Never Been Kissed (36 page)

That he at one point had made a joke about her arriving to ruin the senator’s affair as a good way to break up the monotony of his job now made him sick.

So selfish. Such a symbol of how far away he was from the person Ashley had thought he was.

The man he’d been in Bishop.

It had been nice pretending. Pretending that he was nothing but useful. A cog in machinery that did good things, instead of destructive ones.

But you made your choice years ago,
he reminded himself. He stepped out of the airport into a perfect September day in D.C. and hailed a cab to take him to his apartment off H Street.
You can’t undo it. A month in Arkansas pretending to be someone you’re not isn’t going to erase the ten years before.

He watched the lights of the city pass, the Washington Monument a pillar in the distance.
You never made a choice,
a voice inside his head said.
You scrambled to find a job, any job, that would keep you out of your parents’ house.

Any job that would point him in a new direction. That would give him work. A purpose. He’d been twenty-four and lost.

He paid the driver, too much probably, and grabbed his bags.

His apartment was small and sparce. No stuffed heads on the wall. No mold. No pictures of himself as a kid. There was a mountain bike, a television, a couch he didn’t particularly like.

This is my home?
he thought. It felt so foreign. Everything in it, the Corps flag on the wall, the mugs in the cupboard, the books in the bedroom—none of it felt like his.

His home was miles away, a one-room apartment above a bar, filled with junk and love.

He dropped his bag in the doorway and what he’d been avoiding for the last month, what he’d been avoiding every time he looked into Ashley’s eyes, sunk into his bones.

He had been lost ten years ago and he’d stayed lost.

For a moment—Ashley in his arms, his brother’s success swirling in the air, the beginning of something he’d been building with his own hands reaching from floor to ceiling—he’d found himself.

And he’d been happy.

He shut the door behind him and forced himself into action. There was a list in his head … he rubbed his hands through his hair, groaning at the memories.

The rest of his life, he would never be able to make a list and not think of Ashley. Such a mundane thing she’d made her own. Her fingerprints were all over his life now, and he didn’t know how to get them off.

First thing he had to do was find a lawyer. He made a few calls and set up a meeting for the next morning.

After unpacking his stuff, he sat in the dark on his
uncomfortable couch and mourned the man he’d been for the happiest month of his life.

And waited.

Sunday morning, Sean wasn’t sure what to expect from Ashley. She might have vanished in the night, perhaps left with her brother, who apparently had checked out of his room at the Peabody at dawn.

He’d gotten that bit of gossip at Cora’s when he went in for a coffee and to tell Cora what had happened.

Maybe Ashley had trashed the apartment, or gone running after Brody.

But no. She was sitting on the roof of his bar.

He’d caught sight of her yellow sweater when he went to check on the apartment. “Hey,” he said, climbing the back staircase to the rough shingles of the roof.

She turned, her eyes red and puffy. “Hey.”

“Can I come up?”

“It’s your roof.”

He settled beside her and saw the small pile of Kleenex between her feet.

“You okay?”

“No. Not at all. You?”

“No.” He handed her what was left of his coffee, but she waved it away. “I have to go tell Dad that Brody is gone.”

Ashley dropped her head. “I forgot about Ed.” She did a fancy flip thing with her hair and wiped away the tears before they fell, like she’d had several hours of practice at it already. “Do you want me to go with you?”

He could have kissed her for asking. “Cora’s coming.”

“She’s taking the morning off work?”

Sean nodded.

Ashley pushed against Sean’s shoulder and he liked it so he pushed back. “Must be love,” she joked, but her voice cracked.

“Must be.”

Emotions swarmed around them like mosquitoes circling a light and he wished he could sit up here and support her, give her comforting words, but he’d watched his brother run away too many times. “I’ve spent so many years believing in him, wanting the best for him …”

“We can’t stop.” Her whisper was fierce and he should have known, Brody had told him this woman grew gardens in the desert. “We can’t give up now.”

“I think … I think maybe he’s disappointed me one too many times, Ashley. I have no hope for him anymore. And I’d hate to see you waste time on this roof waiting for him.”

