That hope didn’t last long after Marc learned she’d left the halfway house again. And it appeared she’d even left the state.
Florida, George thought, because he knew she had friends down there. But he wasn’t certain. George had asked Marc if he wanted him to hire a private investigator to track her down, but Marc had said no.
Marc once told me if she didn’t love him enough to stay clean, then she wasn’t worth anything he had to offer.
So he stayed with George and, of course, he had me.
Even though he pretended to hate me.
It never stopped me from trying to change his mind. At first, I knew I only wanted him to be my friend. But now, sitting on a lounge chair by the pool, watching him—with his shirt off—run the vacuum back and forth in the water, his lean body tan all over, I felt like I wanted him to be something else.
Maintaining the pool was one of Marc’s chores. He had a bunch around the estate. When I asked my father if I should have chores, he chuckled and patted my head. So I watched Marc do his chores and if I ever asked him if I could help, he told me to get lost.
He told me to get lost a lot, but I didn’t listen.
Because I loved him, and maybe I wanted him to kiss me.
It was just recently my father had begun to tell me to stay away from Marc. He said boys his age weren’t to be trusted. I wasn’t exactly sure what that meant. But when you’re fourteen, and the only other teenager you have access to lives on the same estate, that was sort of impossible.
Instead, I did what I always did with Marc. I annoyed him with questions until he answered me.
“Are you excited about going back to school?” I asked him.
He grunted.
“You’re going to be a junior this year. You’ll get to go to prom. Have you thought about who you’re going to take?”
He rolled his eyes. “No. Prom isn’t until the end of the year. I’m not thinking about it now.”
Good, I thought. Because another hurdle in all of the hurdles I had to leap over to get to Marc, would be other girls his age who looked at him like I did. Who would study the way his shoulders were getting so wide, while his waist stayed narrow.
Who thought his dark brown eyes were soulful.
Girls, who were going to show up to his soccer games just to get his attention, even though I’d been to every one since he’d started playing. A small concession my father had granted me as a way to potentially mingle, but not for too long at a time, with people my own age.
It didn’t really work. The mingling with other kids. I just sat by myself in the bleachers and watched Marc play. When he scored, I cheered. When he lost, I tried to offer him bottles of Gatorade, which he inevitably took, then told me to get lost. I think it embarrassed him with his friends to be seen hanging out with me, considering he was sixteen and I was only fourteen.
“Think you’re going to be captain of the team this year?” I asked him. Because that’s how it worked with us. I just kept poking and poking until he either answered or told me to leave him alone.
He shrugged. “Dunno. Maybe.”
“I bet you will be. Even though you’re only a junior, all the guys look up to you. Even the seniors.”
“What do you know about it?” he asked with a smirk.
He didn’t really acknowledge that I came to all his games. At least he never mentioned it. If he did acknowledge me, it was only because I had extra Gatorade. But I watched everything when it came to him, and I could see how the guys would take his lead whenever he was on the field. Directing them the way he wanted them to go, to set up for an attempt on goal.
Marc didn’t talk a lot. Not with me. Not with George, who I think he’d come to respect, if not love. But when he did talk, his words always carried weight because they were thoughtful. Never careless.
He was only ever careless with me.
I stretched out on the lounger to show off the tankini I was wearing. I was just starting to get breasts, and watching him without his shirt on had made my nipples hard. Did he notice? Did it make him think about kissing me?
“What do you think of my new suit?” I asked finally, forcing him to look at me.
“I don’t.”
I wasn’t deterred. I was on a mission to make him love me. I knew there were so many things in our way, but it was just going to take time.
Lots and lots of time.
He stopped running the vacuum along the bottom of the pool and looked at me. “Why don’t you go to school? Get your own fucking life instead of living through me.”
“You know why,” I said quietly.
“You’re fourteen, not a kid anymore. Tell your dad you want to go to school. You’re such a freak I don’t know if you’ll make friends, but maybe there will be some other freaks who will like you. I’m serious, Ash…”
There it was. The arrow that shot right to my heart and made me realize all my poking at Marc was worth it. Because every once in a while, he called me Ash.
No one called me Ash. I was Ashleigh to my father, my tutor, my nurse and my doctor. Peanut to George, but that didn’t really count.
I was Ash only to Marc. Who made me think of kissing and made me aware of my nipples and was mostly mean to me…but sometimes not.
“I’ll try,” I told him. I hadn’t had a serious attack in years. The thought of going to school was scary as heck, because he was right. Most kids would know me as a home-schooled freak. Still, it would be better than what I had now.
If we were at the same school, I would get to see him more than at home and at his soccer games.
“You should. Otherwise this estate is going to be your whole life, princess. And that would suck.”
I was rich. I had a big house and father who would give me mostly anything I wanted. My life shouldn’t suck.
Only Marc was right. It kind of did.
Later that night
Ashleigh
Daddy was home tonight, and, when he was home, I was expected at dinner. At seven o’clock sharp I arrived at the table wearing a proper dress for the occasion. My father did what he usually did, which was to size up my appearance then grunt his approval.
We didn’t talk much at these dinners. Mostly because I had nothing to talk about other than Marc, and I was supposed to barely admit he existed. Anytime I did mention Marc, it irritated my father.
It was so bad George had to ask me never to discuss Marc with my father. It was my father’s wishes that we didn’t interact, so as far as he was concerned, we didn’t. And we probably wouldn’t have, if I wasn’t always forcing the issue.
Today Marc had to talked me. Had given me advice like I mattered. Like he cared. It was enough of a boost of courage to push me to ask for what I wanted, and what I wanted was to be normal.
“Daddy, I was thinking now that I’m older…I should go to high school.”
He lifted his eyes above the glasses he now wore to see his food more clearly. My father was significantly older than most fathers of teenagers. He was turning sixty next year. I was a child from his second marriage. My mother was twenty years younger than him.
He was still handsome in the traditional sense. Always impeccably dressed, hair and nails trimmed, fit physique, but there was no getting around the white hair that signified his age.