Lost In Paradise

by Allie Boniface

  "I know who it is.” She pulled the plug from the drain and reached for a towel, shivering as cool air brushed her damp skin.

  "How've you been?” He sounded nervous, and she was glad.

  What's with the small talk? “I'm fine."

  "That's good.” He cleared his throat. “How are your sisters?"

  You should know, considering you talked to Jess just a few weeks ago. “They're fine too, I guess.” She paused. “What do you want?"

  "I...” Colin fell silent. “I miss you."

  He misses me? Ash dropped the towel and headed into her bedroom. Like hell he does. He wants something. Or he needs something. He can't have gotten tired of Callie already. She stuck her arms through the sleeves of her robe and sank onto the bed. Rubbing her temple with one hand, she tried to squelch the other thought that insisted on rearing its head.

  I miss you too.

  "What am I supposed to say to that? You made it pretty clear two months ago that you wanted time. Space. Callie Halliway.” She spoke the name without breaking and was proud of herself. “Besides, you were so embarrassed by everything that happened with my father that you couldn't wait to get away from it all. Remember?"

  "Ash, I made a mistake. Please. It's over with me and Callie. It never was much of anything to begin with."

  "That's supposed to make me feel better?"

  "Jess told me you took a summer place, somewhere up north. Tell me where it is. I'll come up. Tomorrow. Tonight. Or you come home. Please.” His words spilled out, anxious and awkward. “I want us to try again. I was wrong ... I'm sorry."

  Ash closed her eyes. Don't say that. She couldn't bear to hear the remorse in Colin's voice. She couldn't afford to give in to his pleas, not after the way she'd worked so hard to get over him. And yet she couldn't resist them either, despite her best efforts. Sighing, she let the weight of memory roll across her heart. In a flash, it all came back again: Colin's serious expression above her in bed, his hands in her hair, his cheek twitching at the beginning of a smile. His arm around her waist as they crossed campus. His wink as they took notes through class, side by side. His name. His family. God, she'd fallen so hard, so fast, without a thought of what might come after the breathlessness.

  After the letter, she'd begun the grim task of shuttering up her heart, piling brick upon brick to seal out the hurt. Now here he was, calling and pretending an apology and a little attention could make everything all right. Brittle tears made their way up her throat.

  "Ashton?"

  "I can't do this."

  "Ash, please—"

  "I'm not telling you where I am. And I'm not coming home. Not now. I need to figure things out.” She picked at a thread in her quilt.

  "I miss you,” he said again, and the words tore at her heart.

  Ash pictured Colin's eyes, liquid and pleading. Her resolve weakened. Maybe it wasn't too late. Maybe she should give him a second chance.

  "Will you at least think about it?"

  She took a deep breath. No, she wanted to say. No, I won't think about it. It's over, and I'm moving on without you. But the pull of his voice and the memories it sung to her were too strong.

  "Maybe.” The thread yanked free from the quilt and left a tiny hole in the pink fabric. She twisted it around her finger and wondered how much of a mistake she was making. “Maybe I'll think about it."

  "I really want to work things out."

  She tightened her hand around the phone. “I have to go.” She hung up before he could say anything else.

  Stunned, unable to form any kind of coherent thought, Ash pulled down the window shade and sat in silence. Colin ... after all this time. She rolled over onto her stomach and pressed her face into the pillow. Tears welled up, and this time, she let them come. Maybe on another day, she would have known better, would have turned up the music on the stereo, would have opened all the windows to let evening light flood in. Maybe on another day, she would have turned her back on that piece of her life that still bled when she poked at the scar. But it wasn't another day. It wasn't far enough away from the past. Ash was a Kirk daughter, a Harvard graduate, and she'd had every intention of marrying Colin Parker. She'd planned on opening a joint law practice with him, having his children, moving into his family's estate with the wide porch and thriving flowerbeds. Until two months ago.

  He wants me back? He wants to try again?

