FULL NOVELXO : Chapter 33
ASHLEIGH BEATS ME into work on Friday.
She doesn’t look up as I round the desk to take my spot, or when I pick up the paper Fika-stamped cup already by my mouse.
On its side, someone has written Ashleigh’s name, though somehow spelled much more incorrectly than if the barista had simply gone with Ashley.
Out of the corner of her eye, she catches me sniffing it, and her pink-painted lips curl. “It’s not poisoned, if that’s what you’re wondering.”
“I was more worried about urine,” I joke.
“Well, after you taste it, let me know if you think there’s too much cardamom in my diet.”
I take another sniff and a sip. Spicy-sweet perfection. “Thank you.” I chance a look her way, but her eyes are glued to her monitor, nails clacking against her keyboard.
“A few of us went in on it,” she deadpans.
“Give them my regards,” I say.
She’s not ready for more chitchat than that, it seems, so we fall into quietly working at our separate stations. Still, it’s a start. From back in the office, Harvey gives me a knowing wink and a thumbs-up, confirming tomorrow night’s plan is in motion.
It leads me north up the peninsula, then toward the shore, the final right turn rapidly approaching.
I duck my head to peer out the passenger window and slam on my brakes as a break in the foliage reveals a low, squat house tucked back from the road.
The car behind me honks, and I put on my blinker as I ease onto the flagstone driveway. It curves back and down to a sleek midcentury pseudo-mansion.
Behind it, the bay glitters, the view uninterrupted apart from a few pine trees.
I’d assumed Ashleigh never wanted to hang out at her place because she preferred to keep her social life separate from her life as a mom. Now I wonder if she was just playing coy about being absolutely loaded.
I park in front of the bright orange double doors, each slotted with a stack of narrow rectangular windows, and motion-sensor lights flick on. Despite the little sign picketed into the planter, Harvey has assured me that Ashleigh doesn’t actually have a security system.
In fact, he’s pretty sure she found the sign in someone’s trash after Duke moved out.
The spare key is exactly where he said it would be, under an empty pot around the side of the house.
Two nights ago, when we hatched this plan, Harvey and I were both so sure this would only delight Ashleigh. Now I’m less certain. I am, essentially, breaking and entering.
I step over the threshold, prepared to bolt if the alarm sounds. It doesn’t.
I take off my shoes and wander deeper, the terrazzo entryway giving way to a hallway on the right, followed by a massive chef’s kitchen with flush walnut cabinets and a Sputnik chandelier spanning the island. On the left, there’s a sunken, seventies-style living room with a semicircular couch wound around a fireplace.
I follow the hallway to the first bedroom: a guest room, I’d guess, based on the bland pseudo-coastal decor. The next room is covered with RPG franchise posters and drawings of anime characters.
At the end of the hall, I reach a bedroom nearly the size of our apartment, complete with a walk-in closet that feeds into the en suite bathroom of my dreams.
If that weren’t a clear enough indicator that this is Ashleigh’s room, there’s also the tarp, paint buckets, and paint rollers sitting in one corner, unused.
There isn’t much else in the room. A bed, a dresser, a side table. I wonder whether Duke took most of the furniture with him. There’s a sadness to this space that I didn’t expect.
It feels like a place that used to be home.
I hope it can be again. Ashleigh deserves that.
I set my stuff down, grab the unopened roll of painter’s tape, and get to work.
It takes an hour just to tape everything off. Then I do the first coat of the upper cut-in and step down from the step stool I found in the garage to admire my handiwork before starting the lower cut-in.
I’m nearly finished with the first coat when a throat clears behind me.
I whirl around, brandishing my paintbrush like it’s a sword.
Ashleigh stands with her arms crossed, one jet-black brow sharply raised.
“You’re back,” I say.
“And you’re listening to Adele’s greatest and saddest,” she replies.
I grab my phone from the step stool’s cupholder and hit pause. Onscreen, I see the beginning of a text from Harvey: Sorry, I did my best but . . .
“Is poker night over already?” I ask.
“The randomly scheduled poker night that suddenly had to be this Saturday, because every other night this month was booked, for everyone?” Ashleigh says. “That poker night?”
I grimace.
“I only went to see what the hell was going on,” she says. “Next time you want to keep a secret from me, you should know how terrible Harvey is at lying. And you. You were weird at work.”
She’s right. I should’ve seen this coming.
After a fraught silence, she says, “You look like shit.”
“Thank you?” I say.
She smiles. Pesky hope climbs my rib cage.