They watched Cora walking across the town square, toward the bar. “There’s my girl,” Sean said. He stood and put a hand on Ashley’s shoulder. “Come down. Come down with us.”

“I will,” she agreed, but she was lying; he knew it. He’d been in her position far too many times not to see it. She still had hope and she would sit there as long as the hope was alive. “Soon.”

“Gone?” Ed asked, glancing from Sean to Cora. His shaking hand went back to the handle of his cane, the knuckles were white and swollen.

Maybe, Sean thought, he should have worked his way into it a little better. Just blurting out that Brody had left might not have been his best game plan.

Goddamn you, Brody,
he thought. All the anger he’d shoved away for so long, it flooded him, and if Brody were there, he’d beat the crap out of him.

“Dad, are you okay?” Sean asked, putting his hand on the old man’s back. Cora stood and got his father a glass of water.

Sean had told her she didn’t need to come over and talk to Ed, but here she was.

And he was so damn thankful for her.

“You okay?” Cora asked, helping Ed with the water.

“No! I’m not okay,” Ed said, pushing the glass away, splashing the water across the scarred Formica tabletop. He was sitting in his spot, in the gold plastic chair with the flecks of red that he always sat in.

Cora stood behind Brody’s old chair and Sean sat in his. Linda’s was empty, as it had been since the day she died.

We’ve all just stayed the same,
Sean thought.
We’re frozen and I don’t know what will unfreeze us.

“He just left?” Ed asked, looking like a kid on Christmas morning whom Santa had forgotten.

“No. He didn’t just leave. The company he works for is in some trouble.”

“This about that senator that got killed?” Ed asked. Ed, like Brody, was a news junkie and CNN had been on since he woke up at seven.

Sean nodded.

“My son was mixed up in that?” Ed gasped.

Sean caught Cora’s eye over Ed’s head as he stared out the window.
What can we do?
she mouthed and he shrugged. He had no idea what to do.

“Call him,” Ed said. “Call my son and get him back here.”

“Dad,” Sean murmured, “I don’t think he’ll come.”

“Tell him I had a heart attack. He’ll come back for that.”

Sean laughed. “You want me to lie?”

“Yes!” Ed shouted, smashing his cane against the ground. “I want him to come back!”

“Dad, calm down.”

“No! I won’t calm down. My son is tied up with arms dealers. He leaves in the middle of the night—” He took a deep gaspy breath, his hand left the cane and it clattered against the table as he grabbed at his arm.

“Dad?”

“I can’t …” Ed looked up, panicked and white-faced. A muscle under his eye twitched like a rabbit on the run. “I can’t breathe.”

His eyes rolled back in his head and he slumped over into Sean’s arms.

Monday morning Brody sat in a dark room with the shades drawn, waiting for his phone to ring. Waiting for someone to show up at his door and hand him a subpoena.

He’d had a brief meeting with a lawyer, who told him not to worry. As a private contractor with very limited access to the senator, Brody would undoubtedly be subpoenaed but it wouldn’t amount to much.

Unfortunately—or fortunately, depending how you looked at it—the only time his phone rang it was Sean. Four times in the last twelve hours, but he didn’t pick it up. He didn’t have another round in him right now. Instead of putting down his phone, he scrolled through his recently called numbers and pulled up Ashley’s, but he didn’t press the call button. Instead, he looked at the picture of her, smiling up at him over the edge of the sheet.

I dare you.

You don’t think I’ll do it?

I know you won’t.

Her eyes dilated, her pink lips, swollen from the kissing
they’d been doing all morning, parted as she sucked air into her lungs. Slowly, her hands pushed the sheet down, revealing her collarbone, her breasts, the edge of her rib cage.

But the second he lifted his phone, she screamed and yanked the sheet over her head.

Brody turned the phone over, resting it facedown against the arm.

He’d walked out of the garden, burned the bridges that might lead him back, he had no rights to regrets.

Ashley resented the clock. She resented the way her heartbeat ticked with the second hand counting the moments Brody had been gone.

