Loving Ashe

by Madrid, Liz

  Riley stormed past him, took her robe from the bathroom and slipped it on. She gestured to him to sit down, choosing to perch on the short part of her L-shaped couch while Gareth sat on the longer side, although they were still close enough for their knees to almost touch. Riley thought how Gareth would have touched her thigh if they had still been together. He was always touching her, just to let her know that he was there. It was one of the things she had missed the most when he’d left, which had driven her to use drugs to numb the empty feeling every night when she went to sleep, and again every morning when she got up. But it had been three years since he’d touched her that way and she had become used to being alone, until Ashe had come into her life.

  “I’m sorry for everything, Riley,” Gareth said. “All this time, I really thought you were fine. You never answered my letters when I was filming Hell’s Kingdom. Collette told me you had already moved out of the apartment by the time she got to New York, and of course I was annoyed. I had no reason not to believe her. Then I got busy with my career, but I should have checked on you. I should have at least called to see — ”

  Riley touched his knee and he paused, surprised.

  “I don’t care anymore about what happened between us, Gareth,” she said. “What I really want to know is why you and Paige did what you did. Two weeks ago, I heard you tell her you loved her. Have you loved her all this time? Was it Paige you really wanted from the beginning? If you came all the way here from Nashville to apologize to me, at the risk of getting fired from your own movie, at least answer me that.”

  He exhaled and rubbed his temples. “All I wanted to know was why she kicked you out of your apartment, and why she left you that money. I thought it must have been Paige. That’s the only reason I went to see her. I swear, Riley, but even there, even with the best intentions, I fucked up.” He cradled his head in his hands.

  “We all fuck up,” Riley said quietly. “But you haven’t answered my question, Gareth.”

  Gareth took a deep breath, his eyes distant. “Do you remember my mom?”

  “Of course,” Riley replied, though she didn’t have to tell him what she remembered about the woman. Gareth’s mother had worked as a waitress at a nearby restaurant during the day and spent her tip money on cheap tequila shots at a local bar. Sometimes, she went home with a different man a few days a week while Gareth’s father dished out his rage on their only son. Some people said she turned tricks. Most people simply called her a ho.

  Yo mama a ho, Gar, they’d say as Gareth and Riley would walk past them and he’d lose his temper and charge them. Gareth always lost to the boys who were taller and bigger than he was, but no matter how many times they beat the crap out of him, he never gave up. He always defended his mother.

  Then one day, when he was sixteen and taller than everyone else, with all the girls after him because they thought him a stud for being a one-woman man, he stopped defending his mother and agreed with everyone else that she was a whore. He even said it to Riley, and that was because he’d seen her go down on some stranger in an alley.

  They were all right about her, Ri, he had told her. Thank God for you and Paige. At least you both took after your mom.

  Gareth ran his fingers through his hair, chuckling drily as he spoke. “All I wanted when I was growing up was someone to tell me I was worth something. When I couldn’t get that from the shithole I called home, I found it at your house. Your mother was the first woman to ever treat me right. She told me once that she wished I was her son.” He smiled, not looking at Riley but straight ahead at the old box TV with the built-in VHS player. “God, she made me so proud that day, Ri. Your mother was one classy lady, and I mean it. You take after her. I always wondered why she chose to stay where she was when I heard that she grew up in Manhattan – Upper East Side. At least that’s what my mom said once.”

  “That was probably just talk,” Riley said, watching him trace imaginary circles on the coffee table with his fingers, then little squares and spirals. “Maybe she just went to school there or something.”

  “Nah, she was classy, that lady,” Gareth said. “And I know it’s twisted, but that’s how I love Paige. Not because she’s your sister, but because she’s the mother to those boys — my boys. What I did — we did — there’s no excuse and I’m so sorry, Ri. God, I’m so fucking sorry it’s not funny. Who screws his girlfriend’s sister but an asshole?”

  Now Riley felt bad. “Gareth-”

  “But she’s also raising my kids — my boys,” Gareth continued. “She’s my son’s mother and she loves those boys more than the world itself. She’d do anything for them.”

  “And she would.”

  “Those boys are so lucky to have a mother who just loves them, no matter how they came to this world. My mother couldn’t even give me the time of day, and she only had one son. Me! Can you imagine if she had had three?” Gareth said, chuckling wryly. “We’d all have been turning tricks, or worse.”

  “I would have run out of bunk beds,” she said, smiling and reaching for his hand if only to stop him from gouging his fingers into the wooden laminate.

  Gareth sighed. “I never meant to hurt you, not in a million years. But then, I’m nothing but a selfish prick really. All I do is hurt people, even when it’s the last thing I want to do. I know I could never make it up to you, even if I tried, and now, knowing what Collette and Clint did, it seems even worse.”

  “I’m a big girl now, Gareth,” Riley said, squeezing his hand. “You don’t have to rescue me anymore.”

  Gareth studied her, the anguish on his face fading, the lines that creased the skin between his eyebrows softening. How many times had he told her that he’d always be there to save her? He was always some super hero to her – Superman, Batman, Aqua man — and trying to see if he could breathe underwater.

