Encounter

Ava opened her eyes to the bright morning light from the rising sun. She tossed on the bed a bit, then Rake came to her mind, so she raced to the living room. The thought that had kept her up for half of the night had come true.

"He's gone." She mumbled as her eyes pitifully stared at the comforter folded nicely on the couch and the pillow beside it.

Ave was about to head back upstairs and sob for a few minutes when a note on the table caught her attention.

"I made you breakfast as a way of saying thank you. I am sorry for every pain that I have caused you. I also hope you can forget about me and move on with your life and find someone better who will be a better partner and man than I ever was to you." The note said.

Ava allowed her tears to escape her eyes as she let the paper slip from her hand.

"You fool! Don't you know that there's no other man for me except you? I have waited for years for you to come back and explain why you left me and my heart broken. Yet, just like that, you disappear without a trace, and I am left picking myself up and putting my heart back together. You are so cruel, Rake!" Ava angrily said as she fell to the carpet on both her knees and wept bitterly.

It took a while for Ava to get herself out of the depressing state she was in and put her emotions under control.

"Well, life goes on without you, and I have to deal with that fact. Now to get ready for work." Ava mumbled.

She gathered all her strength and dragged herself up the stairs. When Ava entered her room, she went directly into the bathroom. Ava then looked in the mirror, and her eyes looked kind of puffy because of all the crying she did. There were black circles around her eyes and her face seemed pale since she spent most of last night overthinking things that happened between her and Rake.

After taking a warm shower, Ava still did not feel like herself. She headed back into her room, and a few minutes later, Ava came back down dressed up in her business attire for her job as the manager for finance at a billion-dollar company.

She went into the kitchen and saw her favorite food that she loves for breakfast on the counter. Ava stared at the blueberry pancakes on the plate, then walked past it to make herself some dark coffee.

'We're not going to see each other again, so I don't need another memory of you stuck in my brain.' She thought as she drank her coffee while staring at the mouth-watering pancakes.

At last, when Ava could not take the temptation anymore, she set down her mug and approached the counter, took the plate, then tossed the pancakes into the trash.

"That's better." She mumbled, feeling a bit regretful.

At nine on the hour, Ava was out of her house and seated in a cab. Her eyes focused on the vehicle's windshield as she tried her best to admire the beauty of the morning, but everything seemed to be black and white.

The moment Ava turned her gaze away from the window and relaxed against the car's seat, her phone began to buzz.

"Gem, what's up?" Ava calmly asked.

"Oho. You only call me by my name when you are upset. What happened? You know that you can tell your best friend anything, right?" Gem's concerned voice flowed from the phone speaker.

"Rake came home last night."

"What! Why?"

"It's all confusing. Rake wouldn't tell me much, and he left early this morning. I am so confused and upset. I thought that I was over him, and now all I want is for him not to leave me again. But he already did, so what am I going do, G?"

Ava's eyes had got watery again, and she could not stop her tears from falling.

"Listen here, babe. You are one of the bravest women I know. You've been through this before, and you came out as a better and stronger person. You can do it again."

Gem's soft voice was like comfort to Ava's soul. She gently smiled as the black and white color disappeared, and she could see everything in their rightful color.

"You know what?" Gem's exciting tone flowed into Ava's ear.

"What?" Ava asked out of curiosity.

"We are going out later for karaoke night. What do you think?"

"It's a date then."

It took a few more minutes after Ava and Gem's phone conversation ended for Ava to arrive at her worksite.

The company looked the same as she walked into the enormous glass building.

She went into her department, and the first thing she did was grab a folder from her desk.

"Is that the report?" One of her work colleagues asked.

Yeah, it is." Ava replied before smiling a bit.

She was about to walk out of the finance department when she bumped into someone else.

"Hey, Av! So you've finally finished it." Another colleague asked.

"Yeah, I did." Ava said with a friendly smile.

"That's good. Okay, good luck then."

"Thanks."

After her brief conversation with her colleague, Ava rushed to the elevator and hurried in. She has been working on her financial report for days now, and today was her deadline to get it to her boss. So she did not want to get it to her boss late.

The elevator made a few stops, and people got off until Ava was the only one in it. Then the elevator finally stopped on the eleventh floor. She stepped out and walked toward the CEO's company office door. When Ava got there, she knocked, but at that moment, she heard a gunshot.

In fear, Ava hurriedly opened the door. She rushed in and noticed that a gun pointed directly at her, and the person holding the gun was her ex-fiance.

The room became silent as they both stared confusedly at each other without saying a word for a few seconds.

"Rake?" Ava asked out of shock when she finally accepted that this was reality and that her ex-lover had just murdered her boss.