by Bright, Sera
“I can walk, let me down,” I objected, opening my eyes halfway.
Ash ignored me, his face like chiseled stone in the moonlight. I laid my head on his shoulder as he carried me across the lawn. He shifted me around in his arms while he unlocked the door, and then carried me through the dark house to my bedroom. He laid me on the bed without turning on a light, navigating the small space from memory. I kicked off my shoes, amazed at how such a small motion sent another invisible ice pick through my skull. The air could have been broiling in the bedroom for all I knew, but I was too busy freezing and shivering. My senses were misfiring. Ash pulled the quilt over me, wrapping it around my shoulders.
“Where is your medicine?” He stood up, his gaze darting around the room. “You should’ve had it with you.”
I pointed to my backpack on the desk. He took out his phone and used it as a light to go through it. My birth control pills fell on the floor. He stopped and stared at them, before going back to finding an orange prescription bottle.
He went out of the room, to come back a minute later with an ice pack and a glass of water. He sat on the edge of the bed, and helped me sit up halfway, handing me a pill. I swallowed it and sipped the water before lying back down. He knew the routine.
“Have they gotten worse?” He gently pressed the ice pack to my forehead.
“No.” Actually, they’d improved over the last year, but sometimes they were triggered when I least expected it. For instance, not sleeping enough, and then running around while in a state of insanity for two straight days.
“Get some rest.” He stood up to leave. “I’ll go sleep on the couch, in case you need anything later.”
“No, stay,” I shamelessly begged. “I don’t want to be alone.”
I didn’t care if it made me the empress of mixed messages, that’s how much pain I was in.
Ash hesitated for a moment, and then climbed in carefully behind me, trying not to jostle the bed. He settled on top of the quilt, laying his arm around my waist. This was part of our routine, too. I developed migraines after I had viral meningitis when I was fifteen. Ash had found me passed out on my bedroom floor, and been the one to call the ambulance. He’d even managed to contact my father and get him to come home.
A couple of months after, Ash had come into my room one night and found me curled up in pain from one of the first migraines. He panicked, thinking the meningitis had returned, but it was just a migraine. He held me through the night, and it became in my mind the only way for the pain to truly go away. All because he let me be that close to him without shying from my touch.
It was easier to admit I wanted him when I was in pain and my defenses were low. I didn’t want to be alone anymore. I’d spent most of the last year alone. At night, I’d stare up at the sky while lying in the back of my truck, and wish on the stars for a do-over. I would have done everything right, if I had only known how.
I snuggled into him and let the medicine kick in. I wanted him when I hurt. I wanted him always. He felt like how coming home should feel. The pain expanded to an incredible pressure, then collapsed into a void as I fell asleep.
Chapter Twelve
Sunday
I woke up the next morning aware, before I knew anything else, that Ash was gone. I didn’t have to roll over and check, I just knew. Sunlight streamed through my window, making the pale yellow walls of my childhood bedroom glow. Heaviness weighed on my limbs, and a funky chemical taste coated my tongue. My head didn’t hurt but it was otherwise like a hangover without all the fun of drinking first.
I pushed the quilt away and padded to the shower. The hot water washed away the remaining traces of the migraine. I climbed out of the tub, and wiped a hand over the fogged-up glass of the mirror. Dark circles ringed my slate blue eyes. They stared back, judging me for my constant use of deception. Ash had once told me I was beautiful, and I put him off with a joke. He’d once told me he loved me, and I put him off with a lie.
I took in the planes of my cheekbones, the curve of my lips. I could be beautiful in my own right, but my pretty face, and even sometimes my life, didn’t always feel like my own to claim. My mother ran away because she didn’t care about me. I ran from Ash because I cared too much. I combed out my wet hair with my fingers. At least the similarities between us ended somewhere.
I finished drying myself off, and walked naked to my room. Summer was making itself known in a dramatic way this morning. Humidity already clung to the air like a lover. I pulled on a long white eyelet skirt and a loose white linen tank, the top revealing the tattoos on my upper arms and chest. I celebrated every visit to a different big city by getting a new one, like passport stamps permanently marked on my body.
