Episode 584: The Right Combination

She turned back and added a spritz of perfume. She set the bottle down only to pick it up and spritz behind her knees. The action made her cringe as she capped the sweet vanilla scent and caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror. She shook her head at that girl, straightened her cute herringbone skirt, grabbed her book bag and marched downstairs, warning herself that was the end of her foolishness for the night.

Thoughts consumed with keeping emotions in check where they belonged, she hadn’t noticed her parents until she stood at the door, slipping into her coat.

"Where are you off to?" Her father, Phillip, demanded, as if she was a teenager sneaking out of the house.

She did kind of feel like a teenage girl, her insides all fluttery, doomed to get in the way of listening to what her tutor actually had to say. Which was probably why she didn’t altogether trust herself, thought maybe she shouldn’t meet with him. But she had to. She didn’t know how she’d get through this without him.

Ava faced her parents, her mother on the sofa, her father in the armchair, each looking up from work they’d brought home, at their age, still clueless how a weekend was supposed to be spent. "I’m going to study." She raised her bag as evidence.

"On a Saturday night?" Her mother questioned, apparently with some clue how most humans spent a Saturday night.

Studying did sound suspicious, even to Adria despite knowing it was the truth. She needed to study. She was failing. But she couldn’t tell her parents that. She was so tired of disappointing people. "You’re both working on a Saturday night; I’m taking my cue from you. You can never be too prepared in business or in school."

"Or for whoever the young man is you’re meeting?" Her father raised an eyebrow and her mother joined him. "You look like you’re going on a date."

"It’s just a study date," Adria insisted, as much for her own ears as her parents. "Nothing more."

"You could, and have done worse than a business major so serious that he studies on weekends," her dad noted. "That’s exactly the kind of influence you’d benefit from. Better than a man who encourages you to play dress up and get rejected for a living."

Episode 585: Cool