“If you hate it,” I say quickly, “I’ll paint it all back. And I don’t have to do it while you’re here, even. Or if you love it, I can finish it while you go watch Real Housewives, or while you’re out or whatever.”
Her razor-edged brow lifts again. “So this is penance.”
“This is me following through on what I said I’d do,” I say. “Late, obviously. And you’re not obligated to forgive me because of it. It’s not a trade. And I know an over-the-top gesture doesn’t make up for being generally shitty. I would love it if you forgave me, but if you don’t feel like you can, for whatever reason, I understand.”
Her tongue runs over her bottom teeth. Slowly, she saunters toward me, her green eyes sharp and lips pursed. She stops right in front of me, arms still crossed.
Then she grabs me. Hugs me. Uncomfortably tight, almost painful, ultimately perfect. “I’m sorry too,” she says.
“For what?!” I cry, alarmed.
“I may have overreacted,” she says. “It’s just, sometimes I feel like the whole last decade was a wash for me, minus Mulder. Like I’m starting over from scratch, and so everything needs to be exactly right as soon as possible to make up for lost time. I just got so excited to have a new, real friendship, and I put too much pressure on it.”
I shake my head. “I hurt you. I did the exact thing we literally bonded over hating. I don’t think you overreacted.”
She draws back. “You did do that, but I could’ve left you a voice mail, or texted you or something, when I realized it was happening. Instead . . .” She sighs. “Instead I waited to, like, bust you.”
Seemingly in a hard right turn, she says: “I told you I’d picked out a marriage counselor for me and Duke? Even though he wouldn’t agree to go to one?”
I nod.
“Well, by the time our first appointment rolled around, we’d split, but it was too late to cancel without paying a fee. So I went. And I thought I was showing up to, like, complain about him. Which I definitely did.”
“Of course,” I say.
“But I kept going. And I realized I had this tendency. To set up tests. Like, How long can I be in the room before he looks up from his phone? Or, If I don’t say anything, will he ever do the laundry? Or, If I never suggest we get together with friends or do anything fun, will he be the one to make plans, or does it all fall on me?
“Which made sense. I was tired of having the same conversations over and over again and never getting different results. So, yes, you went into the love-bubble slow-fade with Miles, but let he among us who’s never done that throw the first stone, or whatever. My point is, you’re not my ex-husband, and this wasn’t your four-hundred-and-twentieth strike. You blew me off. Big deal. It happens.”
“What happened to When people tell you who they are, believe them?” I say, still waiting for a trapdoor to open in the floor.
“All your actions told me,” she says, “is that you’re human. Which is good, because I don’t think I have it in me to be friends with someone who’s perfect. No more than I have it in me to be friends with someone who says one thing and does another ten times a month. I’m going to hurt you at some point too. I don’t want to, but it’ll happen. I have a kid! I have a whole life! Just like you.
“But I don’t want to lose this friendship over one fight, just because I’m scared it could happen again. You’re becoming kind of important to me, Daphne.”
“Kind of?” I squeak out.
“Kind of really important,” she amends.
I only realize I’m crying when I see the alarm splash across Ashleigh’s face. “Hey!” She grabs my arms, nails sinking into my biceps. “It’s okay! Really!”
“I don’t want to be a person who does that to people,” I say. “Maybe that’s what’s wrong. Maybe that’s why I can’t . . . I can’t—”
“Daphne. Chill for a second,” she says, somehow stern without being unkind. “Tell me what’s going on.”
I shake my head. “We’re talking about us. I can deal with the other stuff later.”
“Honey!” She tugs me over to sit at the foot of her velvet-upholstered bed. “Friends talk about the other stuff.”
When I meet her gaze, her brow is grooved with concern. I feel an intense crush of love for her then, and fresh shame that I could ever forget this person’s birthday, regret that I missed out on what, honestly, would’ve been an amazing Saturday night. After everything with Dad, I’d wanted so badly to escape myself, my life, that I forgot about all the beautiful little pieces of it I’ve been acquiring like sea glass these last few months. Things that no one can take from me.
I sniff. “It’s really okay. I feel better just having everything out in the open between us.”
“Hey,” she says. “Remember me? Ashleigh? I always want to talk about it. So back up. Is this or is it not about you shitting where you eat, with regard to Miles?”
“There was no shitting involved,” I say. “I’m not that adventurous.”
“Holy shit!” she cries, at the nonverbal confirmation. She scoots forward, dropping her voice. “It happened! How was it? Did he just stare lovingly into your eyes the whole time? He seems like a loving-starer.”