  “I’m serious, Gar. I’m fine,” she said. “Well, I will be fine. And so will you and everyone else. We’ll all get through this royal mess we find ourselves in.”

  “It still doesn’t change the fact that I hurt you, or that every time you look at those boys it will always hurt you,” Gareth said. “They’re proof of what Paige and I did. And I don’t know what I can do about it.”

  “The boys can’t be blamed for what happened, Gareth,” Riley said. “If I did that, I’d be doing the same thing my dad did to me — still does to me — because he’ll never stop blaming me for mom dying. I can’t do that to those kids, and I don’t intend to. I mean, I may have thought of abandoning them, but I can’t. I’m not perfect in this, but I’m trying to do what’s best for the boys.”

  Tears sprang into Gareth’s eyes but he wiped them away before they had the chance to roll down his face. He tried to speak but the words refused to come out. Riley’s chest tightened then, the memory of him slipping through her bedroom window with a black eye coming back to her. His father was going through one of his moods again.

  Are you alright? He’d asked her that night, even through his split lip. She’d been crying when he got in, though her father’s insults faded as soon as she saw his split lip and the black eye. She grabbed her first aid kit from underneath the bed so she could tend to him though he’d pushed her away then.

  Your lip—

  Forget my lip, he mumbled. One day, Ri, we’ll move out and God help me, we’ll make it, you and me. I’ll always take care of you, babe.

  “Everyone’s been coddling me since my mother died, you and Paige most of all,” Riley continued. “And then there was Clint, doing his own thing behind the scenes. But I need to stand on my own two feet now. I need to live my life on my own terms. If I’m hurt, then I’ll figure out why I’m hurt and deal with it — not with drugs like I did before, but as a responsible adult. I don’t need anyone to rescue me anymore.” She paused, frowning. “Well, maybe if I’m hanging off a building or something, then I might need someone to rescue me, but otherwise, no.”

  Gareth chuckled, and this time Riley glimpsed the gleaming white te
eth between his lips, the corners of his mouth creating the dimples that he was known for, dimples that made women and even some men swoon.

  “That’s where you got it all wrong, you know,” Gareth said, his hand reaching towards her, touching her face, stroking her cheek. “All that time, you got it all wrong.”

  She frowned in puzzlement. “What?”

  “You were the one who was always there for me, more than anyone in the world. You were my anchor, and I’m not just saying that to say it, Ri. I mean it. I always knew I had a safe place to go to when things went crazy at home, just like I do now though I doubt someone will agree,” he said.

  “He’ll live.”

  Gareth squeezed her hand, his eyes boring right into her. “You were my knight in shining armor, Riley. You. They don’t just come in size M for male, you know.”

  He dropped his hand and sighed. “But I screwed up. I’m the one who took from you, and I kept taking, even when you were running on empty.” Gareth withdrew his hand, pressing the heels of his palms against his eyes before sliding them down so that it was his fingers that wiped away these tears. His Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed and sniffed, and Riley handed him a tissue.

  She took a deep breath, brought her arms around him and held him as he sobbed. Then she pulled away so she could take a box of tissues from the coffee table and hand it to him. His nose had begun to run.

  “How did you get here?” she asked. “They’re all looking for you. I think they even checked the airlines.”

  “I drove,” replied Gareth, blowing his nose and tossing the tissue into the plastic trashcan she held out to him. “Thirteen fucking hours, Ri. Six states, though don’t ask me to name them. I should have flown, but I needed the time to think with no one telling me to do this or do that, to emote, or to take it one more time from the top. I just needed to get away and go someplace where I remembered feeling safe, and that led me right here.”

  “Well, you’re safe here,” she said, squeezing his hand, and together they smiled a smile that they had often given each other long ago, before they had become more than friends and added another layer onto their feelings for each other.

  “Do you want me to call someone and tell them where you are? They’re ready to file a missing persons report on you.”

  “That would be a good idea,” he said, leaning back against the couch. “Then I’ll be out of here in no time. Sorry if I messed up your day.”

  “You didn’t. If you hadn’t come to apologize, I’d have hunted you down anyway,” Riley said. “I’m tired of being left in the dark by everyone else. I’m not a baby.”

  Gareth smiled wistfully. “You never were, Ri. But maybe it made all of us feel bigger if we made you one.”

  Riley looked at him for a few moments, the meaning of his words sinking in. She nodded and retrieved her phone from her bedside table. Then she took a deep breath and dialed a number.

  36

  I’ve Got You

  Ashe answered his phone on the third ring. Riley heard the sounds of people talking around him, the clink of plates and cups and Ashe saying, “Excuse me, I have to take this call.”

  “I hope this isn’t about climbing that tree just yet,” he said in a low voice.

  “Gareth’s here,” she said quietly.

  There was a pause. “Is he all right?”

  “He’s fine now,” she replied.

  “And you?”

  “I’m doing much better than he is,” she replied. “He drove all the way from Nashville.”

  “I’m just down the street,” Ashe said before muffling the phone with his hand as he spoke to his companion, “I’m sorry, but I have to cut this interview short. If you call Lance Purefoy tomorrow, we can continue the interview by phone. Here’s his number.”

