Ash: A Bad Boy Romance

by Lexi Whitlow

  I throw a pillow at Josh and sigh. “Get out of here, man. You need to be in a bed, fucking recovering. Thanks for looking out.”

  Josh gets his bearings and claps me on the shoulder, then looks back briefly at Summer, who stands up from behind the sofa. She’s holding a tan, white, and black Corgi puppy that weighed six pounds at his first vet visit. The puppy looks around in confusion and then licks Summer on the cheek, making little excited yelps. Summer grins, her face lighting up, happiness glowing from within.

  “Looks like she likes it, man,” Josh says. “Don’t know what the hell is going on with you two, but I wish you the best of luck.”

  “We’re... seeing each other.”

  And we’re married. And she’s pregnant.

  But there will be plenty of time to reveal that shit after everything else gets figured out.

  Josh walks out, and the door closes, leaving the three of us together. I’m not counting the baby quite yet since the puppy takes up a whole lot more space.

  “You’re crazy,” she says, but she can’t stop smiling. The dog licks her again, and she comes over and sits down on the sofa, holding the Corgi like it’s a human child. The puppy struggles, wobbly legs flailing around. Summer strokes its pink belly until its movements become slower and slower and it falls into a light sleep.

  “We can take it back.” For some reason, my heart is beating hard and fast. I’ve fucked up so many times with Summer. It doesn’t seem like a puppy would be a major fuck-up on the grand list of fuck-ups, but you never know.

  “Don’t you dare.” The puppy’s legs move in its sleep, and she laughs. “We might not have enough money to pay for its shots, but my mom fucking loves dogs, and she can pay back some of the money she owes you by dog-sitting and buying food or whatever.” She snuggles the puppy closer, and it licks her lazily.

  “She doesn’t owe me any money, Sunshine. We’re family.”

  “We’ll need the help. Especially with—especially with the possibility of another addition.”

  “I know we’ll figure it out. We’re resourceful people.”

  “And I’ve heard having a puppy at the same time as having a baby is a great idea,” she says.

  I raise my eyebrow and touch the puppy’s cold nose. Then his eyes pop open, and he leaps down from the sofa like he has some place else to be. “Really?”

  She laughs and gets up to follow the puppy. “Fuck no, Ash. This is among the stupidest ideas we’ve ever had. I say ‘among’ because it seems like you and I can come up with some pretty fucking stupid ideas.” Absently, she reaches down and pats her belly, even though it’s just as flat as it was before—flatter, maybe, since she started eating two servings of buttered noodles a day, followed by absolutely nothing else. “What should we name him?”

  “I’ve never been good at naming anything. I had a dog when I was a kid,” I say, stretching and yawning. “But I named it Jonny. I had a stuffed bear too, one I carried everywhere. I named that one Jonny too.”

  My phone buzzes in my pocket again, and I pick it up as Summer chases off after the puppy. The damn number is from New York again. “I’m not interested in whatever life insurance bullshit you’re selling,” I say.

  “Ash?” A voice I barely recognize speaks to me from the other end of the line. It sounds like she’s far away, or underground. Just like what it used to sound like when Cullen called me from his soundproofed apartment in Soho.

  “Bianca?”

  Summer whips around and looks at me, her mouth hanging open. “I haven’t heard from her in a year,” she whispers at me. I wave my hand, holding the phone closer so I can hear whatever Bianca has to say.

  “I’ve been trying to get in touch with you and Linda for the past two weeks,” she says. “Where the hell have you been? I don’t have Summer’s number—”

  “Linda’s phone got cut off, and it seems she hasn’t gotten it turned the hell back on, Bianca. What’s going on?” I swallow hard. The last time I spoke to Bianca, she told me to stay away from Summer. I haven’t exactly disobeyed the Family’s orders, since I waited to see her until after she was done with her time abroad.

  Summer makes wild gestures, like she wants me to give her the phone. From the look on her face, it seems like she’s damn well ready to confront her birth mother about the whole messy business. But after what she’s been through today, I’d imagine it’s not the time. I put a hand up, because I also have an inkling about what Bianca’s going to say.