  A few weeks ago, Ash would have leapt into his arms. But now? Now, she didn't know. To her surprise, a few weeks in Paradise had started to change things. She stared into the blackness behind her eyelids and pursed her lips until Colin's face disappeared, and she could no longer hear his voice ringing against the hollow behind her cheekbones. Then she took a deep breath and opened her eyes. For the moment, he was gone. Now she just had to figure out how to make him stay there.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Ash straightened the tables in both corners of the porch roof and glanced into the street below. A few cars already lined the curb in front of the house, and the sun hadn't even begun to set. Apparently, thanks to Eddie, half of Paradise had been invited to their housewarming party. He poked his head through the window, looking out from the kitchen.

  "Ash? Everything good out here?"

  She glanced around and nodded. Jen had come in from the city early that morning, and the two of them had spent the entire day decorating. Now, red, white, and blue lights twisted themselves around the porch railing. Flags perched in buckets of ice, while picnic benches and tables bowed under piles of food and soft drinks.

  "I'm gonna run out and get the beer,” he said.

  "Okay.” Ash wrestled with a bucket of ice and ended up dumping half of it onto her feet. She cursed under her breath. Behind her, Eddie laughed.

  "Shut up,” she said and started to laugh herself.

  Jen looked over from the far corner of the porch, where she was arranging piles of silverware.

  "So when are the two of you going to stop playing this game?” she asked when Eddie disappeared.

  "What game?"

  Jen dropped the last stack of napkins into place. “Ash, please. That guy has been up here five times today. He's called you twice. Why don't you just sleep with him and get it over with?"

  "God, Jen, everything does not always have to be about sex."

  Her friend smirked. “Okay, fine. Don't sleep with him. But why don't you at least go out with him? See a movie or something. Spend a little time playing doctor after work. What's wrong with that?"

  Ash tried not to smile, tried not to reveal that she'd let some of the same thoughts drift across her mind the last few weeks. “It's not like that with me and Eddie,” she lied. “We're just friends. Housemates. He's not really my type, anyway."

  "Right.” Jen's voice dripped with sarcasm. “Good-looking, good job, monster biceps, funny—not your type at all."

  "Anyway, I think he's involved with someone,” Ash added.

  "Who?"

  "I don't know. But he's always got a girl down there.” Except when he's up here with me, watching a ball game or having a beer or ... Ash shook her head. Eddie West was Paradise's playboy. Didn't matter that he happened to be her housemate as well. He loved women, in any variety and any package, and the more the better, from what she'd observed. Just about everyone in town seemed to know it, and she'd be better off remembering that.

  "Come on,” she said, ignoring Jen's gaze. “Let's start making the appetizers."

  * * * *

  By nine o'clock, nearly everyone had arrived, and most of the guests had moved out onto the roof. The party was in full swing, with classic rock pouring out of the speakers and laughter carrying up to the treetops. Ash looked around at the shiny, smiling faces: some regulars from the restaurant, a few of Eddie's high school friends, and a couple of neighbors from around the corner.

  Someone bumped her from behind, a burly man with a huge red beard. “Oops! Sorry, sweetheart. Great party, by the way.” He planted a kiss on her cheek and kep
t on moving.

  Ash smiled at the crowd, so different from the people she'd grown up with, the snobby elite who threw cocktail parties and talked politics inside their gated communities. The conversations around her buzzed with baseball predictions and comments on the weather, news about the latest divorce and the shopping center scheduled to break ground next month. People cursed and laughed and wound arms around each other; they tossed back shots of tequila and played cards in the corner. They sang along to AC/DC and made bets on the baseball playoffs. It startled Ash to realize how comfortable she felt here, after only a few weeks. How real people seemed when you peeled away layers of presumption, when you paid attention to each other for the things you cared about and not the things you had.

  Pushing her way through the bodies clustered around the stereo, she found a space near the porch railing. She knew only a fraction of the guests by name, but she didn't really mind. She'd catch up with Eddie in a minute or two, see if they needed to make another run to the store for anything. But at the moment, she needed a few minutes to breathe. July had snuck up on her when she wasn't looking, and she knew that after the fireworks vanished, August would steal along in its place. Then September would round the corner, hand-in-hand with a life she wasn't sure she wanted to meet.

