, did you choose a name yet?” He shoved a bite of
hot bread in his mouth and chewed loudly.

“Oh! I assumed Ari had already told everyone.”

“No! We don’t know anything!” My mother practically
jumped up and down in her seat. “You have names!” she cheered.

“Only one …”

“What is it!?” three people said at once.

Ava looked up to me, unsure if I wanted to be the one
to deliver the news. “Best not keep them waiting. This is a very
impatient group.” I waved her on, giving her the floor.

“We chose Cal … for a boy.”

Everyone smiled.

“Cal is a perfect name for your son, Ava,” Julia, who
had cherished my grandparents, said quietly with a hint of
heartache and we all agreed with sad eyes as we remembered my
grandfather. She was right. Cal was a perfect name for Ava’s
son.

“What do you think you’re having?” My sister kept the
talk up and I looked over to Ava and waited for her answer. She
wavered weekly from the baby definitely being a girl to without a
doubt a boy.

“A boy. Once we decided on naming him Cal, the baby
just felt like a boy to me. The name just made everything feel so
real.”

“Ari, what about you? Do you want another boy or a
girl this time?”

My sister is by far the best at treating Max as if he
had been in Ava’s and my life since his birth.

“I don’t think the baby’s gender matters to me. I'll
be happy no matter what. Another boy would be fun. But I think I’d
like to have a girl. With a mother like Ava, she would be the
second most beautiful woman in the world and I’d cherish every inch
of her. But I do worry about how many boys I may have to kill when
she grows older.”

My dad nodded and rubbed Lauren’s back with his
palm.

“And Max? What about you? Sister or brother?” my
sister continued.

“Bwudda,” he said, and my heart leapt from my chest
again at the sound of his voice.

“Brother?” Lauren clarified and Max nodded.

“Well, I want a niece, so I can do her hair, paint
her pretty nails and dress her in ruffles. What are you two
thinking about for girl names? Any favorites?” My sister continued
some more.

“Ari is obsessing over the name Ileana. He won’t let
it go to rest. But I don’t have any names that I have fallen in
love with yet.”

“Ari, don’t name her Ileana, please.” Lauren laughed
at me.

“It’s pretty. I really like it.” I defended my
choice.

“It’s old sounding. The baby will come out of Ava
looking a like a ninety-year-old Greek woman. You know, the kind
that still wears a wool cloak with a matching headpiece and lives
in the villages without electricity.”

Everyone laughed at my sister and that was all we
needed to move forward.

“I think Agatha is a beautiful name, Ava. I am
willing to share it with my granddaughter in case you are
interested.”

“You are right, Agatha is a beautiful name for a
beautiful person.” Ava smiled kindly at my mom and her comment made
my mother’s day.

Instead of just pushing her food around, Ava started
to eat and began giving more to the conversation.

“The doctor is sending home birthing videos at my
next appointment for Ari and me. We have a date night Friday to
watch them together. I am really getting nervous!”

“Oh, Ava, you’ll do just fine. I remember when I went
into labor with Ari --”

“Nope.” My dad coughed and sputtered out an
interruption. “Not at the dinner table, Ag. No way.”

“Uh! I was just going to say that --”

“Stop it right there, Aggie. Whatever you have to say
from that day will scare the girl to death and ruin all of our
appetites.”

We laughed some more and my phone silently vibrated
in my pocket. Without a word, I pushed my chair back from the
table, stood and left the room. The
no-phones-allowed-at-the-dinner-table rule didn’t apply to me. At
least not anymore.

“Hello, this is Ari,” I answered after I reached the
door and was out of earshot.

“Ari. Hello, this is Dr. Phillips. I have a message
here from Susan that you called.”

“Yes. Thank you for calling me back.”

“What’s going on?” He slid immediately into doctor
mode.

“Ava had a trigger this afternoon that caused an
anxiety attack, and she also had a smaller one earlier in the
week.”

“Are these old triggers or new ones?”

“I don’t think they are old ones, but she hasn’t told
me.”

“OK. Give me the details, how was she acting?”

I gave him a breakdown of her anxiety attack and he
listened to me and made small ‘hmms’ or ‘ohhs.’

“Is she doing alright now?”

“Better but she is still not quite herself.”

“I’d like to see her tomorrow morning and see if
she’ll open up with me and talk.”

“That sounds good.”

“Do you think you can get her to agree to come?”

“She’ll be there.”

“Can you arrange for a sitter? As fond as I am of
Max, Ava doesn’t talk much when he accompanies her.”

“Yes, of course, whatever we need to do, we will
do.”

“Is she still taking her medication regularly?”

“As far as I know, yes.”

“Good. Is there anything else going on with her?”

“She is having nightmares again. I am not sure what
they are about, though. These ones are different and they make her
very sad. I worry that they may add to the anxiety and maybe some
depression. We are also dealing with an issue with Max.”

“Ok, I can try to see if she will talk about that,
too.”