  “Cullen was...” Her voice is suddenly full of emotion. I didn’t spell it out for Summer, but I know that the two parents who abandoned her have been living together the past three years. Talk about a happy family. “He was very sick. I know Summer didn’t want to hear from me, and yours was the only number I had.”

  “He was sick?”

  Bianca gasps, like she’s trying to catch her breath. “He’s gone, Jonny.” I hear her sob, like she’d kept her emotions from bubbling up until this very moment. “A few days ago. He sent a package to Summer.”

  The girl in question—a woman now, my wife—stands in front of me, looking fearful and anxious and understandably sad. “What’s happening?” she whispers.

  I raise my hand again. “What package, Bianca?”

  “All the details of his will. And an account he put into her name. It’s supposed to be paid on death. She needs to get the money transferred to her account before these wise guys up here figure out what Cullen has done.”

  “Christ,” I mumble. “Really?”

  “I told you this would happen someday, Ash. I take it you took back up with her, didn’t you? Her mother said as much a few weeks back.” I don’t answer because there’s a slight disapproving tone in her voice, and I know she has no goddamn right to say anything about what Summer does with her life. She abdicated that right twenty-eight years ago. “I trust you can tell her to open that damn package and do what she needs to do. I swear, that girl—so disorganized.”

  “Yes, Bianca,” I say through clenched teeth.

  “No need to get testy, Ash. You never divorced her. This impacts you, too.” There’s a shrug in her voice, like I should be graciously accepting her call. She doesn’t know it, but Ash offered me money the day Summer left—money that made sure I stayed away from her for good. Call it pride or love that came two decades late. Summer could have the money for all the trouble these two caused her, but I wouldn’t take money to stay away from my wife, a woman I wanted from the moment I laid eyes on her.

  “It’s her choice what she does with it—” My heart is pounding hard. I know what this means for Summer—medical school loans paid off, maybe a down payment on a house. It all depends on how much it is. And I don’t want to ask.

  Summer stomps her foot and runs over to me, grabbing the phone from my hand and bringing it to her ear. “B—why are you calling Ash? It’s not about—” She pauses, and I can hear the cadence of Bianca’s voice on the line. “Oh shit,” Summer says. She turns to me and sits down heavily in the overstuffed blue chair. The puppy appears, pushing a white box across the floor, nipping at it desperately and chewing on the edge of it. “Yeah, Jesus, okay B. I’m—I’m sorry, I guess. Pancreatic cancer is a bitch. I know—” She pauses, searching for the right words to say to a mother who abandoned her about a father who never knew her. “I know this is a loss for you, B.”

  Summer holds the phone away from her ear, and I hear Bianca’s voice. “I hope you can forgive him,” she says. “I love you, Summer. If you look back at everything I’ve done, love was always the reason.”

  “I love you too, B,” she says as tears form in her eyes. I gesture for her to give the phone back to me. She does, and I click the off button before Bianca can add any more emotional touches to the conversation.

  Summer looks at me, face stricken and gray again. “What is happening?” The words come out in a whisper.

  “Everything, all at once.” I get up and pick up the puppy and the package. I sit the puppy on her lap and
put the package on the coffee table in front of her. The Corgi leans its head into Summer’s chest, and she scratches its floppy ears. “First of all,” I say, looking at her seriously. “We need to give this puppy a strong Irish name.”

  She laughs and squeezes the little dog to her chest. “I guess we do.”

  “Darragh?”

  “No one can pronounce that.” Her eyes flick over to the white box on the table. “What about Emmett? That was my grandfather’s name. He’s the one family member that doesn’t have shit to do with this.”

  “Well, he can’t speak for himself. Maybe he did, and we just don’t know. Your family’s pretty shady.”

  “Look who’s talking. Here, take Emmett.” She hands me the hapless puppy, and he yelps and wiggles like he can’t quite control his body.

