They were both home and Callie did a good job of pretending she hadn’t talked to me through most of my stay in LA in front of Vince. I had never really gotten to know him since he’d entered the picture when I had been out of commission. He looked like the sort of guy who she would date. Good looking, polite. I knew basically nothing about him. I could imagine he probably wasn’t that pleased at moving in with a stranger. Just one month though. That was as long as he’d have to take me.
I got to my room and sat on the edge of the mattress. I’d spent days on end in that bed, basically dead from misery. It was strange being back when my life was finally moving forward. I took my phone out of my pocket. I wasn’t lasting till tomorrow before doing this. I had to say something. This entire month would be useless if I didn’t.
I found Asher’s number and called it, waiting for him to answer. He must have been home by now if not just wrapping up at the shop.
“Jenny? Fuck, I’m sorry. Felicity?” he said, answering before the first ring was over.
“Hi,” I said softly.
“Why do you keep running away from me?” he asked. He sounded so tired. It scared me because it sounded like the answer might not have actually meant anything to him. He just wanted to know, and with that knowledge, he’d tell me it had been fun, but he wasn’t going to play anymore.
“I’m sorry.”
“Why’d you leave? Where are you?”
“I’m at my best friend’s house in Seattle.”
“You went home.”
“I didn’t go home, Asher. I don’t live here anymore. I’m coming back.”
“When?”
“As soon as I can. I started looking at places in LA today.”
“Why are you looking for places? Just come back home,” he said. Home. Like it was mine too. I didn’t want to be too presumptuous, feeling like I had a place under his roof because I had to say no to this offer.
“I have to get my own place, Asher. I need to get on my own two feet again. Your couch is comfortable, but I can’t stay there forever.”
“Do I have to throw it out? You aren’t sleeping on that couch again,” he said. I could hear his annoyance and frustration.
“I should be back in LA in about a month,” I assured him. “Please, Asher. That’s all I’m asking for. Next month, I’m coming back to LA. Then if you’re still… if we’re still talking, we can talk about this.” He cursed. He sounded like he was walking, moving around. I wondered where he was.
“Are you seeing someone else?”
“No. There’s nobody else. I lost months of my life too depressed to do anything. I need to get control of it again. I need to figure out who came out the other end of the tunnel,” I said. “I can’t ask you to wait for me if you don’t want to. I’m not selfish enough to ask you to put your life on pause for me and I won’t. I’m still coming back. If in a month you want to talk, I’d still like to do that.” I heard him sigh. I fought the urge to hang up on him because I suddenly felt sure that he was about to tell me it had been real, but he was moving on.
“Were you lying when you said you loved me?”
“No,” I said defensively. “I do love you, but I can’t just stay in LA and pretend I don’t have things I still need to take care of.” He was silent for a while.
“I wish you hadn’t lied to me because now I can’t trust anything you say,” he said. I was speechless.
“Asher-”
“No. Goodbye, Felicity. You should have at least said that before you left.” He hung up. I held the phone to my ear for a long time after he was gone.
I deserved that, I thought. I was so worried about my own life; I should have let him go first. A tear rolled down my cheek as I looked at my phone. He’d said it. Goodbye. We were done. Now I could focus on getting back on track. I took a deep breath, feeling the weight in my chest. It came out as a sob.
This was for me. It was what I needed. If he wasn’t part of my life when I went back that was fine. I could deal with this. My vision completely clouded and I felt myself crumple. At least he’d told me. At least now, I could start the healing process early. At least now I’d know what to expect when I went back to LA.
21
Asher
I’d gone to the gym an hour earlier than usual and left half an hour later than usual. I’d hit a bench PR, but then almost killed myself by forgetting the clip when I tried to up the weight. It was important that I was as relaxed as possible going to work today.
Working out didn’t relax me, really. It made me tired, and that was the next best thing. I needed something to take the edge off. I’d drink, but I couldn’t do that and tattoo. I’d been on a hair trigger since Felicity had left and it was just better for everyone if I wasn’t breathing fire. Especially since I was the boss. Especially since today I got to meet person after person who thought they could replace her.
I wasn’t so much sad that I was doing this as I was just really mad.
I. Fucking. Hated. Having. Interviews. Hated it. I had known, I’d fucking known from the jump that Felicity wasn’t going to be there like that for me at the shop, but silly me. After we’d become a couple, I had thought that that meant not just walking away without telling me where the fuck she went.
I didn’t really date girls, but there had to be some shit that you didn’t do when you were with someone, and this sounded like one of those things. She’d called me afterward, but she was still gone. She had still left without telling me. I had thought that was what she wanted—something official, where it was just the two of us. It was what I had wanted. I still fucking wanted it even though she’d bailed.
She had said she was coming back, but did that mean anything? A month? Anything could happen in a month. In a month, she’d gone from a girl in rehab to my shop manager. In less than a month she’d gone from the beautiful girl outside my shop to the beautiful girl in my bed. If it had taken that long with me, who said it couldn’t with some guy she’d meet up there in Seattle? Who said she couldn’t move on in that time?
