Asher picked it up and turned and saw me.
“Hey, Loser Lauren,” he said. “What are you doing?”
“None of your business, Ash-hole.”
“Everything is my business. This is my street. I own it.”
“No, you don’t.”
“Wanna bet?”
“What?”
“Keep walking,” Asher said. “I’m busy.”
“Doing what?” I asked.
“Trying to get a car to run over this car.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “Why are you such a dork? Can’t you just have fun?”
I gasped.
I can have fun.
“Watch,” Asher said. “Come here. You don’t want the car to see you.”
Asher crouched again.
I got sort of close to him and did the same.
I made sure my dress stayed over my knees.
I had to be ladylike around Asher. One time he saw up my dress by accident and he reminded me about it for weeks. I didn’t like wearing dresses all the time, but Gram said I looked pretty. She told me when I turned thirteen I could dress myself. After I get a job.
“Here we go,” Asher said.
A car came down the street.
Asher slid the toy car out into the street.
I watched with my heart racing and saw the car run over the toy car.
There was a weird thud sound followed by a hard clank sound as the tire kicked the toy car under the real car.
The real car came to a skidding halt.
“Oh, shit,” Asher said. “They’re stopping!”
“What?” I asked. “What do we do?”
Asher stood up and I did the same.
The driver of the car opened their door.
They got out and looked right at us.
“You little assholes!” a man screamed.
Asher cackled like a little demon.
And I was in a white dress.
The angel sucked into his version of hell.
Stupid Lauren…
The man started to run toward us.
I gasped.
Asher grabbed my hand and started to run.
“Stay with me,” he said. “We have to hide.”
Next thing I knew, we were on the run.
I was too afraid to look back, thinking some stranger was going to grab me. Some man was going to attack me because of something Asher did.
Asher kept looking back though.
Laughing as he did.
He didn’t have a care in the world.
He wasn’t just mean. He was crazy.
We ran around the block and to the back of his apartment building. There were little storage sections separated by old pieces of wooden fence.
I had to climb over a couple rusted bicycles and hide behind a plastic bin that had rainwater collected in the bent top.
“We’re good here,” Asher said. “That guy won’t look for us for long.”
“Why did you do that?”
“For fun.”
“How is that fun?” I asked.
“Because it is,” he said.
“It’s not. You could have damaged that car. Or caused an accident. Or if that guy caught-”
Asher touched my face with both hands and moved at me.
He looked ready to kiss me.
Maybe to shut me up.
He was right there.
I shut up and wasn’t sure what to do.
“You’re lucky,” he whispered.
His breath smelled like butter and cheese.
“Lucky?” I asked.
“I was going to kiss you to get you to be quiet,” Asher said.
“Kiss me… no. Have you kissed other girls?”
“Do I have any kids?”
“What?”
“You know kissing gets you pregnant, right?”
“What?” I asked again.
“Definitely. I heard about it. I saw it too. That’s how you have kids. If you kiss someone.”
“Then get away from me,” I said.
I swung my foot and kicked Asher in the stomach.
He let out a groan and fell back.
I stood up and looked down at him.
I touched my lips.
Was that true? If he kissed me…
“You’re horrible,” I yelled at him.
“Go home, Loser Lauren,” Asher said. “You ruin all the fun.”
“I hope that man finds you and runs you over!”
Asher puckered his lips and kissed the air.
I growled and hurried to get away from him.
I walked to the front of the apartment building and the street was clear. The man was gone. The car was gone. The only thing left was Asher’s toy car in the middle of the road, flipped upside down.
I hurried back into my apartment and saw Gram at the kitchen table, working on a find-a-word puzzle.
She looked over the top of her crooked glasses.
“What are you doing back?”
“Nothing,” I said.
“What’s wrong?”
“Can I ask you something?”
“Sure,” she said. She took her glasses off.
“Please don’t get mad at me.”
“What’s happening?” Gram asked.
“I know I’m too young for certain things… but can you pregnant by kissing a boy?”
Gram’s eyes went wide. “Where is this coming from?”
I played with my hands. “I heard people talking. They said if a boy kisses a girl, she can have a baby. I don’t get how…”
Gram let out a sigh. “Lauren. You’re going to learn a lot in life. And some things won’t make sense until you’re old enough to really know.”
“Like math?” I asked.
“Uh…”
“Like how kids in tenth grade learn harder math than I do now?”
“Exactly,” Gram said. “Exactly.”
I took a few steps. Then I paused. “But what I asked…”
Gram smiled. “Yes. Okay? Yes.”
I gasped. “So, if a boy kisses a girl, she can have a baby.”
I felt the heat rise to my cheeks.
Gram went back to her find-a-word.
My head kept racing.
I hated Asher even more now.
I needed to stay away from him for good.
