At the very least, it wasn’t Ash’s fault that they all came up here. He tried to explain it to me, that the band all owned the cabin together. The place belonged to Johnny and Connor as much as it belonged to Ash. And Ash hadn’t seemed any happier than I had about the intrusion. Maybe I should have tried a little harder, at least had a beer or two, instead of popping my head under my shell like a freaking turtle.
Johnny their drummer actually seemed kind of nice. He struck me as a good guy, friendly. He didn’t give me the creeps. Johnny wasn’t the one I had a problem with.
It was Connor. He gave me the willies. There was the aggressive way he’d come on to me, of course, but really it was more than that. There was a wild, unhappy electrical current charging through him, driving him, pushing him past normal limits. I could see it in the way he goaded others around him. He was a manipulator. And he didn’t like me in Ash’s life, I could tell that, too.
And then there was the fact that someone had slipped something into my drink New Year’s Eve. I had no proof that it was Connor. It could have been anyone. That drink might not have even been intended for me. And Ash said it was Connor who’d found me passed out—in a good way. Like Connor had been trying to take care of me.
But that just didn’t ring true. I hadn’t sensed a caretaking bone in Connor’s compact, wiry body. He seemed as selfish as they came.
But, then, I didn’t know him. Not like Ash did. He’d explained that they went way back. I’d always trusted first impressions with people, that gut feeling you got about someone when you first met. But maybe there was a lot more to Connor than I’d seen? And if I really cared for Ash the way I thought I did, I needed to give his closest friend more of a chance.
I thought for a second about putting on some makeup, then decided against it. What did it matter, really? If they were up, they’d all have to be so shitfaced by now it wasn’t as if I needed to impress. There’d be no photographers up here. And Ash had seen me in a state of complete undress for days on end, no styling, no nothing. And he seemed to like me just fine.
Giving myself a smile to boost my self-confidence, I turned out of the room. I’d go find them, and if they were still hanging out maybe I could at least spend a little time with them as well. I could let Ash know I didn’t blame him for them arriving up at the cabin they co-owned. It would feel good to let go of the anger.
In the main room of the cabin, a girl lay fast asleep on the couch. She had a blanket over her and she looked peaceful. And young, younger than me. How old was she? Did her parents know where she was?
OK, I took a deep breath. I needed to try to relax. This was a whole different scene than what I was used to, but that didn’t mean I needed to fly into a panic. She looked over 21. Probably. And she looked fine. I saw no sign of the others, but then I heard some voices in the kitchen.
“Thought I’d lost you, man.” That was Connor, I recognized the light Irish brogue that seemed to come and go. Sometimes he laid it on thick, other times not so much. I wondered if he calculated when it would have the right reaction. But, see, there I was again getting all judgmental and bitchy. That wasn’t how I supposed to be feeling right now, so I tried to tamp it down.
“No, no.” Ash was in the kitchen with him. Ash. I loved hearing his voice.
“Thought you might be about to quit the band!” At Connor’s words, I froze. This suddenly seemed like a conversation that I maybe shouldn’t intrude upon. Maybe he and Ash were talking through something important.
“No,” Ash protested again, and I could almost see him shaking his head, though I stayed outside the room, unseen.
“It seemed like you might be thinking about it,” Connor insisted. He kept his tone light, but I could tell that he was dead serious. “Seemed like you were about to head out to the suburbs with that librarian. Bang out five kids and start working in some sort of a shop.”
That librarian? I stopped breathing. Connor was talking about me.
“Yeah, right.” Ash laughed in derision, like the whole idea of starting a life, a family with me was a preposterous joke. I brought my hand to my mouth, unable to stop a slight gasp, though it didn’t seem as if they heard. I felt like I’d been kicked in the teeth.
“What size do you wear?” Now Connor’s accent sounded more British as he pretended to be someone working in a shop.
“Seven and a quarter,” Ash replied, also in a British accent. Laughter flowed through both of their voices.
“I think we have that,” Connor replied, the helpful shop assistant. Then they both broke into hysterics, cracking up like school boys.
“Aw, man,” Ash said. “Spinal Tap. Always so good.”
“The best.”
Spinal Tap? I had no idea what they were talking about. Maybe they were quoting a movie or something. But I did know what they were doing. They were making fun of me, and the kind of life Ash would live if he were to choose to be with me.
“Good to have you back,” Connor said, full of feeling.
“Good to be back,” Ash agreed. My heart sank straight down to somewhere below the floorboards.
Connor continued in a whisper, but I still heard it. “I think she went to bed at six o’clock last night.”
Ash chuckled. “No, it wasn’t that bad.” But his laugh said otherwise. He thought I was ridiculous, laughably lame.
“Seriously,” Connor insisted. “The sun had yet to set.”
“C’mon now.” More laughing.
“Hey, how about the tits on Kristie?” I knew I should leave. I didn’t want to hear Connor ask about some woman’s breasts, and I definitely didn’t want to hear Ash’s response. But somewhere along the way I’d lost my power to move. I stood, stone still, engulfed with shame and sadness.
“Was that her name?” Ash asked. “I thought it was Stacie?”
“Does it matter?”
More laughter. I winced and wished I could vanish, somehow transport myself right out of that cabin Harry Potter-style. But when I opened my eyes, I was still just a Harry-Potter-loving nerdy librarian standing in the hallway overhearing people make fun of her. Still overhearing things I shouldn’t.
“So you’re heading back to S.F.?”
“Yeah, I guess.” Ash sounded reluctant.
“Leaving at the crack ‘o dawn today? That’s in about an hour.”
Ash groaned, “Shit.”
“Right?”
“That’s not gonna happe
n.”
“Ooh, the librarian’s gonna be pissed.”
“Shut it,” Ash responded, but he was laughing as he said it.
“You’re gonna be in trouble!”
More laughter, more muffled giggling. They were talking about me like I was the school principal. The buzzkill.
“You’re my boy, Blue,” Connor declared. I heard some scuffling and I could picture a sort of chummy wrestle/hug. The kind of thing guys did to express affection without really engaging in a warm embrace.
“Good to have you back,” Connor said.
“Yeah, sorry I’ve been—”
“Such a wanker?”
“That’s not exactly what I was going to—”
“A pansy? An asswipe?” Conner had a full supply of insults. Was I the only one who could hear how angry he was at Ash? I could hear such jealousy and venom in his joking tone.
“Thanks for that.” But Ash still sounded like he was laughing.
“OK, how about MIA?”
“Yeah,” Ash agreed. “Sorry I’ve been MIA. This whole Mandy Monroe bullshit has been driving me crazy.”
“Mandy set you up.”
“She did. And now Lola’s been all up my ass.”
“Bitch be crazy.”
“Bitch be crazy,” Ash agreed, throwing his PR rep right under the bus. “She’s had me on this tight schedule.”
“With the ball and chain.”
Ouch. I winced again, standing alone in the hall. But Ash agreed without missing a beat and kept right on complaining. About me. “It’s been rough. We’re here. We’re there. Got to get all the right shots from all the right angles. It’s sucked.”
Oh shit. I now wished more than anything that I hadn’t gotten out of bed. Or at least I wished I’d knocked over a lamp or something in the living room when I’d walked through it. That would have alerted them to my presence and they wouldn’t have started having this conversation. I wished I were anywhere other than standing there hearing Ash describe the last three weeks with me as rough. While I’d been looking at him with stardust in my eyes, apparently he’d been counting the minutes until it was over because it sucked so much.