  "Ashton, please call home,” her mother had said on her voicemail last night. “We haven't heard from you in weeks. Is everything okay? Please..."

  She'd erased the message before her mother finished talking. What was she supposed to say? How could she begin to explain her decision? Funny how it became easier every day to pretend she belonged in Paradise, to pretend she came from a normal family, to pretend she had no secrets to hide.

  Turning up the stereo volume another notch, Ash dug a cold beer from the bottom of the cooler. She stared across the street, to the shadowed park that backed up to Helen's house. It was quiet for a Saturday. Usually she and Eddie spied a few kids there on the weekends, sneaking joints, making out, talking loudly in that adolescent voice that cracks and wavers and flirts and bullies. She laughed at them, wondered about them. Sometimes she even envied them a little. Everything is so exciting when you're sixteen, so fresh and painful. Your skin aches with wanting, and every sunrise, every phone call, every heartbreak, cuts you a little deeper. As a grown-up, she'd almost forgotten how a mere breath of wind at the right moment could bring tears to her eyes.

  Tonight, though, the swings hung unnaturally still, and only a stray cat wound its way through the legs of a picnic table before it disappeared behind Helen's house. Ash wondered how many first kisses that park had seen, and how many goodbyes.

  Someone leaned against the railing next to her.

  "Hi, stranger.” Eddie's teeth were a wide white slash in the darkness. He glanced across the street. “Whatcha you looking at?"

  "Nothing, really. Just the night, I guess.” His scars seemed less noticeable in the moonlight; still, she wanted to know his secrets, even as she tried to ignore her own.

  He finished his beer in a long, smooth gulp. “It's a great one, isn't it? Terrific party. Everyone's having fun."

  "Good.” Ash leaned over the railing again, chin propped on one hand. The humidity had finally broken, and now the temperature hovered at a perfect seventy-five degrees. On the breezes that passed through every few minutes, the perfume of Helen's gardenias floated up to them. She took a long breath and drank it all in, wishing she could bottle the night and make it last.

  The song on the stereo changed, and Eddie nudged her. “Wanna dance?"

  "Here?"

  "Why not here?"

  Ash hesitated. She didn't need to draw attention to herself. She didn't need to take center stage with Paradise's favorite son and have one person in the crowd start to wonder why her face looked familiar. Plus, she wasn't sure she trusted herself to put one hand in Eddie's and pretend it didn't take her breath away.

  "Ash?” The edge of a tattoo peeked out of a shirtsleeve at her, and she studied the familiar lines that crossed Eddie's face. She'd memorized them by now, the hairline ones, the thicker one, the patterns they made across his cheeks.

  "Okay.” But wouldn't you rather dance with someone else? Where's Savannah? Or Cass?

  Eddie took her hand and suddenly, she didn't care.

  Their fingers met and twisted together, as if they'd done so a hundred times before. Ash stumbled a little and then found her rhythm, following Eddie as they shuffled in a slow, tight circle. He spun her under his arm, and strong fingers moved across the small of her back. They guided her away and then back to him. They pressed into her palm, burning her skin a little. They pushed the hair from her face when it fell from the clip she wore.

  The music bled into her veins as they danced around the roof, and for a few minutes, Ashton Kirk forgot everything. She forgot about her father's arrest, her mother's plaintive messages, her sister's harsh words. She forgot all her sad feelings, her confusion about Colin. It was just she and Eddie and some silly song. Nothing else really mattered, except being in Paradise with someone who wouldn't judge her or expect anything from her. In that instant, she wanted to stay twenty-six, laughing and dancing on rooftops, forever.

  The song ended, too soon, and they drifted to an awkward stop. Eddie looked down, and Ash glanced away, suddenly self-conscious of her hand in his, of their shoulders brushing in the shadows.

  "I should check on the food,” she said after a minute.

  "Okay.” But he didn't drop her hand. “Thanks for the dance."

  "Yeah. Thanks.” It was all she could manage. Ash slipped back inside to find a corner in which to calm her heart and splash some water on her burning cheeks.