12
(Asher)
NOW
The buzzing of my phone woke me up.
I reached for the nightstand and was going to throw the damn thing against the wall.
It was Jared texting me.
I was two hours late for work.
Fuck.
I gave the standard reply that eased his mind.
I’m not dead
I tossed the phone back to the nightstand and turned my head.
My eyes looked down to Ember’s pierced nipples and I nodded in approval.
But there was nothing to approve.
Bringing Ember back here was a problem. That wasn’t my style. I never brought her back here. Last thing I needed was the wrong idea to be given.
I threw the covers off me and grabbed for my jeans.
I had to wrestle my dick into my jeans as I made as much noise as possible.
That got Ember to stir a little.
She rolled to her left side and opened her eyes.
“Hey, you,” she whispered in a sleepy voice.
Oh, fuck no.
“Come on,” I said. “I have to get to work. I’m late.”
“So, fuck it,” she said. “I think we still have business here.”
She flirted with the covers, showing herself to me.
It was tempting, yeah, but I had to turn the switch off.
I wasn’t going in for a morning fuck. Not with Ember. If I did that, she’d end up staying for the day. Then she’d clean the apartment. Then she’d make fucking dinner or something like that. Then I’d have a really big problem.
I r
eached for her clothes and tossed them to the bed.
“You have five minutes to get out of here,” I said.
“What the fuck?” she called out as I left the bedroom.
I went into the bathroom to take a piss and brush my teeth. I needed a damn shower to wash away the night but that wasn’t possible right now.
I’d catch hell from Jared and Tristian for smelling like a stripper and sex, but at least I could say I had a good time. Those two morons probably spent the night jerking off into a tissue.
When I opened the bathroom door, Ember stood there.
Messy. But dressed.
“Can I at least pee?” she asked.
“Have at it,” I said.
I walked by her and she grabbed for my hand. “Hey…”
I shook her away. “Don’t do this. We don’t do this.”
“Do what?”
“Not here. Not in the morning.”
“Oh, but if I dropped to my knees and sucked your dick, it’d be okay?”
“Fine by me,” I said.
“Fuck you, Asher. You’re such an asshole.”
“You knew that a long time ago.”
“You’ve been… whatever. I’ll just pee and leave.”
“That’s music to my ears,” I said.
I went into the kitchen and flipped open a pizza box. I peeled off a slice and started to eat. In the fridge I had beer and orange juice. As much as I wanted a beer for breakfast, I grabbed the orange juice container.
I chugged and watched out of the corner of my eye as Ember walked by.
She threw me the middle finger and slammed the door on her way out.
I shrugged my shoulders.
She didn’t seem to hate me that much last night.
* * *
“Tighten those fucking bolts,” I snapped at Jessie.
He was a young, pretty boy type that thought he was the smartest guy in the room because he went to technical school.
I didn’t understand how some people could pass college but couldn’t tie their own fucking shoes.
When he wasn’t messing up, he was scrolling on his phone.
“I got it, boss,” Jessie said. “Don’t you worry.”
“I do worry,” I said. “You almost fucked up those brake lines last week. You’ll kill someone. Fucking prick.”
Jessie dropped the wrench and turned to face me.
If he thought for a second I wouldn’t drop his nineteen year old punk ass on the concrete floor he was out of his mind.
“Holy shit,” Tristian said as he got between us. “Jessie. Go grab a soda.”
“I don’t drink soda. Sugar is bad.”
“Then go have a douche sparkling water,” I said. “What’s today’s flavor? Mango and cock?”
Tristian grinned.
“Fuck you guys,” Jessie said as he stormed away.
“What the fuck is your problem?” Tristian asked. “He’s learning. You were a punk like him once.”
“Not like that,” I said. “I drank whiskey, beer, and my thumbs weren’t scrolling on a phone screen. They were scrolling on lonely wives’ clits…”
“I know,” Tristian said. He patted my chest. “You were a legend.”
“Fuck off,” I snapped. “I still am.”
“Leave the kid alone,” Tristian said. “And why aren’t you in a good mood? You had someone in bed with you this morning.”
“Did we get that parts order in?” I asked.
Tristian laughed. “Go check with Jared.”
“I want these three projects done this week,” I said. “I’m not going to fall behind because of some teenager.”
“You won’t. You’ll fall behind because you’re hungover from whiskey and pussy.”
“Never,” I said. “I don’t get hangovers. Ever. And I don’t get hung up on pussy either.”
I walked away to the main office where myself, Jared, and Tristian each had a desk.
We had once worked at the same garage and came up with an idea. We’d take all the scrap motorcycle parts and build our own. That turned into a fun side hobby where we’d get drunk and work on rides all night. Then someone bought one from us. And a second. And a third. And next thing I knew, we had a business.
Fucking life.
I opened the office door and heard the groans of a woman.