A sense of suffocation from the heat formed as I walked through the rooms, opening windows. I needed to get out, out of this town for a while. Just take off for the day, go to the nearby amusement park, anything to cheer myself up. And then I remembered, I needed to arrange for a tow. Until my truck was fixed, I was truly stuck here with no way out. Damn it.
My bag wasn’t on the entryway table where I usually left it, but a square of glossy paper lay on the floor in front of the door. I bent down and picked it up. It was an old photo of a young woman holding a chubby toddler. When I picked it up to look closer, my own face smiled up at me—no, that was my mother’s face. The toddler was the one that was actually me, with fat cheeks and cotton candy wisps of blonde hair. I didn’t have many baby pictures of myself, and I had never seen any with my mother in them.
For a woman who’d dumped her kid and husband because she couldn’t deal with the responsibility, she seemed rather happy in the photograph. We shared the same exact delicate facial features, but her eyes were a bright and clear sky blue. Her flaxen blonde hair straight and sleek. Along with my propensity for lying, I inherited my eye color and my unmanageable hair from my father.
Goose bumps crawled up my arms. I scanned over the newly neat and tidy living room that I had compulsively cleaned and organized over the last few days. This picture didn’t appear out of thin air. I’d have found it already. Did someone slip it under the door? Or did someone come into my house? I whirled around to the door and checked the lock. Thankfully, Ash had secured it after he had left.
I flipped the deadbolt and flung open the door, but no one was out there other than an elderly man down the street watering his lawn. He loved his lawn way too much to abandon it just to scare me with a photograph. Relieved, I closed the door and locked it. But I needed to find my bag fast—my phone was in it. I put the photo on the table, and searched the house.
It wasn’t in my room. It wasn’t anywhere in the house. My recollection from last night fuzzed around the edges. After our fight, I couldn’t remember the order of how things had occurred. Panic took hold as I became aware of the small gaps in my memory, but I calmed as I reassured myself I had been with Ash. Nothing would’ve happened.
It still didn’t change the fact I didn’t remember grabbing the bag out of Ash’s car before he carried me inside, and I didn’t remember him holding it, either. It must still be in his car.
Double damn it. Even if I had his number, there was no way to call him. There wasn’t a landline in the house. My father had his cell phone, and I had mine. Until I lost it again. This was the third phone in a year, which was why I usually resorted to the pay-as-you-go phones. I was going to have to walk downtown in search of a payphone to call Helen at home, if payphones existed anymore. I opened up my laptop at the kitchen table and did a quick search online for tow companies, writing the numbers on the back of my hand with a pen.
I flipped up the couch cushions in search of any loose change. Jackpot. Five shiny silver quarters. I really shouldn’t carry my whole life in that bag if it meant I had to resort to finding money in furniture. They represented all the cash I had until I got my bag back from Ash. The ridged sides of the coins dug into the palm of my hand as I squeezed them tight. If he ever came back.
After putting on my sandals, I
went to the front door. I opened it to see Ash parking his car in my driveway. The impulse to run to him hit me hard, and I swallowed while I leaned against the doorway. He’d only think I was playing games with him, and that wouldn’t be fair.
He got out of the car, wearing his standard uniform of worn jeans that hugged his hips and a simple black t-shirt. His wet hair waved across his forehead, his eyes hidden by sunglasses. The lenses reflected the sun as he walked across the grass, carrying an iced coffee and a white pastry bag.
He stopped at the bottom of the concrete steps. “Feeling better?”
He used that same flat, impersonal tone from last night, as if he couldn’t care less. He was shutting down. Shutting me out. My heart wrenched. It was what I wanted, right? He didn’t need me messing up his life. He looked up at me briefly and then away, as if he couldn’t bear to meet my eyes despite the sunglasses hiding his gaze.
“Yeah—I mean, thanks.” I clutched the thin fabric of my skirt and I added a soft, sincere, “For everything.”
He nodded curtly, and came up the steps. At the top, he handed me the iced coffee and the bag. “The tow truck should be waiting for us, if you’re ready. I picked this up for you in case you haven’t eaten.”