She resented the silence of Sean’s phone, in addition to her own, as they sat across from each other, Ed’s hospital bed between them.

Sean hung up his phone and nearly collapsed in his chair.

“Still no answer?” It was one of the dumbest questions she’d ever asked.

“Why do I care?” Sean asked. “Why does it matter?”

Ashley looked at Ed, sleeping on the bed between them. His color was better, but the heart attack had weakened him. He would recover, his meds needed to be updated and monitored more carefully. Someone was going to have to talk to him about mayonnaise, but he would live to argue another day.

She was leaving for Atlanta in the morning. But would be back here within the week, to see through the end of the shuttle roll-out, for a meeting in Masonville. To check in on Sean and Cora and Shelby.

Her friends.

To be here when Brody came back.

Because sooner or later he’d come to his senses and realize what he’d walked away from.

Sean stared up at the ceiling, his arms and legs flung out over the edges of the chair like he’d been thrown into it with huge force. She felt the same way, like over the last two days every bone in her body, one by one, had been broken and ground into dust.

“Why is it so hard to get him to do the right thing?” he asked.

“He thinks he’s doing the right thing.”

Despite the heartache, the disappointment, and the anger, she knew that. He thought he was protecting her. His family.

It was ten years ago all over again.

To be so angry, so hurt, and so in love all at the same time was nauseating.

“I’ll call him,” she said. “He might pick up for me.”

Sean glanced at her, his eyes were black holes crammed full of pain.

“Thank you,” he whispered.

She slipped out of the chair and into the hallway, painted what was probably supposed to be a soothing green but in the bright sunlight looked like pea soup.

Outside the Masonville Community Health Center, she found a quiet spot behind a shrub and past the standing ashtray. She stood against the wall and let the breeze wash over her. The rains last night made the air feel damp, the smell of the river was thick.

I like the smell of the river,
Brody had said one night, his hand stroking her arm.
It reminds me of Linda. I never figured that out before.

After a couple of deep breaths she called Brody.

I wonder if he deleted that photo.
She thought about the failed dirty picture that came up on his phone every time she called.

The memory of his laughter was poison.

He answered on the second ring.

“Ashley.”

She’d never noticed, really, how very southern his voice was, the way he swallowed the
y,
made the
a
last for a week.

Her eyelids fluttered shut from the sharp slide of pain between her ribs.

I told you that would be a mistake.

“Ashley, you okay?”

“Your father had a heart attack.” Saying it, despite having lived it for the last two days—despite having answered Sean’s frantic phone call and rushing to the hospital and standing in the waiting room, stroking Sean’s shoulder, holding Cora’s hand, despite all of that—it didn’t seem real, not real like this, like her face was pressed up against the glass around a Klieg light.

She bit her lip and pressed the back of her head hard against the brick wall.

“What?” Brody’s voice was a strangled bark.

“Your dad had a heart attack Sunday morning. He’s at the Masonville Community Health Center.”

“Is he …”

“He’s stable. But he’s weak.”
He’s sick, Brody. Your father is sick. And you can’t keep walking in and out of his life like you have all the time in the world.

“Sean—”

“Is losing his mind. You should have answered his calls.”

His silence was telling. Damning, really.
You’re such a coward,
she thought. And just like that she cut the ribbon on her dream of him coming back. For her.

“I’m leaving,” she said. “I’ll be gone tomorrow morning. Come back, Brody. Be with your family. You won’t … you won’t have to see me.”

She hung up before he could say any more and pressed the phone to her mouth so hard her teeth cut her lips. And when the tears spilled over them, it stung.

Eyes burning, lips stinging, her heart bleeding, she went home.
Not home, not ever her home,
she corrected. She went back to the apartment to pack.

The first days of basic training on Parris Island, one of the hardest things some guys had to figure out was how to remain calm with the DIs screaming in their faces. It was hard to keep all the adrenaline and fear locked down. Brody stood on those famous yellow footprints in front of the receiving barracks with that instinct already ingrained. He could slow down his heart rate, manage the flood of adrenaline through his bloodstream.