Ava and Carmella were communicating with facial expressions as they stood in the coffee shop near the performance centre, watching Sami talking with the female barista. They had head Enzo and Sami talking about her a couple of days ago, Enzo trying to convince Sami to get her number if he liked her. Carmella and Ava had instantly agreed that she was really pretty, it was obvious they had the right person when Sami smiled at her when they walked in, automatically talking to her. Sami was leading the conversation, asking the girl about her day, but Carmella and Ava could see the spark there.

Now they just had to get Sami to ask her out. They knew Sami, if they didn't help him out, it would be another six months before he did eventually ask her out on his own. As Carmella had told Ava, of all the things that Sami was good at, asking someone out on a date wasn't one of them. He would often turn into a rambling idiot and would end the conversation before asking that important question.

Standing by the door to the place, Carmella and Ava were watching the whole thing, already having ordered and received they're coffees. While they could see a lot of smiling, they hadn't seen an exchange of numbers yet. When Sami started heading towards them, both girls were looking at him eyebrows raised.

"Well," Carmella asked. "Did you ask her on a date?"

"Why are you so interested in my love life all of a sudden?" Sami answered awkwardly, knowing he couldn't escape this inquisition from the girls, he could only deflect that question for so long.

"That means no," Ava answered. "Dude, she's hot and you clearly like her. What's the issue?"

"It's starting to look weird us all still just standing here."

"Fine," Ava rolled her eyes. "I'm in the mood for a blueberry muffin. Go and get one and this time ask her out on a date." Ava was staring at Sami firmly, not budging one bit.

"Okay, okay."

Sami went back to the counter, glad the place was quiet.

"Oh, is there a problem with you coffee?" The barista asked.

"No, no the coffee is great. My friend really wanted a blueberry muffin so I said I'd grab it for her."

"Oh okay, I'll get that for you," she smiled.

"I was also wondering, erm, if maybe, you wanted to go to dinner…with me tonight?" Sami asked nervously.

The girl's face lit up as she handed Sami the muffin. "I would love to. I finish here at 5."

Sami returned her smile, also letting out the breath he had been holding. "I don't finish until 6 today. Do you know Joe's Stone Crab house? I could meet you there at 7?"

"Yeah I know the place, that's perfect. See you there," the smile was still on her face. "Oh wait, here's my number."

Jodie wrote down her number and handed it to Sami, the wrestler paying for Ava's muffin before leaving the little coffee shop; a smile on his face.

The girls were beyond excited as they walked back into the performance centre and found Enzo and Cass at a table in the kitchen/lounge area. "Yay our Sami is going on a date," Carmella said excitedly as she sat down next to Cass, the two recently having started dating.

"They just grow up so quickly," Ava added with mock emotion, wiping a fake tear away. "Our baby is growing up."

"I'm ten years older than you," Sami said sitting down. "And you owe me for that muffin."

"I helped you get a date with Jodie, this is payment," she grinned.

"For real, you girls actually got him to ask that coffee shop girl out?" Enzo asked, excited and impressed.

"He just needed a little gentle persuasion. Now you lovely freaks, I've got to love you and leave you. Meetings await me this morning. Thanks for the muffin, Sami," Ava winked as she walked off.

Ava hadn't long come out of taking minutes for several meetings, walking to the front of the building where she has agreed to meet the others so they could go out for lunch.

"Hey Ave, your dad was looking for you not long ago," Sasha Banks informed her as she passed.

"Thanks. I'm sure it can wait for now. Ill text him in a bit."

She had just reached the lobby of the building where the others were when she stopped in her tracks when she saw who was there. "Mom." Ava looked from her mom to her dad and back again confused. What was her mom doing here? She hadn't said anything about visiting. Last she knew she was in London. "What, I thought you were in London?"

"Really, that's the response I get?" Diane asked, a little hurt. The jet lag not helping. "I came back early and figured I might as well come and see you before heading home."

"How considerate of you."

"Avery, I'm tired and jetlagged, can we just stop with the attitude. I thought we could go for lunch."

"First you didn't want to listen to a single thing I had to say, you just decided to ship me off to live with dad. Then you just show up out of the blue and expect us to go to lunch like everything is okay when we both know it hasn't been for a long time. No not happening, I have plans already."

"Don't Ava. We're not talking about Julliard right now, you know this was the best option for everyone. Now will just please stop playing up, you can see your friends anytime. I'm only here for 24 hours and I would like to have lunch with you. I've already made a reservation-"

Ava cut her mom off. "That's your problem, always thinking about you and what you want. Poor me, I made a reservation at a fancy restaurant and now my daughter won't come to lunch with me, what will I do. Like I said, I've got plans with my friends already. But hey looks like dad is free, why don't you take him to lunch and you can sit down and compare notes on how bad I turned out. Maybe work out where you both went wrong and how everything is my fault. Have fun," Ava said sarcastically as she walked off. Her friends following her.

"You really look like your mom," Enzo said as they got out of the building.

"Don't. Please don't. I don't want to talk about either of my parents right now."

