Never Been Kissed (31 page)

“It’s me. Ashley.”

There was a pause, a long sigh. “Ash. Are you okay?”

“I am. I’m good. But you should know, a picture of me is going to surface in the next little bit.”

“What kind of picture?” His voice went all stern and big brother.

“A guy took a picture of me in a café. Very innocent, but he sent it to some TMZ place? I don’t have any clue what that is.”

“Heavy-duty gossip show and website.”

Ashley kicked a leaf off the step and watched it flutter to the ground.

“I guess it’s time for me to come out of hiding.”

“I can have a car pick you up and—”

“No. No, that’s … I’m going to stay here.”

“Where is here?”

“Bishop, Arkansas. It’s a tiny town about an hour and a half away from West Memphis.”

“Are you really okay?”

“I’m fine.”

“Have you even seen a doctor again?” Harrison asked. “What about your stitches?”

“Brody took them out.”

Harrison’s silence was deep and thick.

“You can’t hide forever, Ashley.”

“For the first time in years, I’m not hiding,” she said. “I’m just getting on with my life.”

“In Bishop, Arkansas?”

“It’s not Dadaab, I would think that should satisfy everyone.”

“Mother won’t be satisfied until you’re back in your old bedroom at the mansion.”

“What Mother wants doesn’t matter anymore.”

“Well, listen to you … It’s about time you realized that.”

“It took me a while, but I’m done running from her and from who I am.”

“Good, because my office has had about a million media requests for you.
The Today Show, 60 Minutes, Newsweek, Redbook,
the list goes on.”

She put her head in her hand and started rubbing at the headache blooming behind her forehead. “I don’t know what to do first.”

“Well, first, I think you should let me come get you—”

“Harrison. I’m not leaving.”

“Okay, then issue a statement. You’re going to have some photographers there, but they’ll lose interest pretty fast, I imagine, once they see you’re not hiding anything. I can have Jill, my press secretary, look through the requests and pick out the best ones and we can start scheduling some things.”

“Forward all the requests to me,” she said. “I can sort through them. If I have questions, I’ll call Jill. I can use Joanie for support.”

“At the foundation?”

“Yeah. I also have some thoughts for a community project down here.”

Harrison’s laughter was a sweet sound from her childhood and she was reminded that her brother had been the first really good man in her life. He’d managed to keep the sterling core of himself untarnished in the business of politics.

“You just can’t help yourself, can you?”

“Apparently not.”

“What’s the project?”

“I’m starting a senior transportation initiative.”

Harrison laughed. “Mention that in your statement and no one will bother you.”

“Not very sexy, is it?”

“The important stuff usually isn’t. You can take the foundation over from Joanie. It can be yours to use however you want.”

“That always came with strings attached.”
Don’t go to Africa and you can run the foundation however you want.

“You’re a grown woman, Ashley. You don’t have to run halfway around the world to get Mom to stop controlling you. Cut the strings yourself.”

“What about you?” she asked. Mom and Harrison were a team, of sorts. Locked in a weird symbiotic relationship.

“I entered into the family business, Ash. It’s not so simple for me. I need her and she knows that.”

Ashley used to wish she had the relationship that her brother seemed to have with Patty. They talked the same language, understood politics in a way that left her baffled and reeling. But now, listening to the resignation in his voice, she wondered if maybe she didn’t have it easier. To not need her mother seemed like a blessing.

“I have a favor to ask.” Harrison took a deep breath and she imagined him pinching together that crease over his nose. “I could use your help on the campaign. Voters will respond to you and your story … I hate to say it, Ashley, but they’ll be fascinated by your experience.”

“By
my story
you mean my three weeks of horror?”

“Yes. It’s ugly, I know. But it’s a tight race for the seat in Congress, and I could use every bit of help I can get.”

He would be an excellent congressman—and possibly president someday, if Patty was to be believed.

Ashley shifted on the steps, the need to hang up and run, to throw herself into something that was not touched by her family, something that was both simple and hard, something her family wouldn’t touch with a ten-foot pole was a very hard impulse to control.