The smell of sugar and yeast tickled my nose as I took them from him. I peered in the bag—fresh doughnuts from the bakery downtown nestled in the waxed paper. After all my attempts to push him away, he still took care of me last night, arranged for a tow truck, and brought me my favorite breakfast. I wanted the earth to open up and drag me down to a fiery pit of my own unworthiness right then and there.
He leaned against the rusting iron rail, arms crossed over his chest. I set the bag and drink on the entryway table by the photo. The sight of it brought back the earlier uneasiness.
“Can you wait for a few minutes?” I said over my shoulder. “I need to shut the windows before I leave.”
“Whatever you need to do.”
I rushed through the house, closing all the windows I’d just opened. More than once, I locked a window and tested it to be certain it wouldn’t open. I was being paranoid. It was just an old photo, not a death threat. Or a smashed-up truck. I walked to the front door to see Ash inside the entryway, frowning down at the table. He picked up the photo.
“Where did this come from?” he asked, with an edge in his voice.
“I don’t know. It was on the floor when I got up.” I walked over to stand beside him. “Did you see it earlier on your way out?”
“No.” He dropped the photo onto the table.
“It’s a picture of my mother. I don’t think you’ve ever seen one before.” I flicked a glance up at him. “I look just like her.”
“I don’t see the resemblance at all.” He took a stiff step back. “Are you ready to go? The tow truck is going to leave if we wait much longer.”
I followed him out the door to his car, holding onto the iced mocha like it was my new best friend. My bag sat on the floor of the passenger side, and a tiny stream of relief seeped in through my misery. I settled into the leather seat and sipped the bittersweet coffee. Ash got in the driver’s side and started the engine. The stereo came on, playing the throbbing tones of the opening of Placebo’s “Running Up That Hill.” I snapped my head up in shock.
“Are you playing that on purpose?” I blurted.
He reached to turn it off. At the same time, I darted my hand out to stop him, laying my hand on top of his. The strap of my tank top slid off my shoulder. The song was from a memory I’d never regretted. Not for a single moment, despite how everything turned out.
“I’d like to listen to it.” A chill from the air vents cooled the skin of my chest. I glanced down. Most of my lacy bra was bared, showing off all my cleavage, along with the tattoo of the blue swallow under my collarbone. Subtle. I attempted to shrug the strap back up. “If you don’t mind.”
He stared at me, no expression on his face I could discern. If he hadn’t had those sunglasses on, I could have seen a hint of what he was thinking. I was flying blind here. Did he think my tattoos were trashy? Too bad. It was my body.
His hand moved away from the controls to push the strap back to my shoulder. The roughened tips of his fingers skimmed over my skin. My breathing sped up. He could keep touching me like that, if he wanted to.
He shook his head. “I don’t think it’s a good idea right now.”
He turned the song off, and backed out of the driveway. I turned from him to look out the window, tucking my feet under me. I was beginning to hate driving anywhere with him—it always turned into an exercise of self-recrimination. We passed by houses with the proverbial white picket fences as we drove downtown. Light dappled through the trees onto the tidy lawns.
The wish game repeated in my head. I wished I was normal, and could tell him my real thoughts and feelings without hiding or misdirection. Condensation from the plastic cup coated my palms, and I wiped my hand on my skirt. I wished I could tell him it wasn’t because I didn’t trust him. If there was anyone I did trust in this world, it was him.
But the fear of making his life worse had never left since I was thirteen, when I called CPS and made his shitty home life unbearable. The skin of my wrist prickled. I had just wanted to protect him and make him feel safe, the way he did for me whenever he was near.
We drove into downtown, where a flatbed tow truck idled by my poor broken truck, dwarfing it in size. Ash parked on the main street, in front of the entrance to the alley. I turned to him with the idea to offer an apology for my behavior the last few days. Or to finally tell him how much I’d missed him. Something honest and true for once. But he held up a hand silently, and shifted uncomfortably away. It could’ve meant, “go on ahead, I’ll catch up,” or “goodbye, see you never.”