When Ava got back from lunch, her dad was waiting for her and he wasn't happy. He spent the first ten minutes yelling at her for how she had spoken to her mom. Telling her which hotel her mom was staying in, trying to convince Ava to go and see her before Diane left to go back to San Diego the next day.

Ava just got back to work, finishing some paper work from that morning. She didn't want to see he mom at that moment. She had spent so much time arguing with her mom since everything that had happened at Julliard, which got worse when the decision was made to send her to live with her dad. Ava didn't know how to be around her mom at the moment without arguing with her and her showing up so out of the blue had completely thrown her. Ava had been having a good day up to that point. She was so excited that she and Carmella had got Sami to ask the barista out on a date. It had been adorable watching Sami so nervous about asking someone out. Sometimes it still amazed her how much of an actual nice guy he was, always helping people, how much he had helped her since she had arrived. He deserved some happiness.

When she finished work, Ava didn't want to go home. She knew it would just end badly, that her dad and Christina would only try and convince her to see her mom. Instead she hung out with Bayley for a bit, but she was still feeling a bit down about everything that had happened. She knew she should see her mom but she wasn't ready to yet. Instead, after leaving Bayley's she ended up driving around for ages before she ended up in Mel's dinner.

She sat there for a while debating over what to get. In the end, one of the waitress', Wendy, came over to see if Ava was okay. Ava ended up speaking to Wendy for a while, not telling her exactly what was going on, but that she'd had a bad day and didn't really know what to do.

Not long after she had started eating her burger and fries, she had a text from Sami. She had been texting since finishing work while he was getting ready for his date, he mainly wanted to check to see how she was doing after everything. Things had gone quiet for a bit, which didn't surprise Ava as he was on a date. But now he was texting to tell her the date was over, it hadn't gone well and asking what she was doing.

Ava told him where she was and he said he was on his way. He would tell her about the date there.

"You ordered without me, shocking," Sami mock gasped as he sat down next to Ava at the booth in the dinner, stealing a fry from her plate.

Ava turned her head to face Sami, "No what's shocking is you stealing my food. That's a serious crime."

"What you going to do about it, shorty," Sami grinned.

Ava picked up a fry and chucked it at his face. "Bringing my height into this is just mean." She just about finished saying before she was laughing and trying to move away from Sami who was tickling her sides. "Truce, truce, stop it!" Ava was laughing, using her feet now to try and block Sami, neither paying attention to the looks they were getting from a couple of the customers and the staff. However, Wendy who had served Ava, was just smiling at them.

After a few minutes Sami finally stopped tickling Ava's sides, mainly after she caught him a little too hard with her foot in his rib. "Shit, I'm sorry, are you okay?" She asked worried, sitting up properly now, watching Sami rub his side.

Sami noticed the overly worried look on Ava's face. "Hey, it's fine. I'm okay, just caught me off guard a little. Don't look so worried, you'll ruin that badass rep of yours," Sami smiled. "Come here, everything's fine." Sami lifted his arm, wrapping it around Ava when she moved into his side, her head against his shoulder.

"I should hug you more often, you're really comfortable. I could probably sleep on you. You could set up a side business, charge people to hug you. Like $5 for five minutes," Ava suggested, still curled up next to Sami. Her legs now curled up under her while she rested her head on his shoulder and his arm was around her still. "I also think I want to order desert. I need ice cream after today and you need to tell me about the date. What went wrong?"

Sami laughed, looking down at Ava; he didn't mind her being curled up against him. He just wanted to make sure his friend was okay after her mom's sudden arrival. He had soon learnt that for all her attitude, she was vulnerable when it came to her family. "Sure, I'll set up a hugging business. But first, dessert. You should try the waffle ice cream sundae, its diabetes inducing deliciousness."

Ava looked at the menu, looking at the description of the waffles Sami mentioned. The waffle topped off with ice cream, whipped cream, chocolate syrup and sprinkles did sound really good. Ava was quick to order the waffle ice cream sundae and another drink, Sami ordering desert and a drink too.

"So you want to talk about your mom showing up?"

"I know what everyone thinks after today."

"Yeah, what do we all think?"

"That I hate all my family, that I really am trouble and why the hell would Dusty want me as his assistant when I got kicked out of a prestigious school and I start fights with everyone. I'm pretty used to everyone thinking I'm trouble, a rebel."

Sami finished his mouthful of food before speaking. "People are definitely gossips in this business but a lot of people also have their own stuff going on so I think you'll find people are less interested in what happening with you than you think. I don't think that about you and I know Bayley, Carm, Enzo and Cass don't either. As Dusty likes to say, you're small but fierce, definitely not trouble though."

"Well for the record, I don't hate my mom. She pisses me off a lot and we argue most of the time but I don't hate her. The main issue is with Andrew and what he turned her into."

"Your step dad, Andrew? What did he do? Wait, does he hit your mom?" Sami asked concerned, keeping his voice down in the dinner.

