“Why is it nobody listens to me when I’m trying to be the voice of reason?” D asks.
“D?” I press.
“Right at the sidewalk,” he says. “I didn’t really pay much attention after that.”
“Thanks, D,” I tell him and start off after Ash.
I pull out my phone again and call her, but after a couple of rings, it goes to voicemail again. This time, I leave a message.
“Hey, Ash,” I say into the phone. “You just left the fight and I’m trying to catch up with you. I’m sorry if that was a bit much for you all at once. We don’t have to go back or anything, but I don’t want to have things end like this to—”
“You have reached the maximum message time available for this mailbox,” the robotic voice says.
I didn’t get everything I wanted to say in the message, but it pretty well covers the bullet points. Maybe I’ve just been trying to idealize Ash because of my physical attraction for her. Maybe she’s one of those people who get turned off by MMA and stay turned off to it, regardless of how familiar with it they become.
As I call a third time, now being forwarded directly to voicemail, I’m starting to think this whole thing with Ash is just a failed experiment.
I walk along the side of the road where D had seen Ash heading for a while, but break off my efforts before too long. I’m not going to spend my whole night going after her when she’s making it clear she doesn’t want to talk to me.
It’s not the end of the world if this is the end of the relationship—we’re still just getting to know one another—but I had hope for this one. She really seemed like my kind of chick, but maybe I was just seeing what I wanted to see.
At least we didn’t get too deep into the relationship before the cracks started to show. That’s something, right?
Chapter Four
Callbacks
Ash
It’s been a long week.
First I went AWOL at that fight Mason took me to and then, ever since I came home, it’s been all Starbright—Jana’s mom’s latest nom de plume—all the time. Right now, I’m just thankful the woman sleeps as much as she does.
“Why is she here, anyway?” I whisper to Jana, looking up from the open textbook in front of me.
“What do you mean?” she returns at full volume.
“Your mom,” I whisper back. “Did something happen? Is she all right?”
“She’s fine,” Jana says. “I’ve noticed you haven’t been seeing too much of Mason lately. Did something happen there?”
“I just don’t think he’s really my type—” I start, but the question, apparently, was rhetorical.
“You know, I almost freaked out when I saw him,” she interrupts. “I really didn’t think I was going to see him again.”
“Well, it’s not like this is the biggest city in the world,” I tell her. Leaving my textbook open on the coffee table in front of me, I get up from the couch to follow Jana as she tries to squeeze all of her chores into the next five minutes.
“I know,” she says, “but we run in such different circles we’d made it from breakup to a couple of weeks ago without running into each other once.”
“I don’t think you’re going to have to worry about running into him anymore,” I tell her.
“Oh, I’m sorry, sweetie,” she says and pulls me into a strange embrace.
“Why are you sorry?” I ask, trying to pull away but being unsuccessful.
“I know you were really hoping things would work out. It’s been so long since anyone’s even looked at you, much less asked you out, and to be rejected like that so soon…” she says. “I don’t know if I could get out of bed in the morning.”
“He didn’t ‘reject’ me,” I tell her. “I just didn’t like how violent his world is.”