But leaving Dadaab, finding her own life, meant living on the same continent as her very prominent family, and that required compromise. Compromise and backbone.

“I will help you at three different events. You pick which ones and let me know.”

“Three events?”

“Yes.”

“My choice.”

“Yes.”

“Three weeks from now, Tuesday, September 10, I have a fundraiser in Atlanta. It can be your first public appearance.”

She looked up at the pink and purple sky. Three weeks seemed very soon. “Mom and Dad will be there?”

“Of course.”

She nodded. Then it was perfect. Well, as perfect as she could hope for.

“Okay, I’ll do it. But on one condition.”

“This should be good.”

“You come and get me.”

“What?”

“You come out here and get me. Just you. No people. No driver. Just you, and stay for the weekend.”

“In Bishop, Arkansas?”

“Have you ever in your life been just Harrison, not Harrison Montgomery?”

“Once,” he said, surprising her. “It didn’t seem real.”

Something in his voice made her feel so bad for him. Like she was perhaps the lucky one. “Come and get me in ten days and I’m yours for the fundraiser.”

Harrison promised and they said their goodbyes.

She hung up and stared at the sky. The bats were out again. And she missed Brody.

Three weeks. All of this would be over in three weeks.

If she was going to survive on the memories of this time, she’d better make more.

Her heart a bewildering combination of heavy and light, she stood and went to find him.

Brody carried the grocery bags through the back door to Ed’s house and set them on the counter.

“I don’t like bananas,” Ed said from his spot at the table. His hand was worrying the handle of that cane.

“Then don’t eat them.”

“I don’t like wasting food.”

“I’ll take the bananas.” This had seemed like such a good idea when he left The Pour House. His father needed to eat food that wasn’t beige, so he’d stopped by the grocery store.

“I can’t eat apples. My teeth.”

Brody sighed, braced his hands on the counter. “This is what I get for trying to help.”

“I didn’t ask for help.”

“You asked me to stay!” he cried.

“Stay. Not get me fruit. You hired that girl for this.”

Brody nearly smiled, it was a good thing he never expected a radical change of heart from Ed.

“The question is, where’s Sean? Why isn’t he making sure you have some fresh food?”

Ed’s very long silence made him turn around.

“Look in the fridge.” Ed bit off the ends of all the words like cigars he couldn’t wait to smoke. Brody didn’t move and Ed shoved his cane into the handle on the fridge and used it to pull open the door.

Inside there were bags of grapes and peas.

“The peas don’t hurt my teeth,” he said. “Sean knows that and he brings me some every week.”

“I didn’t know.”

“Of course you didn’t know. You don’t want to know anything about your brother.”

Ed had never said that before, and while it was true, and Brody had lived with it for a long time, and he’d felt a lot of things about it, he’d never been ashamed. But with Ed’s eyes on him, he was ashamed that he’d run so far and so fast and coming back hurt like it did.

“You and your brother used to be friends.”

“We are friends.”

“Not like you were.”

“Are you hungry?” Brody asked, dodging the subject, like it was grenade lobbed at his head. “You want a sandwich?”

“You got peanut butter?”

“No. I have turkey and lettuce.”

Ed made a thick noise in his throat and Brody smiled as he pulled out two pieces of wheat bread and the cold cuts he’d bought.

“Sean says you’re helping with the bar.”

“I knocked down a wall.”

“He said you’re building the kitchen.”

“I’m just helping while I’m here. That’s all. At some point I have to go back to work.”

“I thought you were working now. Ashley.”

Brody made the same thick noise in the back of his throat, not yes, not no, not much more than
I acknowledge that you’re talking to me.

“If your job is like that, I understand why you love it.”

“Love it?” He put some of the low-fat mayonnaise he’d bought on the bread and then carefully made sure Ed couldn’t see the label. Ed would put mayo on everything including cardboard, but the low-fat kind would get a very turned-up nose.

“You don’t?”

“Love is a stretch.”

“That’s a shame. You should love your job.”

“Like you loved yours?” Every day at three his father had walked out that door, the newspaper tucked under his arm, the same dour expression on his face.