I guess it just sucked because I had no fucking clue anymore, again. I had thought I knew, but I was still waking up alone every day. She said she was coming back, but she also said she loved me and both those things were starting to feel like lies. Even if she was coming back, she said it would be in a month. That was one month longer than the shop could survive without a manager.
I’d already seen a young guy with tattoos on his face and this girl who I’d fucked before and had come in without a resume. By this third dude, I was hanging on to my last nerve to not blow up at him. He had seemed sort of nervous when he came in. I was reading his resume.
Went to school for business administration and management. Had previously owned his own business, which he had recently sold before he moved to California. He’d worked retail, so he knew about customer service. The kicker, though; he had spent two years at an Atlanta tattoo studio—as the fucking manager.
I sighed. The motherfucker was perfect.
The perfect replacement for Felicity. I wanted her to stop sounding like a stranger when I thought about that name.
You know what really sucked—thing number five thousand on the things that sucked now that Felicity was gone—I had to hire this guy.
I told him we’d be in touch and sent him away. There was just one more guy after that and I was done. I phoned it in because I already knew who I was giving the job to. Not only was he qualified, she wasn’t coming back, for all I knew. If she was, it probably wasn’t to do this again. If she wanted to, would I send her replacement away just because she wanted the job back? The answer should have been no. I was a better boss than that, but I wasn’t a better person than that.
Okay. I needed to stop. Was this what it was like getting over a breakup? Was that what we had done? We were actually together, and I hadn’t just made that up in my head? I had told her goodbye, but I was still waiting to feel like I didn’t want her anymore and it hadn’t happened.
&n
bsp; I didn’t come out of my office, staying there while I waited for the customers to start coming in after the interviews. I could have chosen to draw, read something, research something on the net—anything, but why would I do something productive when I could think about Felicity instead?
Times like this I wished Ryan and I were still talking. He was an idiot and wouldn’t know what the fuck to do, but I wouldn’t be going to him for advice. He’d give me some, regardless, but I just wanted to be able to say something. Make sure I wasn’t going crazy.
After a little while waiting, I heard someone come in the shop. The steady clacking sound on the floor told me it was Mal. She didn’t knock before she opened the door.
“Hey,” she said, popping her head into the doorway. “How’d it go?” She walked inside. She was wearing a skirt—if you really wanted to call it that because it was so short. Maybe one day I’d enforce a dress code. No, then she’d start showing up in turtlenecks and where was the fun in that? The only real rule was being able to tattoo in it.
“Got one,” I sighed.
“Really? Like a real one? Someone who knows what they’re doing?”
“Used to manage a shop in Atlanta,” I said. Unfortunately. The job was his. I could fill that Felicity-shaped hole but what about the others?
“Wow,” she said, sitting on the couch. “Too bad. I liked Jenny. Is it a girl?” I shook my head. She was alone again—one more cock for her to block.
“You never said why she left.”
“I know I didn’t,” I said.
“Do you know where she is?”
“Yeah. Don’t you have work to do?”
“Then why are you here if you know?” she asked. I looked at her wondering what she meant.
“She left. Why would I go after her?”
“Because you want to. You’ve been a total bastard since she left. Have you not been able to get any ass since?” I narrowed my eyes at her. This was how she was, but she wasn’t saying that shit about Felicity. Picking someone up hadn’t even crossed my mind. It shouldn’t have made me mad; we always talked like this, but right then, it did.
“Get out.”
“Have you at least tried to call her? Talk to her? I know the way she felt about you. If this is what’s going on with you, what about her?”
“Leave, Mal. Get the fuck out.” She stopped and stood.
“If you fucked up with her and she left you, that is not my fault. You don’t get to take that out on me or the guys.”
“I didn’t-” I cut myself off, slowing down. “I didn’t do anything wrong. I didn’t tell her she had to leave. We talked about it. She was supposed to stay here.”
“You obviously did something. What happened?” she asked. I hesitated because I was this close to spilling everything. Just telling on her because I was fucking mad. She drove me crazy. I loved her, and she had run away. I gave her a place to stay, and she had left anyway. It was weird when we started, but I did everything right. Why the fuck did she still leave? Mal was a woman too, right? Maybe she knew.
“It’s F- it’s just Jenny,” I said, almost messing her name up. How much could I give away really without completely blowing her cover and not telling the thing with her name? I didn’t know what she had talked about with Mal before, but did it matter? Part of me didn’t give a fuck anymore. She obviously didn’t give enough of a fuck about me, about us to stay. What did I have to lose if she wasn’t here for me to lose her, anyway?
“She didn’t come here to LA after completing a rehab program. She left her program halfway through against medical advice and came here instead of going back to her parent’s house. They thought something had happened to her when her program had ended and she hadn’t gone back, so they reported her as a missing person. We talked about it. We decided that it was okay, she could stay here. Nothing was pushing her away. One morning, she’s just gone. She just left without telling me anything. Then she calls me from Seattle telling me she’s living there now. She’s there for a month before she moves back.”
“Moves back? So, she is coming back.”