  “What about Miss Williams?” asked the interviewer.

  “All interview requests will be referred to Lance from now on. I apologize but I have to leave. There’s an emergency.” Then he turned his attention back to Riley, his voice back to its normal volume on her phone. “I’ll be there in ten minutes. And, Riley – ”

  “Yes?”

  “Thank you for letting me know,” he said as Riley felt relief flooding over her. She wondered if she should have called Ashe the moment Gareth had arrived. But wouldn’t that have meant that she thought he didn’t trust her?

  But he did trust her. Riley heard it in his voice.

  As she hung up the phone, she felt a calm descend on her. It would feel strange to have two men she loved in the same square footage she called home, but it might be cathartic — her past and her present in one room, and maybe her future too.

  When she returned to the living room, Gareth had curled up on the couch and was asleep. He had removed his boots and tucked two throw pillows under his head, the way he used to do when he’d fall asleep on the futon, back when they lived in that small apartment. He’d also taken the blanket that had been draped against the back of the couch and pulled it over him, reminding Riley of the vulnerable little boy who used to sleep on the top bunk of her bed when they were children.

  Gareth’s eyes were closed, his breathing soft and relaxed. The lines on his face had faded and in its place was the boy Riley had known all her life, the one who had rescued her more times than she could count. Yet she had saved him, too, and she had never realized it.

  She knew then that she was going to be fine, that, even though the last forty-eight hours seemed to have been one crushing disappointment after another, there had also been amazing discoveries. She would see the triplets soon, maybe even sit down privately with Paige and Clint armed with a list of things she needed to discuss so that she would remember everything she wanted to say to them.

  Riley would tell them that she didn’t want to lose them, though she’d need time to deal with her feelings about what had happened. She’d insist that nothing be done behind her back ever again, even if it was supposedly for her own good. She wanted their relationship to be treated like a business company, with transparency and full accountability. Indeed, to some extent it was one, as Clint was still her financial adviser until she found someone else.

  It would be difficult to face them again, but she would do it for the triplets. Riley had loved them since the day they were born prematurely, taking turns with Paige and Clint to hold them long before the nurses had told them that touch was crucial to improving the babies’ immune systems and growth. She would have done it even if studies hadn’t proven that touch was so beneficial to the development of premature babies.

  Riley accepted that, most of all, she needed to grow up. Even if events seemed to be happening so fast that she had no choice in the matter, she could handle it. She’d figure it out.

  Then her thoughts turned to something completely different — what she’d make for Thanksgiving. She decided against her usual dish of creamed green beans, which had been Gareth’s favorite. Instead, she’d make something new, something she’d never made before, though she’d need to do a dry run just as Ashe had. And then she’d get away for a while and do some things she’d always wanted to do. She’d travel with Ashe. He would show her the London that he knew and his home in Yorkshire. She might even have to shovel manure, as Ashe had warned her, if his father got his way, though he had doubted that his mother would let the old man get away with it. Maybe she’d even learn how to make his favorite shepherd’s pie.

  Watching Gareth sleep from her seat on the couch, she leaned over and tucked a loose corner of the blanket around him. He looked so peaceful as he slept, reminding her of the boy she had known so long ago, the boy who grew up too fast because he had to, the boy she had once loved with everything she had.

  “I knew it was your pepper spray in the elevator, by the way,” Gareth mumbled, pulling the blanket tighter around him though his eyes remained shut. “I gave it to you, remember, because I couldn’t pick you up some nights when you closed the restaurant at midnight.”

  “Then why did you think it
was hair spray?” Riley asked, leaning back on the couch, facing the door.

  “I didn’t,” he said. “I was just testing it. But that damn elevator was so fucking small. I don’t know how you and Ashe survived in that thing. You two must deserve each other to be trapped that long without killing each other, and even falling in love.”

  “Is that what happened?” Riley asked, just as the door opened and Ashe strode in. The furrow between his eyebrows and the firm set of his jaw told Riley more than she wanted to know. Ashe wasn’t happy with what he was seeing, even when Gareth casually rolled off the couch and stood up.

  “Hey, man, how’s it going?” Gareth said, slipping his feet into his boots. He addressed Ashe with some embarrassment, slipping his hands into his jeans pockets and looking down at the floor. “I hope you don’t mind me being here. I had to talk to Riley.”

  “She doesn’t need my permission to talk to you. She’s an adult and can think for herself,” Ashe said walking towards Riley and standing next to her, his arm possessively over her shoulders. “You look like you haven’t slept for days.”

  “Just one day, really,” replied Gareth. “I took the scenic route, though I’m afraid it didn’t leave me looking as scenic as I would like.”

  “I called Isobel on my way here and told her where you were,” Ashe said before Gareth could say any more. “Since you fired your manager, she’s sending Betty to come over and pick you up. She’d probably prefer you to look presentable, as there’ll be photographers waiting for you when you come out of the front door of the building.”

  “I figured as much. PR department’s hard at work already on damage control. I guess that means I’ve got to get camera-ready,” Gareth said, turning towards Riley. “Can I use the bathroom before the cavalry arrives, Ri?”