  * * * *

  "Hey, check this out.” The voice came from the living room, and when Ash peeked inside, she saw a small knot of people gathered around her television set.

  The news banner scrolling across the bottom of the screen read, “Kirk Charges Dropped. Two Men Charged in Political Framing of Massachusetts Senator."

  Ash dropped the trashcan she held, and beer bottles spilled everywhere. Faces turned toward her, startled, but she didn't care. Pushing through the crowd, she reached for the remote and turned up the volume.

  "In a stunning turn of events,” the news anchor reported, “all charges originally filed against Senator Randolph Kirk have been dropped. Earlier today, two men came forward and confessed to being hired by a prominent member of the Republican Party to plant cocaine in the senator's vehicle. They also..."

  Voices rose, clamoring at the revelation, and Ash lost the rest of the anchor's sentence. By the time she wormed her way close enough to hear, the news had switched over to a segment about a local dog trainer.

  "Would never have guessed..."

  "Told you he was innocent..."

  "Betcha it turns out to be one of those religious fanatics from..."

  Fragments of conversation rose and fell around her, but Ash couldn't make out any of them. In fact, she couldn't follow a single thought beyond the ones racing inside her own head. Her stomach felt as though it might erupt. She reached blindly for a place to sit.

  Innocent.

  After all this time, her father was innocent. All those weeks, he'd insisted that someone had set him up. He was right. And no one believed him. His own family didn't believe him. Ash shook her head. Unshed tears burned in her eyes. Is that why Colin called last night? Did he already know? She blew out a long breath. Everything had suddenly become more complicated.

  "Hey, you okay?” Jen bent down, close to her ear.

  Ash jumped, startled. “Did you see it?” One hand waved toward the television screen. Her voice dropped to a whisper. “Did you hear what they said? My father's innocent. Someone set him up."

  Her friend stared at her for a long minute, with something quivering in her eyes that Ash couldn't quite read. “Yeah, I heard. Now what are you going to do?"

  * * * *

  Ash tied the last bag of garbage and set it near the door. “There. Done
."

  The clock read after two in the morning. She felt as though she'd been run over by fatigue, but at least the place was clean. The last thing she wanted to do was wake up in an apartment that reeked of stale beer, or find a half-naked couple lounging on her living room floor.

  Frank and his wife had been the last to leave, about a half-hour ago. She could hear Jen fussing in the bathroom, and she guessed Eddie was somewhere downstairs, hauling boxes of empties onto the porch.

  Ash sunk onto the loveseat and let it cradle her. She'd switched shifts with one of the other waitresses at the restaurant, so at least she didn't have to work until the following day. She stretched, and a yawn split her mouth wide. “Think I'll sleep ‘til about noon,” she said aloud. “Maybe even later."

  "Sounds like a good idea."

  The voice buzzed through her, and she opened her eyes again. She hadn't heard him come in, but there Eddie stood in the doorway, smiling over at her. Her heart jumped a little, sending shots of adrenaline into all the wrong places. She'd managed to avoid being alone with him for most of the night, not trusting the tingling in her hands and toes after their dance. But now it sounded like Jen had made her way into the spare bedroom, and nothing stood between Ash and Eddie but a few feet of hardwood.

  "Thanks for taking everything downstairs,” she said.

  "No problem.” He sat on the arm of the loveseat. “You need anything else?"

  She pretended not to hear the double meaning in his words. Instead, she lifted a hand toward the roof. “Still have to take down the tables and chairs out there. But I guess that can wait until tomorrow."

  "I'll do it. Only take a few minutes."

  "No, Eddie, really. It can wait."

  But he'd already crossed the room and crawled through the window. Ash sighed and followed. She'd much rather wait until she had about ten or twelve hours of sleep, but if he was going to tackle the last of the cleanup, she couldn't very well sit there and watch him.

  By the time she made it outside, he'd already collapsed most of the chairs and folded them into stacks of three and four. Two tables still stood, and as Eddie yanked on the legs of one, she found herself watching the way his shirt pulled across his back, the way his hair fell into his eyes, the way his arms flexed and deft hands put things back where they belonged.