Page 1 of Along Came Amor
Chapter 1
October
To: Ava Rodriguez
From: Pam Perez
Subject: Re: Divorce Petition
Good news. It’s done. The Court has signed the Judgment of Divorce. I’ll handle filing and sending the papers.
If you need anything else, don’t hesitate to reach out.
—Pam
Perez & Russo Family Law LLP
As an English teacher, Ava Rodriguez believed a character’s backstory provided vital context for their behavior.
Therefore, to understand her reaction to the email that hadjust landed in her inbox, anyone looking over her shoulder would need to know three things.
The first was that a year and a half ago, Ava’s husband, Hector, had arrived home from work one evening and announced his hitherto unmentioned dream to travel the world as a photojournalist—oh, and by the way, he no longer wanted to be married to Ava.
Two, he’d said, “I’ll be back for my stuff” on his way out the door, and then did not, in fact, ever return for his stuff.
And finally, after Hector failed to initiate proceedings for the divorcehe’dinsisted upon, Ava had, as she’d done so many times during their marriage, taken care of everything herself.
Without this context, Ava’s response to the email—good fucking riddance—might have appeared callous, cynical, or even bitter. And Ava was none of those things.
Well, maybe a little cynical, after everything that had happened. But never callous, and only occasionally bitter within the privacy of her own mind.
The sentiment wasn’t toward her lawyer, of course. Pam had been nothing but kind.
Butgood fucking riddanceto Hector, to their marriage, and to the process of disentangling herself from a ten-year relationship.
At least the email had arrived while she was alone in a hotel room, and not, god forbid, while she was around herfamily.
From her rolling suitcase, Ava pulled out her main planner—an A5 six-ring binder with a padded leather cover in blush pink, stuffed to the gills with custom inserts. She never went anywhere without it, and that included dinky little education conferences like this one.
Sitting on the bed, she leaned against the headboard and opened the planner on her lap. She flipped to the checklistlabeled “Divorce Tasks” and zeroed in on the final unchecked box. Her fingers itched to mark it as “done,” already anticipating the hit of dopamine from completing a goal.
Instead, she ripped out the checklist and crumpled it in her fist.
On the next page, another list waited for her. At the top, in big block letters, was a question.
Who is New Ava?
Below that, hand lettered in the brush script she’d spent hours perfecting, were three statements.
New Ava embraces life boldly.
New Ava is confident in her own skin.
New Ava is open to new experiences.
She’d started The New Ava List while visiting her cousins Jasmine Lin Rodriguez and Michelle Amato in California earlier that week, as a sort of pep talk before getting a Brazilian wax. The list had been Jasmine’s idea, the wax had been Michelle’s.
After selecting a purple brush pen from her “Teaching is a Work of Heart” zippered pouch, Ava added another item to the page.