"No, nothing like that. Do you really think he's still be able to use his legs if he was hitting my mom?"

"Okay, so he's not abusive. What's your issue with Andrew? What's he done to your mom?" Sami was intrigued now.

"When I was younger my mom was the best. She was so open about everything, she told me about dad, not who he was but how they met, the short fling, his drink and drug problem. She was never malicious about it though, just honest. She was my number one fan at all the dance competitions, she made a lot of my costumes, took me too all the dance classes. She always told me I could do anything, she taught me to believe in myself. I was nine when she met Andrew, she fell head over heels for him and suddenly things started to change. I was spending less and less time with her."

"Andrew's a great businessman man, I'll give him that, but not great with children. His company might want to see him as a great family man, but that's one big lie. He thought, like everything else in his life, that if he chucked money at me then everything would be okay. That's how he tried to forge a relationship, and then get me out of the picture. If he had his way completely, I would have ended up in a boarding school when I was 11. You can imagine how happy he was when my dad came into the picture and I was spending weekends and school holidays with him. Andrew wanted my mom, not me. And I guess a big part of my mom believed that she was doing the right thing, giving me the life she thought I deserved, the life she never had. She wanted me to have everything. So suddenly I'm getting sent off to all these summer camps and these nannies are taking me out all the time; the theatre, expensive dance classes, theme parks. And yeah they were good, but my mom was rarely there. I didn't get to enjoy them with her. And the more time that went on, she stopped coming to watch me practice and she's missing big performances because Andrew's taking her to day spas or weekends away. I wasn't happy and so me being me, I was vocalising that. Just probably not in the best way, I used to shout at Andrew a lot, argue with him and mom all the time.

"Only Andrew's telling mom that I've got an attitude problem, that I'm ungrateful. He's got her convinced that it's because I've never had boundaries and I need to learn that I don't always get what I want. He's got her convinced that she deserves 'me time', that I was being selfish and she deserved to be treated and pampered. She did, but he did it by pushing a wedge between us. I guess after a while, she got used to that lifestyle and the older I got, the more I resented it all and I was projecting that on everything else."

"Sounds rough. You just wanted your mom and Andrew didn't want to share her. He sounds very manipulative. I think a lot of the time, having so much money is a bad thing. It changes people."

"Until now, I don't think I've ever thought of it like that. Him manipulating her, emotionally abusing her. I was so angry and resentful that she never had much time for me after marrying him, I pushed her away too. I played up at school, at business functions and argued with her, with them all the time, I was effectively living my own life. I never thought about the way he made her change, the stuff he said to her, the way he was planting these ideas in her head. Does that make me a bad daughter?" Avery looked up at Sami, her eyes filled with sadness and worry. "Am I selfish?"

"No, not at all. You were a child, Ava and you were upset that you were suddenly getting to spend less and less quality time with your mom. You were used to it just being the two of you, then suddenly there's this other person in your mom's life. I think sometimes you say and act before thinking things through, but you have good intentions. From what I've seen and what you've told me, I think you're afraid that you don't matter to people, that you don't belong and trust me, that's not the case. There's a lot of people that care about you, I'm one of them."

Ava wrapped her arms around Sami's neck, hugging him tightly. "How is it you know me so well already? How do you know me better than almost everyone else?" she asked quietly, pulling away from him.

"You get a lot of people on the road with issues with family, people feeling like they don't belong. They're usually the loudest people, people that need attention, need to feel validated. People open up a lot on the road. And because I'm actually a superhero and superheroes know everything," Sami grinned.

Ava started laughing, Sami always seemed to be the one to cheer her up. "Shame you didn't know your date wasn't going to go well," she smirked. "Too soon?" she laughed.

"I think I walked right into that one."

"So what went wrong? She seemed really nice."

"She was nice. Very nice and polite-"

"Boring. You mean she was boring, right? It's okay, you can say it."

"I feel mean saying that."

"It's the truth though. There are a lot worse things you could say than calling someone boring. Some people are just boring, it's fact. So she was so boring you were falling asleep or she was boring and a vegan? Boring and doesn't like hockey? Boring and a really loud eater because that is just the worst. Like sometimes I want to stab people that eat really loudly with their mouths open. Like hey, you're in public and I don't want to see everything going on in your mouth."

Sami smiled, it always amused him when Ava went off on a bit of a tangent. "None of the above. We just didn't really connect, we didn't have much in common and she wasn't particularly talkative. I think we both knew it wasn't going anywhere and so we ended it after dinner, didn't either bother with desert."

Ava frowned, "That sucks. She seemed like a really nice girl and you seemed to hit it off this morning in the coffee shop."

"She just wasn't the girl for me. I think I should take a leaf out of your book and stay away from dating for now."

"One bad date and you're giving up. There's someone out there for you, Sami."

"You sound like my mom," Sami grinned. "Relationships are hard in this business and for now, I think it's just best to concentrate on my wrestling. I'm sure you and Carmella can play match maker for someone else."

Ava smirked as she finished the last of her drink. "Ruin all my fun."