  Tentatively, Summer picks up the white package and opens it. A heavy stack of papers sits inside, all very legal looking and notarized. “Is this really what B said it is?”

  “I think so.” I can’t help but think of the divorce papers she served me with after she first saw me again. These are a damn sight better than those papers—but I don’t say anything because I don’t want to give her any ideas.

  She flips through the stack, eyes scanning the pages, and then she sits back into the chair with a deep, shaky breath.

  “It’s—it’s a lot.” Her eyes meet mine.

  “How much is ‘a lot’?”

  “A lot,” she says again, raising her eyebrows. “Like more than I’ve ever had in my bank account, plus more than my mother’s ever had in her bank account.”

  “Summer, how much?”

  “Five hundred and thirty-six thousand dollars.”

  “Five hundred and thirty-six thousand dollars?”

  “That’s exactly what I just said. I know you’re old,” she says, laughing. “But can you not hear?”

  “Wow—that’s—that’s a significant amount of money.”

  “It is.” She twirls her hair between her fingers and blows air between her lips in a put-putting sound. “Can I just leave this on your coffee table until tomorrow? I can’t with this right now. I really can’t. I’m not supposed to be happy that someone’s gone. And while we’re at it, I’m not supposed to be pregnant either.”

  I tilt my head and shrug. “Emmett probably needs to go out. Let’s take him to the beach. It’s September—the tourists are gone.”

  “Nags Head or the Manteo boardwalk?”

  “We’ll go to the boardwalk. We can get dinner and go see Linda. Introduce her to Emmett.”

  “She’s going to freak out,” Summer says. Then, suddenly, the tears come. I’m not in the dark like I was last time.

  There’s so much, all at once. The journey here has been weird and twisted, arduous and long. But I always knew I’d come back to Summer—I always knew this day would happen. Not exactly like this, because I couldn’t have known, but a day we’d remember forever, one we’d talk about when we’re old and not beautiful anymore.

  “Should we get married?” I ask her.

  She looks at me and starts laughing hard through her tears. “Why not? Second time is a charm.”

  “I think they say ‘third time is a charm.’ Maybe. But maybe the second!”

  “Whatever. Either way, our divorce lawyer is going to be very confused. And so is any kind of officiant. What will we call it?”

  “Renewing our vows, or maybe ‘Saying our vows for real this time.’ Would that look good on a card?” I stand up and take her hand, leading her out to the car and picking up Emmett’s leash and collar on the way.

  I never doubted this day—and I hope that Summer has as much faith in herself as I do in her. She stands on her tiptoes and kisses me before we get in the car.

  “I love you, Jonathan Ash.”

  “I love you, Summer Colington. Every day for all of these years, and each one going forward, for the rest of our lives.”

  EPILOGUE

  Three Months Later

  When the tourists are gone for the summer, Kill Devil Hills feels completely different. There aren’t cars up and down Beach Road, and the ice cream shops close up, except for the one that’s right on the corner near our neighborhood. The sirens aren’t going off at all hours of the night, and sometimes the emergency room is almost empty save for the few locals and fishermen who seem like constants. It’s during the summer that everything feels alive, bustling with people who only see the place for a short part of the year.

  I missed it when I was away, and I didn’t know that I’d ever want to be back. There was a way I envisioned my life going, and it didn’t have anything to do with the life I came back and found, right here, waiting for me.

  The house isn’t big, but we knew from the moment we saw it. The floors are all made of palm, paler than bamboo and warmer than tile. The bedroom is just big enough for a king-sized bed and a bassinet right next to it. The first time I saw it, I was only two months pregnant, and we had no idea if this pregnancy was ever going to make it.

  We stood on the porch, and I placed my hand over my belly, willing something to happen inside—willing something to move or keep growing or give me any kind of sign.

  “You know too much about medical stuff, Sunshine. Stop worrying. Let’s go inside and see what this one is like.”

