Page 27 of Fighter
How bad could that be?
That afternoon, Ava stared at me through wide eyes, a backpack slung over her shoulders that seemed to take up her whole torso. Female superheroes decorated it with bright colors and fierce expressions. She dropped it off her shoulders and dragged it by a single strap as she approached. It splashed through a mud puddle, but she didn't seem to mind.
“Youare picking me up now?” she asked.
The rain had retreated, leaving a thick skein of moisture over the reservoir and a freshly-washed smell on the world. Overhead, a bright cerulean sky unfurled. I couldn't help but notice a gaggle of other girls peeling off another direction, talking together as if Ava didn't exist. Ava didn't seem to pay them any attention either.
Did she have friends?
“Yep!” I forced brightness in my tone, although I couldn't tell whether she was excited by the prospect or annoyed.
“What happened to your face?”
“Had a little accident,” I said blithely. “Hardly hurts at all, except my rib is sore, so we’ll need to be careful. Ready to go home?”
She trudged forward a few more steps, then chirped, “Great!” and skipped over. Her backpack banged on the ground behind her. Without another word, she yanked open the SUV back door, which she could barely reach, and clambered inside.
A feeling of mental paralysis overcame me as I carefully eased into the driver’s seat. The SUV seemed to swallow me whole and felt like driving a tank. It was tricked out with futuristic lighting and all the LED screens. Trying to figure out such a monster had almost made me late to the bus stop.
“What's your name again?” Ava asked from the back seat as she peered out the window.
Her blind trust took me by surprise. She didn't even know my name, but she climbed into a car with me? Not just any car, her Dad's car, but still . . . we'd have to have some talks about strangers.
“Serafina.”
“Oh, now I remember. My Dad told me that. So did my teacher.”
“Your teacher?”
She nodded. “Mm-hmm. Daddy called my teacher and she told me to watch for his car at the bus stop because someonereallyfun named Serafina would pick me up at the bus stop today. I'm glad it was you. I remember you. Do you have more brownies?”
Point for Benjamin—he'd thought this through to an impressive degree. For all his weird self-deprecatory comments earlier, he seemed to be doing a great job.
“Maybe I do have more brownies,” I drawled. “First, let's get you home. Then we can go from there.”
Her bright expression faded. “Do we have to go to the gym tonight?”
“Nope.”
“Really?”
The happiness in her cry cut at me. “Really. You and me, tonight, babe.”
“Awesome!”
The happy peal of her voice made me smile. Except . . . what was I supposed to do with her once we got to their house? Providing dinner was one thing. Six-and-a-half-hours of entertainment was something else entirely.
Filling out an application to rent the Frolicking Moose had taken up most of my morning, not to mention updating Dad on the current condition of my ribs, and Mom on her countless questions about Benjamin coming over. Although I hadn't done much today, I already felt tired.
With a sigh, I shook that off. Now wasn't the time. Now it was Ava-time. Step one: I'd see Benjamin's house and what I had to work with. I had a feeling that the father-run home would dictate what happened next.
8
Benjamin
With a sense of great trepidation, I slowed my run and turned onto my long, dirt-road driveway.
The house I'd bought when we moved to Pineville was just over a mile from the MMA Center, but the roads turned to dirt not far off of Main Street, and a long driveway separated the house from a road that wound back into the mountains. No one wandered this way, which almost negated my need for a security system, but I kept it anyway for Ava's sake. Some of the weirdos I'd encountered during my years in the MMA limelight had no sense of boundaries. I might be out of the spotlight, but reminders that I hadn't been forgotten popped up here and there.
