“You’re ridiculous.”
What is happening right now? Why is he talking like this is totally normal?
“I wish we could just go out for coffee or something like normal people,” he says.
“You’re not allowed to have coffee with girls?” I say. “What is this, the 1950s?”
“People talk,” he says. “This island is so small.”
I have done so much in the last few days, but I have never done this.
“Maybe we could go hiking,” I say. “No one could find us in the forest.”
“I get so frustrated with hiking,” Ash says. “It’s so slow. I always want to run.”
“What’s your big hurry?” I say.
He laughs. “That sounds like a joke my dad would make.”
Something constricts in my belly and I don’t know why. Like for a split second, I miss my dads more than anything in the world, even though they’re just in the other room.
Dad jokes. What a wonderful thing.
“How is your dad?” I say.
There’s silence for a long time. “Thanks for asking. No one ever asks.”
Not even Ivy? What do they talk about when I’m not around?
“I think he wants out of this life, like he wants to do something crazy. My mom’s been moving all the money to different accounts so he can’t do anything with it without her permission. She thinks he wants to join one of those communes where they take all your money and you go live in a yurt in the middle of nowhere and no one ever hears from you again.”
“What do you think about that?”
“Honestly, I don’t think it’s a bad idea. It’ll kill him to go back to his old life.”
Can anyone ever really do that? Go back to their old life after they crack? Some holes are too big to patch back up.
“I was thinking about asking my dad if he could pull some strings and hook me up with some A-Corp music people,” Ash says. “I bet he’d do it, even if it’s just to piss off Mom.” He laughs. “She wanted me to be part of the A-Corp family dynasty, didn’t she? People should be careful what they wish for.”
I feel the crush and squeeze of something inside me. Why is everything so easy for him? Just a few phone calls by his dad and he has a music career? Why doesn’t he have to work his way up the way Ivy did? All he has to do is decide what he wants and it’s his.
“I like talking to you like this,” Ash says. “When things are calm. I can talk to you about stuff I can’t talk about with anyone else.”
I am a secret being kept from a secret.
* * *
• • •
In the afternoon, Ivy sends a group text that she’s coming home early.
When are you getting back? Ash texts.
I don’t know. When I can get a flight. I’m taking a nap now. Turning off my phone.
How’d the meeting go? Ash texts, but she does not answer.
Are you okay? he texts. But she is gone.
* * *
• • •
I am waiting for Ivy at her pool, floating in the water in her bikini, drinking her drink, willing the sun to turn me the same shade of golden.
The last she told us was she was still trying to get a flight out of LAX. Something about another government shutdown. Something about protesting airport employees. Something about a bomb scare at O’Hare.
There is an air quality advisory because of the smoke. The elderly and infirm and small children are supposed to stay inside. I don’t know what I am doing out here. I am pretending things are different than they are.
I hear a rustling in the bushes. I see a pair of eyes. Long limbs emerging. A deer found its way here through the forest.
Ash is shirtless, covered with sweat. “There you are,” he says. He takes off his running shoes and socks and dives into the pool. For a moment, there is silence as he glides underwater toward me, and my body bobs up and down from the waves he made. He pops his head out of the water just inches from mine.
Deer know how to swim. They can go from island to island. That’s something not everyone knows.
“Hey,” he says.
“Hey,” I say. “I was just going to get out.”
“Okay.”
We stand in the shade, toweling off.
“You shouldn’t be running in this weather,” I say, watching a drop of water run from his shoulder down his chest across the ridges of his ribs and stomach.
“You shouldn’t be swimming,” he says, hooking his finger under the strap of my swimsuit and pulling it down over my shoulder. He steps closer, puts his other hand on my hip and pulls me to him. My head goes cloudy. All I can feel is my body pulsing, pulling toward his, the heat where we make contact, the need for everything to touch.
But then I think of Ivy, alone, in a big city even more polluted than this one. I see her wearing a face mask on her way to her meeting, trying not to mess up her makeup and hair. I feel the timid hope inside her chest as she steps out of the car, as she walks, a little wobbly, to the sliding glass doors at the bottom of a skyscraper. Maybe she says something like “I have an appointment” to the security guard behind the podium in the middle of the giant, windowed space that was designed by some architect for awe and intimidation. She takes an elevator up, to a different part of the sky where powerful men reside. The receptionist at the front desk eyes her with a smirk and Ivy gets a sinking feeling this is nothing new at all.
I pull away from Ash. His fingers are still tangled in the strap of Ivy’s bikini. “Aren’t you supposed to be hanging out with Tami today?”
He looks stung. He drops his hand. “I played sick. I wanted to be with you.”
“Why?” I want to ask him. “You have Tami, you have Ivy, why do you need another girl?”
“Are you in a bad mood? Did something happen?”
Did something happen? I don’t know. So many things have happened. So many things keep happening, and I can’t keep track.
Where is Ivy? Why isn’t she home yet? What happened that made her have to leave early?
“I think I have to go,” I say.
Ash looks confused, like I am some upside-down version of a girl, not a species he recognizes. He is not used to being rejected.
Something in me burns, but it is not passion. This is a different kind of fire, one that wants to destroy, one that wants to see him burn, wants to see everyone burn. Who does he think he is that he can have whatever and whoever he wants?