  Until that day, it felt tenuous, like a joke the world was playing on both of us, like this thing that was neither real nor imaginary. If I think back on it, the pregnancy was kind-of like looking for a house. We’d seen ten that never felt real to us, that never felt like anything close to a home. It began to feel like there wasn’t anything that would suit us, that there wasn’t a house on the market that we could put our finger on and say, “This one is ours. This is the place.”

  “I only know too much because I studied. It’s a good thing. It means I know what can go wrong—”

  “That’s the problem. You have to listen to me, because this time, despite everything else in our lives, absolutely nothing is going to go wrong.”

  Ash peered into the living room, eyes growing big as we waited for the realtor to show up. She was late, but after we stood waiting, talking about what we wanted, she arrived in a frazzled mess. It felt ceremonial when we followed her inside and saw the floors, the living room that extended toward the kitchen, black granite countertops and white cabinets that looked more like they belonged in a farmhouse than a beach cottage. Light played through the windows, and mottled shadows of the trees from outside danced over the floor.

  Even before we walked onto the screen porch and saw the sprawling backyard for Emmett—and a new addition to the family—I knew I was already home.

  Some days, I come home late, and some nights, Ash is home long after midnight. He finally allowed me to make an investment in his business—because somewhere along the way, I was able to convince him that I believed in him as much as he believed in me.

  The road isn’t an easy one. Even though we’re technically still young, we feel much older. The road that we took to get here was winding, and there were twists and turns we didn’t expect.

  On this night, though, everything feels just right. I waddle over to the sofa, already carrying what feels like far more than the weight I’ve gained. Ash will be home shortly. For now, I’m content to put my legs up and wait, eyes closed, hand resting on Emmett’s velvety ears, savoring our hard-won peace. It’ll all be turned on its head in the next few months, but that’s a different kind of upset than the ones we’ve been used to. It’ll be one that’s welcome, one that’s needed.

  When I hear Ash at the door, my eyelids flutter open slowly, and I watch as he enters. Emmett runs over to him, running in little circles on his stumpy legs. Ash picks him up and scratches him between his ears before putting him down. Content, Emmett busies himself with a toy while he watches us with his soulful eyes.

  Ash’s red hair gleams in the afternoon light, looking more like copper than ever. If I look hard enough, I know I’ll see a strand or two of
gray. He hates it, but it just makes him look even more like the man I love.

  “You have anything to share with me, Sunshine?”

  “Let me see. There’s laundry in the washer that I don’t want to deal with, so you have to put it in the dryer.” I pause, and point over to the kitchen. “And I got take-out from the diner over on Beach Road. So you can bring that over here, because I’m not getting up.”

  He goes to the kitchen and picks up the greasy white bags and two of the hand-fired plates Bianca sent from Brooklyn in December. “And?”

  “And you can pick up that envelope too.” My face breaks into a smile.

  “You promise you weren’t looking today?”

  “I promise.”

  “I’m sorry I couldn’t be there, baby.” He puts the greasy food down on the Ikea coffee table and dishes it out over two plates, giving us both huge handfuls of French fries.

  “Debbie will get the ultrasound tech to do it again next week so you can see. But I didn’t want to wait any longer—and no, I didn’t look.”

  He holds the envelope in one hand and opens it, getting a grease spot on the outside flap. When he pulls the card out, he looks at it in disbelief and then meets my gaze, his eyes dancing.

  “You looked at it!” I say, grabbing it out of his hands. “We were supposed to look at it at exactly the same time.” We’re both laughing, and my heart is pounding hard, nearly racing out of my chest. I hold the white index card in my hand and flip it over quickly.

  Ash leans in and kisses my cheek. “It’s a boy,” he murmurs, placing one hand on my belly. At that moment, the baby gives a resounding kick that makes him feel much larger than his twenty weeks, nearly bruising my rib in the process. Ash looks at me when he feels it and kisses me again, longer and warmer this time, like one of the hungry, passionate kisses from when we first met. He doesn’t hold anything back—his hands roam over my body, hitting each sensitive place, cradling my tender breasts and the round swell of my belly.