Jared hurried to slap the mouse of his computer.
“At work?” I asked.
“What?”
“Man, that’s fucking lonely,” I said. “Watching that shit at work.”
“And you never do?”
“I get the real thing. Why the fuck would I watch some woman fake it on a screen?”
Jared shook his head. He grabbed a stack of invoices and waved them.
“Careful, those are going to stick to your hand now,” I said.
“Isn’t it time for you to sell your part of the business to us?” Jared asked.
I grinned.
My phone started to ring.
I dug it out of my back pocket and didn’t recognize the number.
I took the call, in case it was something for work.
“Asher,” I said.
“Asher…”
“That’s what I said.”
“Asher. It’s… me. It’s, uh, Lauren.”
I walked away from the office and toward the back of the shop.
“Lauren,” I said.
I hadn’t talked to her since I left her apartment. My parting gift was the sight of her beautifully curved, naked body. Which I appropriately saved in my memory and enjoyed whenever the hell I felt like it.
“You know who this is, right?” she asked.
I grinned and leaned against the wall. “No idea.”
“Really?”
“Lauren… it rings a bell. But I don’t know. Maybe send over a pic. If you really know me, you know how I’ll be able to identity you. Hint, it’s not your face.”
There was no response.
Did she hang up already?
“Do you really not remember me?”
I rolled my eyes. “I don’t have time for this, sweetheart. Make your call short and to the point. For the sake of both of us.”
“Okay, I will then,” she said.
“I’m listening.”
I waited.
I counted to three and opened my mouth, but figured I would just hang up.
I knew Lauren enough… the dorky girl with big glasses who was now a curvy beauty with glasses that fit her face much better. She may have turned into all woman, but her innocent heart was still the same. Always looking around at everything and wanting to change it for the better. She should have been a hippy artist, painting flowers and green suns, spreading love… kind of like the way she spread her legs for me that one night.
One night.
That’s all I gave her. Hell, maybe that’s all she gave me. But I always took what I could get so there were no regrets. Ever.
I started to move the phone away when she asked, “You still there?”
“What the hell is this?” I growled.
She finally got right to the point of her call.
“Asher, I’m pregnant."
13
(Lauren)
NOW
Was there anything more graceful than taking a pregnancy test at work?
As I hovered over the toilet, trying to figure out how in the hell I was supposed to pee on that tip of the test, listening to the bustling voices of the cafe, the clanking of mugs, the hiss of machines, my eyes glued to the door as though I were a teenager about to get caught by Gram.
Gram.
She popped into my head as I waited.
She warned me. She told me. A bunch of times.
And look what happened.
I kissed Asher and now I’m pregnant.
Of course, that wasn’t how it all happened.
It wasn’t just because I kissed him. We did a whole lot more than kiss.
My body had felt off for a
couple weeks. I blamed every illness I could think of. And when I ran out of illnesses, I sat on my phone and searched the internet. I typed in every symptom and went down every rabbit hole, finding the most obscure diseases possible. I refused to replay the night with Asher through my mind. How intense it had been. The way I felt about him - only in that moment though - and how I had let him inside me.
Our bodies… his… mine…
I let it happen.
I let it happen without demanding he protect himself. Which at the very least would protect myself. Because if he was the type of guy he claimed to be…
Oh, god, Lauren, what did you do?
Worse yet, there were the pills.
I had been behind. Just a few days though. I had been so wrapped up in the cafe and getting the orders and receipts together, taking birth control was the last thing on my mind. Plus, who would have thought the jerk from next door when I was a girl would have shown up as a ripped and ready man, with eyes locked to me, giving me a chance to live out every wild fantasy that ever went through my head?
The bathroom was small and smelled like mango.
The smell was so powerful I thought I was going to pass out.
We definitely needed to get a new smell in the bathroom.
My stomach did pancake type flips and I shut my eyes, knowing I wouldn’t be able to stop throwing up. It was my morning routine. For the last five mornings. It was the same time, same feeling, same result.
Marissa and Peggy thought I was going pee.
I would puke.
I didn’t need to see the test to know.
I had already called Asher.
The silence of his reaction took anything romantic away, putting in its place living the life of a single mother.
Not that I expected him to do anything. Why would he? I just wanted him to know. He had the right to know. And the first thing he asked me was if I was sure it was his. I wasn’t sure if I should have been insulted or not, so I told him I wasn’t a collection agency and I hung up. Which made me feel icky. I didn’t sleep around with a lot of guys. And I didn’t do it unprotected like I did with him. That was a one-time stupid judgement call on my part.
And now I was going to be reminded of it for a long time.
I coughed and turned to get to the toilet in time.
My morning bagel made a return.
There was a knock at the door. “Hello?”
I flushed the toilet and reached for the sink for balance.
LUCKY KISS Page 6
