Ash’s eyes met mine as he inched slowly over to me, like I wouldn’t notice that I felt warmer the closer in proximity he came to me. He didn’t say anything, kept silent. Ash had an interrupting problem, so this surprised me, but I went on.
“But the worst part is that it was both of them. No matter what happened later, it was both of them. They continued to do it for quite a few years after I decided to live in Manhattan. They played little games, and I was still young, and I didn’t know who to please and who to listen to. They asked me to lie for each other, and it just got confusing. I felt like they were just constantly mad, mad at each other, mad at me.”
I took a deep breath, and when it came out, it was shaky. Ash was right next to me, my shoulder pressing right into his arm.
“Then all the truth came out. My mom started seeing this guy Caspar, Caspar with an ‘A’ which matched his super pretentious personality. This was before she left to Nebraska. She was renting some shabby thing in Brooklyn. And when I was there, he was just always there. When we went to the movies or the park or when she took me shopping, he was always there. She called him a friend, but I wasn’t allowed to tell my dad about him. And I hated having to lie to my dad. I mean, okay, I lie to him about things all the time, like spending the night at Madison’s house when I’m really going to midnight showings of Rocky Horror Picture Show, but this was just too much.” My fists balled up as the memories came back to me. “My mom finally was making the move to Nebraska; she was leaving in a week, and she was still hoping to convince me to come.”
“We were at a diner with my dad, and they were talking, but it was just, god, all kinds of awkward. My mom kept talking like my dad was just going to send me on the plane in a week, and I just…I don’t know what happened.” I broke off, and looked up at him. “I just got confused. It was so hard to keep everyone’s stories separate, and the lies and the truth and the half-truths. I asked my mom whether Caspar was going with her to Nebraska.”
“I knew immediately that I had something wrong, and not just because my mom had told me not to say anything. She looked horrified, angry, upset, and I had never seen her so red in my life. My dad…to this day, I still have never seen him as upset and angry as he was that day. What we’ve seen in the past few weeks, it’s nothing. He started yelling, and she started yelling back. He was screaming ‘how could you let him around our child?’ and she was trying to calm him down. I didn’t even really understand what was going on.”
“Turns out, Caspar was my mom’s boyfriend, and he had been my mom’s boyfriend for quite a while. From what I gathered, Caspar had been around for about a year before my parents had officially announced their separation,” I said, feeling the anger, the confusion, the frustration all piling back into my voice. “And I couldn’t handle it. Before, I was angry at both of them, but suddenly I forgot about all the things I’d been mad about before.”
I saw Ash’s hand on his lap, inching closer to mine, and I found myself wanting to reach for it. I took a deep breath and clasped my hands together to keep myself from doing anything incredibly stupid. “And so I chose to live in New York, with my dad. She moved to Nebraska, and she married Caspar about six months later, where I was lovingly forced to be her maid of honor in a small casino chapel in Vegas, complete with a fat Elvis. I get to see the two of them twice a year, for either Christmas or Thanksgiving, and half of spring break.”
I turned back to Ash and was surprised when his face was mere inches away from me, a hair’s breadth away. His breath was hot on my cheek, and I felt my heart slamming in my chest at how close he was. There was a very serious expression on his face, not like any one that I had seen before, and I felt my breath catch in my throat as he moved closer.
Shit. Ash was going to kiss me.
HE WAS SO CLOSE; I could see every single stupid, thick, black eyelash and every white vein spreading like lightning through his blue eyes. His lips came closer; they were so close. I wanted to pull him toward me and forget everything. I wanted to forget about my mom and Caspar and the fact that I had to be there out of all places in the world. I wanted to forget Madison and Bandit and my beautiful city. I wanted to lose myself in him, and feel anything besides fear or pain or heartbreak.
I couldn’t believe how close he was and how I wanted to close the minuscule distance between us and feel something, anything but the pain of the past 72 hours. I wondered for a moment what Madison would have thought of this situation.
Just then, there was a loud snap, jerking the two of us away from each other. I grabbed my gun, clutching it tight in my hand. I scanned the area around us, looking for any hint of blue.
“It was probably an animal or something,” Ash said, pulling me closer to him.