Whichever one it was, I wasn’t about to ask. His rejection was what I deserved. I knew I’d waited too long to speak up. I grabbed my bag as I climbed out of the car, and squared my shoulders.
“Wait—” he said.
I slammed the door. A remnant of pride remained, even if it was torn and shredded on the ground. Who was I kidding? I just didn’t want him to see my humiliation and hurt. A wiry man hopped out of the tow truck and greeted me with a gap-toothed grin.
He nodded over to my truck. “They really did a number on it, didn’t they?”
In the sunshine, the damage to my truck was less menacing and more pathetic. It needed a completely new windshield as well as two new front tires. Walking around to the side of my truck facing the alley, I knelt down to a flat back tire that hadn’t been there last night. Make that all four new tires. I sighed as I stood up.
“Good thing I brought the flatbed, huh?” He stood right next to me, but I struggled to listen to him over the noise of the idling engine of the tow truck. It was next to impossible to hear anything from beyond it. The driver kicked at the tire, probably out of sympathy for me.
I nodded as I went through my bag for my wallet. I couldn’t deal with small talk on a normal basis, and I absolutely couldn’t deal with it this morning.
A slender redheaded girl came running by on the sidewalk, stopping to use the bench to stretch. Ash suddenly scrambled out of the car and took off his sunglasses. He called to the young woman like he knew her, his white teeth flashing bright in his tanned face. He greeted her with more animation than he’d shown me this morning. Or in the last three days. She straightened up as if surprised and walked over to him.
The driver continued to talk next to me. I handed him the cash, my eyes on Ash and the girl.
“We’re going take it down to this repair shop. I know the owner—they can usually get these things done real quick and he’s open today…”
Ash leaned back on the hood of his car with an easy smile, the kind he knew girls tripped over themselves to get from him because he so rarely offered it. The dimple deepened in his face as she laughed at something he said. How many times had I watched a version of this scene play out? Too many.
&nbs
p; I remembered her now. Brooke. The girl from the beach last summer. She must have just graduated this year. She moved closer and laid a hand on his chest, like she knew him very well already.
Ash looked happy, though. Far happier than I’d seen him for the last three days. I bit the inside of my lip. My mouth was becoming raw and painful from all my nervous chewing. That was what I’d always wanted, for him to be happy, but it didn’t mean I was obligated to stay and watch the whole show, either.
“Why don’t you go on over to the sidewalk while I load her up,” the driver shouted beside me. “I’m gonna have to block this alley for a few minutes to get her out.”
If he blocked the alley, it would make it hard to see what was going on in the alley. Or who was going into the alley.
“Do you need me for anything else?” I turned my back to Ash and Brooke. “I think I’m just going to go.”
“No, I think we’re good.” He grinned, wrinkling the leathery skin around his eyes.
I gave him my best grateful smile. “Thanks for coming out.”
I waited for him to climb into the tow truck before I made my move. When the engine revved and the beeping of the back-up alarm started, I fled down the alley. The rumbling of the truck washed the air with white noise. I walked quickly with light steps to the other end. Ash would probably be a little insulted I’d left without telling him, but he’d already done his good deed for the day by arranging for the tow truck and dropping me off.
On the other side of downtown, I crossed the street to the town library parking lot and cut through someone’s unfenced backyard. I came out on a small side street and relaxed then, feeling less exposed. After a couple of blocks, I went through a backyard to another side street. I didn’t really think Ash would care if I left. Again. I continued to zigzag through the neighborhoods back to my house, refusing to think about why I was taking the long way. Besides, I didn’t want to interrupt his precious love life.
I meandered down a sidewalk. In front of a house that could pass for an English cottage, white roses draped over an arbor. I ran my fingers over the feathery petals, and caught the side of my hand on a hidden nail under the last rose. I hissed in a breath and yanked it back. Luckily, the cut was ugly, but relatively shallow. I wrapped my hand around the loose fabric of my shirt and sighed at the dark crimson staining the white linen in a macabre Rorschach blotch.