“That’s not the point.”
“Then what is? Why are you upset?” Mal asked. I scowled. She was talking to me like I’d done something wrong and was too stupid to realize what it even was.
“She didn’t have to leave; she wanted to.”
“The way I see it, that’s the most important part. It was what she wanted to do, and because of that, you should respect what she did. She had her reasons.”
“She didn’t have to go back. She’s an adult. People move all the time. She called her parents when I was there. They knew where she was but she still fucking left.”
“She can leave if she wants to. She’s not yours. She’s not a child. Why are you acting like this is some sort of personal insult?” I slumped back in my seat. I swear this only made sense if you were a woman. “How can you be mad that she chose to go back to her family and spend some time with them after not seeing them for months?”
“Because I fucking loved her, Mal. I told her I loved her, that I wanted her here, that I’d help her, take care of her and she didn’t want it. It fucking wasn’t enough.”
“She was a person before she met you, Asher. If she needs time, then she fucking needs time. You think forcing her to be with you is going to make her love you?”
“Time? I don’t know why she’d need time if she was serious.”
“Do you realize what you are asking of her? You’re asking her to leave behind everything she used to do, everything she used to know. For you. Maybe she isn’t fucking ready.”
“Did she talk about this with you? Did you know she was going to leave me?” I demanded.
Mal crossed her arms, glowering at me.
“I would have left too. If that’s one of the questions that keeps you up at night, no, she didn’t tell me anything about leaving. She did talk about her parents, and her friends; everything that was still in Seattle while she was here. You keep saying you love her, Asher. Why don’t you love her enough to let her have what she wants? Even if you aren’t one of those things?” She turned and walked out of the room.
Fuck. I flexed my hands feeling like I needed to use them to break something. What did Mal know that she wasn’t telling me? There was no way Felicity didn’t want me as much as I wanted her. The evidence wasn’t on my side, but I loved her. She loved me. She’d told me, and I’d seen it. I’d felt it when I was inside her.
Maybe I shouldn’t have said what I said. I shouldn’t have because it wasn’t fucking true. I had been mad and hurt, and I hated feeling like I wasn’t enough for her. I didn’t have enough appointments that day to stop me thinking about her. I went from angry at her, to angry at myself, to not knowing who the fuck to be mad at. Maybe we’d both gotten it wrong somewhere—I didn’t do this often.
The guys wanted to have a party that night, but I eighty-sixed the idea, telling them they had to wait till our new manager came in. Once my last customer left, I was alone in the shop less than five minutes before I was on my phone, calling her. If she’d still talk to me, it meant I hadn’t lost her.
“Asher?” she said, instead of hello, picking the phone up. She sounded quiet and expectant. I smiled a little hearing her voice saying my name again, especially given the way I’d spoken to her last time we were on the phone. She’d said it angry, yelled it, said it breathlessly while we fucked. It was fucking amazing to hear her again. I was angry, yeah, but I also really fucking loved that girl. I didn’t think or act or feel normal when I was with her.
“Baby,” I said simply.
“Hi,” she said. She was smiling. I could hear it. “Are you at work?”
“Yeah. I’m just heading out. I miss you,” I blurted out. I heard her sigh.
“I miss you too,” she said quietly. “I’m sorry it has to be like this.”
“Don’t apologize. I’m sorry for what I said to you. I didn’t mean it.”
“Will you stil
l… I don’t want to stop talking,” she said.
“I wish you were here so I didn’t have to call you. I don’t like it.”
“I don’t like it either, Asher, but I can’t come back to you like this. You deserve someone who has her head on right. I don’t want to wait, but I can’t be who you need when I’m still running around like a headless chicken.”
“If you came back, I could take care of you,” I said recklessly. What wouldn’t I give up for her? If she came back, I guess I’d find out.
“You need a partner, not a project,” she said. “I need to be present for you. Not stuck in the past.”
“I love you,” I said.
“I love you too. I’m coming back soon.”
I sighed. Soon wasn’t soon enough. I felt myself get irritated. If I picked a fight with her about this, we’d just talk round in circles until one of us said something mean and we hung up. I asked her about her day instead since we hadn’t spent it together. We couldn’t talk long because she was actually out with her friends, but she spoke to me as long as she could before saying goodnight.
We hung up. Soon. She was coming back soon. A month wasn’t that much time. It was too much time, but it wasn’t that much time. It could have been worse. A year. Five years. Never.
Where did she live? I thought. She might have told me. How much was a ticket to Seattle from here? I caught myself wondering how many clients I could get away with rescheduling but let it go. A month wasn’t that long. Neither was three days. I booked myself a ticket to Seattle before locking up the shop and leaving that night.
22
Felicity
If I could pick what I liked better, sleeping alone or with Asher, I would pick sleeping with Asher. He was the last person on my list. Our relationship which I had definitely played a major role in complicating was the last thing that I wasn’t sure of, and after we’d talked, I finally knew where we stood. Our first conversation had felt like a breakup, but now I knew that he was waiting for me.
Asher (Heartbreakers & Troublemakers Book 6) Page 17