“Yeah? I pegged you for a thrill-seeker.”
“What can I say,” she said with a straight face, “I’m a wild child. I act coy in class and stuff, but when the weekend comes, look out! I paint my fingernails black. I wear leather and lace. And, of course, I wear a dark, glossy shade of red lipstick.” She leaned across the table and spoke in a hushed, conspiratorial tone: “It’s so much fun frightening the parents of the guys I date.”
Her sarcasm clashed with the “good girl” image she perpetuated at school. He wondered what other surprises she had in store for him. “So there’s been lots of guys?” he asked, a little fearful that she might not be exaggerating that point. After all, no man could deny that she was incredibly beautiful.
From the corner of his eye, he saw her breasts pressed against the table, and he waited for a moment that Ashley glanced elsewhere, so he could steal a glance. But she locked her gaze on his, preventing him from admiring her beauty. He’d have to settle on looking into gorgeous eyes that captured his attention like nothing since the first day he picked up an acoustic guitar six years ago. Not a bad trade-off.
“Are you kidding?” she said. “I go through guys like I go through outfits.”
“I figured as much. I mean, I heard you’ve ruined plenty of guys, but I didn’t want to judge you or anything.”
“So you’re not turned off?”
“Of course, I am. I’m more into your alter-ego: miss prim and proper.”
She grinned. “I thought so. I bet there are a handful of angry fathers wanted to rattle your neck.”
“Only a handful? Huh. Kind of disappointing. But you’d think their daughters would wise up. They knew who they were getting involved with. Especially after I had them sign a consent form.”
“Clever,” she said with envy. “I should use one of those. What does it say?”
“It has expectations, limitations, you know, the standards: refusal to ever meet the parents; refusal to buy gifts; refusal to ever give compliments – that sort of thing.”
“That’s a lot of refusals. What’s in it for all of these girls?”
Scott gazed into her eyes. He didn’t say a word. He just smiled at her. And although they’d joked about everything they were not over the last couple minutes, he couldn’t help but feel the weight of her stare. He saw conflicting desire and a longing for acceptance there. He might as well have been looking in the mirror.
Her eyes held an irresistible quality: not backing down by looking away or glancing down, heightening the connection between them, making it known that they might be starting on a path that neither had anticipated, while at the same time unsure where that road might lead. For the first time in his life, with the exception of playing music, Scott had never felt so alive.
His senses were on fire. Seeing the pulse at her neck pumping, making him wish he could place his lips there, he didn’t want to linger with lust, so he raised his gaze and took in that luscious mouth he wanted to sample. He admonished himself again for staring and glanced elsewhere, only to catch sight of cleavage that made him want to…
“Welcome to The Cocktail Hour,” said a waitress in her mid-twenties with a chipper attitude as she strolled up to their table.
The interruption broke their connection. Scott was breathless with excitement, yet empty and isolated now that their romantic attachment had been broken. Far from simply sharing an erotic meeting of the eyes, Ashley transmitted more understanding and empathy and acceptance than Scott ever thought possible in another human being. And he wanted it back. Now that he lost a link that felt stimulating yet content, he felt like an addict suffering from withdrawal. He wanted to feel that sensation again, as soon as possible.
“Aww,” the waitress said in a girly voice. “Is this your first date?”
“Sure is,” Scott said.
“Who says?” asked Ashley.
“I did. I asked you if you wanted to come here with me. You said yes, so it’s a date.”
She gave him a sidelong glance. “I think I’d know if it was a date or not,” she said sarcastically. “And it’s not.” Noticing the waitress about to scurry away, she said, “Don’t go.” When the woman returned with a dubious expression a moment later, Ashley said, “When you think of the word ‘date,’ what comes to mind?”
The waitress didn’t need more than a moment to answer. “Trying out two or three different hairstyles. Putting on too much make-up before I finally get it right. Going through seven or eight pairs of shoes to narrow down the four or five outfits it can go with. Then cleaning up all that stuff because it’s strewn on the bed and on the floor. That’s the afternoon. But before that, I spend way too much time thinking about the guy: if he’ll be fun or boring; if he’ll notice all the effort I’ve put into looking good; if he can hold a conversation; if I’ll like him enough to kiss at the end of the night; if I’ll want to see him again; if—”
“Oh my God,” said Scott, cringing. “That’s way too much pressure.” He waved both hands in front of his face to stop her. “I don’t want to know all that.”
Ashley gestured toward the waitress. “Isn’t she great?” Then she smiled at the woman. “You’ve been really helpful. I’ll make sure Scott leaves you a good tip.”
He scoffed. “Wait, I’m paying? I mean, if it’s not even a date—”
Exasperated, Ashley said to the waitress, “He has so much to learn about women.”
As Ashley ordered a cup of hot chocolate, Scott made a mental note to visit the local bookstore over the weekend in hopes of picking up something about that contradictory nature of the modern woman. Seeing the waitress waiting to place his order, he said, “Please make that two.” He returned his gaze to Ashley. Then he remembered something and called out to the waitress: “And can I get a marshmallow with that?”
“Sure thing,” the waitress said with a partial smile before turning around again.
