Ash2: He can see data usage. I want that to start dropping. Make him think I’m using the phone less and less.
I shook my head. This was crazy. And part of me wondered if she wasn’t adding to the drama. She said her father had threatened me to get her to go to Switzerland, but was that true? Would Landen really do something like that? I accepted it as fact because Ash wasn’t someone who lied, but this was all starting to sound a little crazy. I’d known Landen since I was twelve years old. I knew him to be a stuck-up prick who didn’t want me messing around with this daughter. Very typical for an uptight prick given my background. Not someone who Ash felt she had to play these kinds of games around.
Unless…
Me: Is there something you’re not telling me about your father?
Ash
I looked at the text and winced. Did I tell him about the trip my father made here last month? With his client—who I knew wasn’t a client—Evan Sanderson. Much like our interactions before, there was nothing untoward about Evan’s behavior with me. He was charming, polite, courteous. Maybe a little distant.
Arthur said they were here together looking at an investment opportunity in Zurich, and so, of course, they had to stop by and see me. They took me to dinner. Arthur and I made small talk about my progress at school, and Evan listened, albeit distractedly, as he was on his phone the entire time.
After dinner, we were standing outside the restaurant when Arthur went back inside to use the restroom. Evan apologized for his distraction and spoke about considering running for US Senator. The consultants advising him apparently never gave him a break.
The whole thing seemed as weird to me as those dinners at the house. Like there was something Arthur and Even knew, something they maybe thought I should know, but I didn’t.
It felt very ominous.
I considered all the things I hadn’t told Marc about Arthur, and knew I was breaking our no-secrets rule, but these were things he was better off not knowing. I took a hit of my inhaler, and felt my chest ease enough for me to take a full breath.
Me: I think I have to be cautious. I feel like he paid more attention to me than I realized when he was gone all that time I was growing up. Maybe he’s not looking at my data usage, maybe he is. Either way, I feel like I need to be one step ahead of him.
Marc: Ash, tell me you’re not making all of this up as some way to...hold my attention.
Hold his fucking attention?
I closed my eyes and puffed out a breath of frustration. Then I put both phones in my nightstand and didn’t reply. He didn’t understand what was happening. He didn’t know my father had hit me. Had come to visit me with his client only to witness me wheezing my way through dinner. Knowing the cold air was only exacerbating my condition. When I mentioned as much, he stopped any talk of me returning to the States.
My plan for the Christmas break was to hopefully convince him to allow me to go somewhere warm. A long week in Florida where I could have some relief from the constant cold. If Marc had a car, he could drive down and see me. Away from Harborview. Away from my father.
Maybe George could come, too, if Arthur let him have some time off.
That had been my plan.
Only now Marc thought I was lying? When I’d never lied to him about anything, ever . Only held back what I knew he didn’t want to hear. There was no way I would be able to go back to sleep, but I concentrated on my breathing, laying on my back, eyes closed.
Easy in, and out. In, and out.
Fifteen minutes later, my phones started to vibrate. First one, then the other. He would have texted. Would be angry I wasn’t texting back. He would tell himself that it didn’t matter.
Two minutes later, he called.
I didn’t want to talk to him. If I told him the truth about Arthur, and what I suspected Evan Sanderson wanted from me, he would only think I was making up more ridiculous lies.
I needed to not worry about that, and just continue with the plans I’d already set into motion.
2
Two weeks later
Marc
She wasn’t talking to me. I got it. I’d basically called her a liar.
Now I was sitting in a bar, getting shit-faced drunk, and, hopefully, about to get into a fight. I wanted to beat the shit out of someone. Or, just as effective would be having someone beat the shit out of me. So I could feel on the outside what I felt like on the inside.
You need me like air.
She’d told me that once and I told her she was delusional. Now, I wasn’t so sure, because this loss of connection felt like, felt like…
Being torn away from my mother.
And just like back then, I had no control over this. I couldn’t afford a plane ticket to Switzerland. Every penny I’d made at the restaurant, taking shifts evenings, weekends, and in between classes, had gone toward the car.
Because the car, like learning how to drive sooner than most people, like getting into Princeton, had been another step. Now I had freedom and autonomy of movement. I could go where I wanted, when I wanted.
Except I couldn’t drive across the ocean and shake her until she promised she wouldn’t shut me out again.
“This seat taken?”
I glanced up from the glass of whiskey that held all my thoughts, and turned my head to my right.
The seat next to me was obviously not taken and there were ten other open seats surrounding the bar, but she wanted to sit in that one.
She was older than me, late twenties, earlier thirties. Brunette, attractive and clearly looking for something. Or someone. It was the way she smiled, the open invitation in her eyes.
I sighed. “I’m looking for a fight, lady. Not to get fucked.”
“Your loss,” she said, and moved farther down the bar. I watched her walk away and thought how stupid that was. I hadn’t gotten laid since…since then. I told Ash there would be other women. She even said it herself, we weren’t in a relationship.
Taking her virginity was something I’d needed to do. For her. For me. But the sex was just that one night.
Maybe hooking up with a random woman was exactly what I needed to break free of this trap I was in. The trap I’d been in since I was twelve.
The Ashleigh Trap.
Only, I had no enthusiasm for it. After one more shot of whiskey, the idea of getting into a fight seemed pretty stupid, too. I didn’t need an arrest for assault or public brawling added to my record. Instead, I left the bar, got in my car, drove to campus and texted Ash again, for the hundredth time, telling her to text back.
Princeton
Marc
It was the middle of the night when my phone rang.
Disoriented, I scrambled for my phone and saw that it was just after two in the morning. Ash was calling on her normal phone, which was strange because she had to know it was the middle of the night. It wasn’t even a text to see if I might be awake. Instead she was calling.
“What’s wrong?” I answered. Because something was. Something worse than her anger toward me, if she was reaching out.
“Don’t be mad,” she croaked out.
Her voice was weak. Her breathing was shallow.
“Where are you?”
“Hospital,” she wheezed. “But I’m better. I’m better.”