My cheeks heat. “No, we didn’t make unblinking eye contact for forty minutes straight.”
“Forty minutes?” she shrieks.
“Not all at once!” I hurry to add. “It was more like a very intense fifteen minutes, a cooldown period, and then a more well-paced thirty later.”
“Okay, now this surprises me,” she says.
“Trust me,” I say. “I’m well aware of how little sense he and I make.”
She scoffs. “No, you two make perfect sense. I just would’ve imagined Miles would be so overeager that he’d sail straight through to the finish line, with no decorum.”
“There was decorum,” I say.
“Hot, charming guys never learn how to work for it,” she muses.
“He worked for it.” Immediately I want to take it back.
I’ve never had this kind of friendship before, the sort you see women have in movies, where they spare each other none of the gory or lusty details, the best friend who teaches you how to put in a tampon at thirteen, or texts you from the bathroom the night she sleeps with someone for the first time.
Sadie was the closest to that I ever got, but she’d grown up with brothers and always had more guy friends than girls. She was talkative and funny, but never open about things like this.
And as close as I’ve gotten to Ashleigh, I’m also worried this is a betrayal. I don’t know how Miles would feel about me sharing this. I have the somewhat ludicrous thought that I should have asked him when we last talked.
Actually, it’s not ludicrous. I can easily imagine the conversation, how not weird it would feel to ask, Can I tell Ashleigh?
Which only makes me feel more emotionally hungover and confused. Every time I think of Miles, I think of what he said, and my heart starts racing, my whole body responding like I’m being hunted. No fight, pure flight.
“I shouldn’t be talking about this,” I say.
“Maybe,” she says gently, “you need to?”
I must look suspicious, because she adds, “I swear, I’m saying this as a friend, not the friendly neighborhood gossipmonger.”
“I need to talk about it,” I relent. “Just not about it. I feel like that should’ve stayed private.”
She pantomimes zipping her lips shut, but hasn’t even finished when she chimes in, “But for what it’s worth, everything you’ve said has only made me love and respect him more.”
“Miles is great,” I say. “I just don’t think Miles and I are great for each other.”
“Why?” Ashleigh asks. “You’re unbelievably happy when you’re around him. That’s kind of the main thing that matters.”
“I’m exactly the kind of person he can’t handle being with, and he’s exactly the kind who could destroy me,” I explain.
“Honey.” Ashleigh touches my hand. “That’s how it works. That’s love.”
“I get too swept up in him, Ash,” I say. “I almost let myself get absorbed again, and for what? I know better.”
“You’re being too hard on yourself,” she says.
“He ran, Ashleigh.” My voice breaks. “He was supposed to pick me up from work the next day, and he just . . . never came.”
Her mouth falls open as she takes in my meaning.
“I didn’t hear from him for hours. Until I texted him.”
“Oh, god, Miles, no,” she groans, like he’s here to reason with.
“And then, Peter came by,” I say.
“Holy fuck!” she yelps.
“He and Petra broke up.”
Another shocked gasp. “No,” she says, aghast. “Miles didn’t . . .”
“He says he was just helping her move her stuff out,” I say. “But Peter said they’re on the path to rekindling.”
“What in Satan’s ball sack?” she demands, then, thinking better of it, says, “Look, Peter’s bitter, and Miles is a nice guy. Of course he helped her move out.”
“I know,” I say. He wouldn’t tell me he loved me if he intended to get back together with Petra. Maybe it’s naive, but I really believe that. Or maybe I just want to.
“That’s not the point,” I say.
“It’s certainly a point,” Ashleigh says, “if not the point.”
“There’s a job,” I blurt. “Near my mom. I think I have a real shot at getting it.”
She assesses me for a long beat. “Shit.”
“I wanted to tell you right away, but . . .”
She looks down at her hands. “I was icing you out.” She sighs and squeezes my hands. “When you move, just don’t forget about me, okay?”
“Trust me, I couldn’t,” I say tearily, and I mean it. “I could barely handle this last week without you. I don’t want to do that again.”
“Couldn’t agree more.” Her eyes drift up to the cut-in. “What a disgusting color.”
“It truly, truly is,” I say.
Her smile grows, eyes dropping to me. “Want to put on the TV and keep going?”
“Do you?” I ask.
“I think it’ll be fun to have an ugly room for a while,” she says. “Duke couldn’t abide ugliness. Or dogs.” She perks up. “Maybe I should get a dog.” She looks to me for feedback.
“I think you should do exactly what you want to do,” I tell her.
“Let’s rob a bank,” she says.
“I think you should get a dog.”