“Yeah,” Ashley said, “what bad-boy doesn’t order a marshmallow with hot chocolate?”
“Who said I was bad?” he asked, laughing at the moniker.
“Oh, just about every girl in school.”
“You inquired about me, huh?” Scott didn’t know what to say to that and hadn’t really given any thought to how others perceived him.
“How long have you been playing guitar?” she asked, changing the subject.
“Since I was twelve. Around that time, I was always writing in my notebooks in school. They weren’t short stories or poems but somewhere in between. But get this, when I started listening to rock ’n’ roll, I found my little brother, who’s four years younger than me, in my room hitting notes from a Van Halen song...simply by hearing the tune once. Until a few hours before, he’d never even played. How is that even possible? He kills on guitar. It takes him like five minutes to come up with these licks that wouldn’t even cross my mind. Right now, he plays both lead guitar and bass on the tapes we’ve recorded from our stereo. But I like writing and singing more than playing lead guitar, so I’m happy playing rhythm guitar.
“Tell me about your band.”
“I formed Scrap Mettle with my brother and a distant cousin, who’s our drummer.”
“Did your brother come up with what you played tonight?”
Scott flinched as if struck by a slap in the face. “Nah, I’m not into stealing his melodies, and I like what I come up with. But only because it takes so much work to put it all together. But tonight – that was just spontaneity.”
“Just something that came to you, huh? Well, it was really special. It made me… feel things I didn’t want to deal with.”
That response intrigued him. “Like what?”
She glanced off to the side. “I’d rather not say.” Ashley met his gaze again with a smoldering look. “It… moved me.”
That remark wouldn’t have affected any other guy his age, but since Scott placed so much emphasis on his music, he couldn’t help but feel the weight of that statement. He wanted to know more. He wanted t
o find out how it made her feel, but he stopped short of asking her. She couldn’t possibly understand his passion for music and how it affected him.
And although she looked at him in ways that no other woman had before, rather than rely on their sexual chemistry, he wanted to hear more about what his music meant to her. After all, he’d spent most weeknights—not to mention every weekend over the past two years—working on his guitar-playing skills, and he wanted to know exactly how his music made her feel. It would justify all the time he had spent—sitting in his room with a guitar stuck to his hip.
“I’m self-taught. It’s pretty boring. You know, spending a lot of time by myself, getting the hang of it.” He glanced around the diner. “Ever been here before?”
“No.” She chuckled. “And I can’t believe you took me here. It’s… not really up on the times.”
“Is anything in Bedford Falls?”
“But you said you live in Vista Heights, right?”
“From the wrong side of the tracks. Guess that’s how I got the bad-boy reputation you talked about.”
“I didn’t mean it that way”
“No?” he asked, holding her stare. “Then what did you mean?” He cocked an eyebrow, curious to see how she would respond.
She triggered a faint smile before glancing down at her balled-up hands. “It’s just…”
“What?”
“Your music. It stripped away all the stuff that I used to hide behind.”
“Like what?”
“The truth,” she said, not missing a beat. “It’s stupid, really.”
“Tell me.”
“I feel like…I don’t belong with my family.”
“In what way?”
“My parents act like I’m just visiting. And I’ve lived with them for seventeen years. They treat my brother and sister differently.” She paused. “It’s hard to explain.”
Their waitress appeared with two steaming mugs of hot chocolate, a marshmallow floating atop one of them.
Ashley took the latter, grabbed the spoon from the saucer under the mug, and dipped it into the hot chocolate, scooping up a bit of melted marshmallow. She brought it to her mouth.
Scott watched her lips consume the marshmallow. How that ordinary act made him grow hard… he couldn’t answer. Maybe it was because she placed her mouth on that spoon, knowing that he would soon do the same.
“Oww,” she said, placing a hand to her mouth. “It’s burning hot!”
“I thought the steam gave that away,” he said, chuckling. He pushed her mug toward her and took his own in his palm. “Besides, that’s what you get for stealing my marshmallow.”
Her face crossed with pain. “I just wanted a quick taste.”
“You could have asked, instead of stealing my hot chocolate. Is that you’re secret? You’re a thief?”
“Only when I need to be. It’s tough with school, my afterschool activities, and a job, but when I get some spare time, I like to take things. Nothing huge or expensive…just little things.”
“What do you do with them?”
“I usually put them in other girls’ school lockers. You know, the mean ones who’ve crossed me. Then during study hour, I set things up to implicate them.” She grinned. “The best part is when the cops visit our classrooms to yank these girls out of class. Seeing their shocked expressions is totally worth all the time and effort.”
Scott met her smile with one of his own. “You have an active imagination. You should be a writer.”
“I never thought about that before.” She considered his words. “But thanks for the compliment. That means a lot coming from a great writer.”
He gave her a suspicious stare. “I write songs, sure, but it’ll take years before I become great, if that ever happens.” When she didn’t respond, he thought back to last night and remembered that she held a crumpled up piece of paper: the aborted attempt at a song he’d written about her.
Scott’s stomach dropped. “You didn’t…read it, did you?”
She reached across the table and took his hand in hers. “It was…” Tears misted up her eyes, and she looked away, finding it difficult to swallow. After she regained her poise, she met his gaze. “No one has ever made me feel more special.” She beamed at him.