Brody put the second slice of bread on top, trying to hide the tomato he’d slipped in there, and turned to face Ed, whose dry-eyed earnestness made him pause.

“Of course I did, Brody. Did you … do you think I didn’t?”

“No. I didn’t think you cared one way or another about your job.”

Jesus Christ, why does he look so damn hurt. Or shocked. On the very mysterious list of things Ed loved, Linda and mayonnaise were the only sure bets. Sean maybe a distant third. On a good day.

“Did you think I loved you?”

The plate clattered onto the table. That look, that slightly accusing, mostly wounded look on his face was utterly repellent—it would have blown Brody halfway across the world if the counter didn’t stop him.

“You should eat the sandwich.” He turned, wrapped up the bread like it was a lone gunman going after the president.

“I did. I loved you. And I loved the bar, and Sean. I loved Linda.” His voice broke. “I loved my life, very much. I’m a grouchy son of a bitch, Brody, but I loved my life. Everyone should.”

Everyone should.
Like it was a choice.
Oh, you know, instead of egg salad, I’ll love my life.

Ashley, her face of bruises, cracking jokes to the doorman, sitting on that pier, kissing him, despite parents who didn’t respect her, all that she’d seen in Haiti and Japan and Africa, and being kidnapped by pirates, she’d made that choice.

“I don’t love tomatoes,” Ed said. “But nice try.”

There was a knock on the door and Ed made a giant valiant effort to stand but Brody patted him back down.

“I got it.”

He stepped into the living room just as the front door opened and Ashley walked in, holding a bag.

This is happy.

The thought was a hand clap in a quiet field, scattering a thousand birds from a thousand branches. This feeling that came in the room with her, that walked into his life with her—this was happy. And he spent so much time building walls and dams to keep it away from the blackness that was the rest of his life, as if this light might somehow infect him.

What if he just let it happen?

What calamitous event would take place if he … if he just let himself be happy? There were months, years ahead of him when she was gone to be a miserable son of bitch. So why not be happy now?

“What’s in the bag?” Brody asked with a smile.

“Wha—” Ashley had forgotten she was even carrying a bag. Every thought abandoned her head like it was a crime scene the second he smiled at her like that.

Easy. Loose.

Happy.

“I brought ice cream.” She lifted the bag.

“Did someone say ice cream?” Ed yelled from the kitchen.

“Is it … is it okay that I came? Sean said you’d be here.”

Brody nodded and took the bag from her. “I’m happy you’re here,” he said and, unable to help herself, she smiled back at him. “Did you talk to your brother?”

Right. Reality. She nodded. “I promised to go with him to a fundraiser in Atlanta in three weeks. But …”
She put her chin up, making a declaration, putting her flag in the sand. “I’m coming back.”

“I told you—”

“I know what you told me, but I’m telling you. I love you, Brody. And I will come back for you.”

“What if I’m not here?”

“Then it’s your loss.”

“Ready?” Sean asked Cora. They both held steaming hot ribs, sliced from the rack on the cutting board in front of him.

They’d been in his apartment for three hours while the meat grilled, low and slow on his rarely used barbecue in the back. She’d brought over her supplier catalogs and they’d made notes about the sorts of things he was going to need.

They were suffering from a small difference of opinion about the scale of the restaurant. When Sean had suggested paper plates, Cora just about blew a gasket.

When Cora suggested he make his own pickles, he almost fell over he laughed so hard.

They’d argued over dishes—three bean salad versus cheaper baked beans. Cornbread with actual corn in it that was nearly double the price.

“I don’t have money for actual corn,” he said. “I don’t …” He rubbed his forehead. “I don’t have money for any of this.”

“Sean.” Cora touched his arm and he twitched away, because he felt like his blood had been replaced with sludge. Sludge that wouldn’t move through his veins.

This morning, what she did in her office was a million miles away. And he felt he was a million miles away too, floating in a sea of coming failure.

Cooking had been Brody’s idea, the giant hole in his bar had been Brody’s idea, and Brody was going to walk away and leave him with money—like it would be enough.