“Yeah, but you’re going to have to pay for that boat,” she says. “The whole thing’s in your name. I’m just down as a passenger.”
“Hopefully the security deposit covers catastrophic loss of boat,” I respond. I kiss her on the lips.
She smiles. “Thanks,” she says.
“For what?” I ask.
“For not being a dick,” she answers. “You helped me snap out of it when I was too freaked to realize what was happening was happening, but you weren’t mean. You said what you needed to say and you were very reassuring, thank you.”
“You taste like lake water,” I tell her. “Gross.”
She smiles, chuckles, shakes her head. This might be the closest we’ve ever been and I only had to sink a boat to do it.
Actually, I’m not going to tell Ash this, but I’m pretty sure the whole thing’s her fault.
Shh…
“Well, I’m glad someone’s having a good time!” a voice comes from toward the shop.
Ash and I look over and there’s the boat rental guy in full scuba gear, holding the hooked end of a rope on a wench.
I feel bad for the guy, I really do, but the sight is just too much and I start laughing. That might have been forgivable, but the fact that I’m in hysterics has caused Ash to start busting a gut, and I think we might be giving boat shop guy the wrong impression.
“I’m—” I laugh.
“We’re so—” Ash cracks up.
I try again with, “We didn’t mean to—” but it doesn’t work. The very fact that we can’t get through what we’re trying to say because we’re laughing is only making us both laugh harder.
“I’m keeping your deposit, Chuckles!” the man shouts before putting his mouthpiece in, his facemask on and walks into the lake, grumbling in muffled grunts as he slowly disappears into the water.
“You know,” I tell Ash, “that might have been the most amazing thing I’ve ever seen.”
“I know! He’s like Mr. Underwater Tow Truck, isn’t he?” she chortles.
I kiss her again and then lie back and look at the sky above, making sure my hand finds Ash’s. She scoots over next to me and rests her head on my chest.
“We should probably wait and help him get the boat drained and back wherever it needs to go when he gets out of there,” I say.
“You’re such a Boy Scout,” Ash says, patting me on the chest.
“We did sink his boat and then laugh in his face uncontrollably about it,” I tell her. “It just seems like common courtesy to give the guy a hand.”
When the owner of the boat rental shop surfaces, holding the line between the boat and the wench to make sure the connection stays taut, Ash and I get up and help him. Until that, though, we’re just lying here on the cool grass huddled together both for warmth and affection.
By the time we finish helping the owner of the boat shop, Morris, undo most of the damage that we’d done, he’s offering to give us our deposit back. We turn it down, though. He definitely earned it.
The world is a great, gorgeous fairy tale until we’re driving back to my place and we have to pull over before we get there.
There are five police cars in front of my house—two in the driveway, two off the curb and one on the front lawn—and the near-immaculate moment Ash and I were enjoying together craters into brimstone.
Ash gets out of the car, but I hesitate.
I know exactly what happened. Maybe not the specifics of what he did this time, or even whether this is just the fallout of another scam-gone-bad from who knows when, but the police aren’t there because someone broke into my house.
I get out of the car, more for the sake of not leaving Ash out there by herself than anything, and policemen start coming out the front door of my house.
“You don’t have anything in there that would give you away as a boxer—fighter,” she sighs. “You know what I mean.”
“No,” I tell her. “There’s a lot of MMA stuff, but nothing that would give away anything. This is all him.”
When they bring Chris out of the house, Ash grabs my hand. We’re in front of the neighbor’s house, but he sees me. I don’t know what the look on his face is, but there’s almost a ferocity to it back somewhere beneath the expressionless face itself.
I don’t try to get closer or try to stop it. I don’t call out that I’ll have his bail tonight or that everything’s going to be okay.
I don’t want to lie.
We just stare at each other until he’s put in the back of a police car.
Chapter Twelve
The Fourth Letter in the Alphabet and the Longest River in the World
Ash
“Good morning!” Mason’s voice comes out of a dream and into my irritating reality.
“Why are you waking me up ever?” I drone, my face a little more than half covered by the pillow.
“It’s nine,” he says. “It’s late. Come on, I made you breakfast.”
“Great,” I moan. “You can eat it yourself, which should give you the strength to try again in another three hours.”
“Come on, Ash,” he says cheerily. “It’s a beautiful day outside.”
I put my whole face in the pillow now and wonder if I have the resolve to be the first person to intentionally smother herself with a pillow. After a couple of seconds with decreased oxygen, though, I decide to live. Even if that means I have to get out of bed.
I turn my head to the side, catch a bit of sunlight too directly in the eye, and I’m strongly reconsidering my options.
Mason’s been Mason for the most part, but that’s kind of the problem. For the first hour or two after Chris got taken away, Mason just said he didn’t want to talk about it. After that, it was like a switch just flipped and everything was fine.
Now, when the topic of Chris comes up, he says, “What happened is what happened.”
Breakfast out of bed at nine o’clock in the morning on my day off, though? This must be stopped.
My knuckles hit the floor shortly after my feet do as I drag myself out of bed. It’s been nice staying at Mason’s, but he’s got to stop picking my clothes off the floor before I’ve had a chance to get up in the morning.
I walk over to the dresser where my clothes are all folded neatly—okay, the folding is new—and I get dressed. The television is on as I enter the living room and Mason’s just coming around the corner from the kitchen.
“Oh hey,” he says. “I didn’t know if you fell back asleep or not. Breakfast is ready when you are.”
“Mason,” I tell him. “You have to let me sleep.”
“Ooh,” he says, “come check this out.”
He grabs my hand and leads me into the kitchen. I’ll give him this much, breakfast does smell really good.
Sleep smells better.
“Look,” he says. “There’s been a chipmunk going up and down that tree all morning. I’ve never seen it before.”
“That’s because only chipmunks and the elderly are awake this early,” I tell him.
“It’s nine o’clock,” he says. “Most people are at work by now.”