He looked at her curved lips. He wanted to taste them so badly, he wondered if she should leap across the table and do it right now. But management would consider such behavior inappropriate and maybe even call the cops, so he restrained himself.
“Anyway,” Ashley said, redirecting their conversation and removing her hand from his. “In all honesty, I’m saving up for when I go to Berkley in the fall. I wasn’t lucky enough to get a full academic scholarship.”
“That’s incredible,” he said, doing his best to stay on topic. He liked that she had it all figured out. It showed vision and discipline and that she hadn’t veered from the priorities she’d set out for herself. It also told him that her parents weren’t able to help out financially, which he sympathized with.
“How about you?” she asked. “You’re pretty good with your hands.”
“Oh, really?” he said, letting a smile peek through. “How would you know? We just met.”
She blushed but didn’t get bashful at his innuendo. “You know what I’m saying. Your guitar playing.”
“I work about twenty hours a week over at Randall’s Body Shop. Mostly just doing oil changes, replacing shocks and struts, brakes and rotors, that sort of thing. Once you really know what you’re doing, you don’t even have to think about it. So sometimes I’ll use that time to come up with melodies or lyrics in my head. It gets me out of the house, and I’m saving up to book some studio time to record a demo.”
“Very cool.”
“But even cooler is that I might be on a date with a kleptomaniac.”
“This from a guy I don’t really know much about.”
“You know I’m a musician. That I live in Vista Heights. And that I ride a motorcycle.”
“And that yesterday was the first time you punched somebody.”
“You know all of that,” Scott said, “but I don’t know anything about you, except that you’re secretly an exotic dancer.” Seeing her looking at him with an incredulous expression, he said, “Hey, you told me you wear leather and lace. You wear black nail polish. And you smear on lots of red lipstick. What am I supposed to think?”
He liked the way she looked at him – a tad bit flirty, not the least bit judgmental, and partially uncertain.
“Why did you help me?” she asked. “You didn’t have to.”
That question caught him off guard. Scott hadn’t expected her to sneak such a serious question into their conversation. And this time, he could tell she wanted a sincere answer. “What we shared last night or tonight in the gym? That’s not something that happens every day.” Scott held her gaze for a long moment, once more enticed and excited by the way she met his stare.
The connection felt stronger this time, more assured. He wanted to reach out and touch her, but he immediately decided against it. Although she may have joked around by saying that he was a bad-boy, Scott didn’t want her to believe it. He didn’t see himself that way. Therefore, he thought it best to answer her question with complete honesty.
“I needed to help you,” he said, although Ashley would never understand how much coming to her aid meant to him.
A shiver took hold of her for the quickest of moments. “I’m glad you did.”
This time, he took the risk, unraveling a hand across the table.
She took it without the least bit of delay. Moments later, looking as though she’d picked up a haunted object that would inflict untold punishment upon her, Ashley removed her palm to take hold of her hot chocolate. She brought it to her mouth. “I can’t believe I’m here with you.” She took a sip from her cup then licked her lips. “Mmm, good.”
He liked the way her lips formed around the mug. For the tenth time in the past few minutes, he envisio
ned pressing his lips to hers. But as usual, the moment he thought about that, he imagined going further: putting his arms around her; pulling her close; letting her scent wash over him; feeling her breasts press up against his chest.
“I don’t have my waiver for you to sign,” he said. “So nothing I do can be held against me…just so you know.”
“There’s the bad-boy.”
“But you’re the one who hasn’t said a thing about yourself. Who’s the mysterious one now?”
“How do you know what I was like? Were you spying on me?”
“Maybe.” He shrugged. “Or maybe I went person to person in school, asking all about you, because I’m—”
“A big pervert?” She smiled.
“Hey, go big or go home, right? But I’m not letting you off the hook. You became best friends with the most popular kids in school. And no one knows why. Me? I’m guessing it’s because they wanted a pet project. To show everyone that they could pick anyone and make her popular. And you bought into it.”
Ashley looked in the other direction, her thoughts obviously striking off in uncharted waters. “I’m worried about you. Troy is… well, he’s Troy. And that means he’s going to come after you.” She looked sad that she’d caused this disruption in his life. “I never intended—”
“You are really good at changing the subject. I bet most people don’t even know that you do it. But seriously, tell me a little about yourself. Come on, miss thespian, miss straight-A student.”
Without missing a beat, Ashley continued her train of thought: “I think you’re probably right. Maybe I became a pet project for the popular crowd. And I went along with it because I wanted to fit in. Is that so horrible? To not feel so alone?” She shrugged. “But I can see your point. I guess…I’m pretty shallow.”
He stared into her eyes, looking for something that might ring true, something that might give him an indication that she might meet him in the middle of their conversation. But seeing nothing, he glanced away and decided that maybe she needed him to talk about himself a little more.
“All those cheerleaders and football players? They act like they’re so above everyone else. They treat everyone they don’t understand like shit. And they have no clue what life is really about. So I don’t want any part of it.”
One More Chance (A Bedford Falls Novel Book 3) Page 5
