Chapter 8 Ashlyn
Ashlyn
“How can you eat that?” Troy’s face is twisted in disgust and maybe even a little bit of uncomfortable disgust as Alice pops an eel roll in her mouth.
“One, it’s good,” she says with a full mouth. “You should try it. And two, I’m half Japanese.”
“I’m half Afro-Jamaican,” Troy says, eating a piece of gyoza. “And you don’t see me eating oxtail at every meal.”
“That’s because you don’t like anything that’s not covered in cheese or salsa or ketchup,” she snaps back.
Meanwhile, I am stuffing my face with udon noodles while my mind races in circles around everything that happened at work today.
“We are here because Ashlyn loves sushi,” Alice points out, her chopsticks hovering over the sushi boat while she hunts for the next piece she wants.
“True,” Troy says. “We always get sushi when Ashlyn has something she wants to talk to us about. Ashlyn. What do you want to talk about?”
I look up and find both of them looking at me. “I’m fine not talking about me,” I tell them as I slurp up a noodle.
“Hey! Sorry I’m late. What did I miss?” My friend Demi walks up and takes a seat at the table next to me. She immediately pours herself a cup of saki and reaches for chopsticks.
“You came at the right time,” Alice says. “Ashlyn was just about to tell us about her life.”
I shoot Alice a look to kill, and she pretends not to see.
“Who says I want to talk about my life?” I ask.
“Just because I nearly lost my job after a paparazzi shoot gone wrong, only to have a supermodel show up at my cubicle demanding I be his girlfriend doesn’t mean I asked you guys to come out with me just to talk about it. Maybe I just really wanted sushi.”
“Wait, you almost lost your job?” Demi asks. She knows nothing. Yet.
“Wait. Zane Calloway asked you to be his girlfriend?” Alice asks.
“Okay, we’re going to need more saki,” Demi says, waving down the server. And once again, I am basking in that aforementioned limelight I had no intention of setting foot in. I didn’t even bring any sunscreen.
“Listen,” Troy says. “Men are known for being uninterested in the gossip you lovely ladies indulge in, but even I want to hear what happened when you and Zane talked today.”
“Hold up,” Demi says as she pours herself more saki, pounds it, and then pops a piece of the dragon roll in her mouth. “I need to know everything. Start at the beginning.”
Oh god. Here we go.
“Well, it all started when Ashlyn here got assigned a job snapping photos of Zane Calloway in his swim shorts,” Alice says, and that’s when I cut in.
“Can we give her the short version, please?” I beg.
“And skip all the juicy details?” Troy asks.
“The SparkNotes are fine,” Demi smiles, shooting me a wink.
Demi is my best friend. While Alice and Troy are great friends too, they’re work friends.
Demi and I go back to seventh grade. She was popular.
I was not. But after a bunch of the cheerleaders made fun of her for only having A cups, I let her borrow a push-up bra.
She eventually told them off, and we were best friends from then on out.
“So Ashlyn got a job taking photos of Zane Calloway from the gardenias in his backyard,” Troy goes on.
“They were rose bushes,” I correct him.
“I always confuse the two,” Troy says.
“How?” Alice asks. “They’re nothing alike.”
I realize that even the SparkNotes of the story of my life have too many rabbit holes, and I decide to take over.
“I army-crawled through his yard and climbed on top of a pergola for a better shot, only to fall through the rafters into his hot tub. He took me inside, banged up my camera, banged me, and then sent me on my merry way. Problematically, I wasn’t the only photographer lurking in the shrubbery and now there are photos plastered all over the internet of us together and unless I agree to be Zane Calloway’s girlfriend to save his image and boost his rank in the model world, he’s going to call the cops and turn me in for trespassing. Can someone pass the saki?”
“Call the cops?” Troy asks.
“Turn you in for trespassing?!” Alice tacks on.
“Be his girlfriend?” Demi muses, handing me the saki bottle.
“Okay, you need to explain what’s going on,” Alice cuts back in. “And not the short version.”
“That’s it,” I say. “That’s what he wanted when he came to Sigma today.
He wanted to ask if I’d be his girlfriend because apparently, he and his boss think it would be good for his image after everything that happened.
Something about a model who isn’t afraid of commitment having an edge.
And you know what the craziest part is? Deborah is on board!
” I say, shaking my head as I drink the saki straight from the bottle.
“Of course she is,” Alice says. “Imagine how good it would look for Sigma if one of their photographers is hooking up with Zane Calloway.”
I lean in because they’re not getting it. “She wants me to keep sending them photos.”
“That’s shady AF,” Demi shakes her head, munching on edamame.
“Maybe lucrative,” Alice says, before biting her lip.
“Are you actually suggesting she take pics of him without him knowing?” Troy asks. “That’s evil.”
“We work for a paparazzi magazine. That’s what all of us do,” Alice argues.
“This is different,” Troy says.
“I agree,” Demi chimes in. “This is different.”
“Alright, well now that you all know my current dilemma, what do I do?” I ask them.
“You go out with him,” Alice says. “And if you happen to get photos…”
“I think you should go out with him as well,” Troy says. “But 86 the photos. It doesn’t sit well with me.”
I turn my attention to Demi, desperate for a tiebreaker here.
“I don’t think you should do any of it,” she says. “The photo thing is totally unethical, and I do not recommend dating a celebrity. When I was on Billionaire Hearts, I learned very quickly that nothing snuffs the flame of romance quicker than being in the public’s eye all the time.”
Demi was on a reality TV show recently, one of those where they put an odd number of guys and an even number of chicks on an island and they all fight over each other until someone at the end survives it all and walks away with their choice of lover.
Wildly enough, Demi was the last girl standing.
Every guy loved her, and the public viewers sent everyone else home, leaving her with her choice of multiple very wealthy men to choose from.
The wildest part…she left alone. Her choice.
“You see?” I ask. “It’s all crazy. Besides, I’m not even looking for a boyfriend, and I don’t do rebounds.”
“Aside from a one-night stand,” Alice mumbles.
“She needed that,” Troy says. “She just got divorced like a year ago.”
I drop my chopsticks on the table. “Here’s an idea. How about we don’t talk about my life anymore. Not the photos or Zane Calloway or my ex–”
“That last part might be kind of hard…” Troy says under his breath.
“Why? Is it my ex and his new wife?” I ask.
“No, but they are kind of hard to avoid,” Alice says in the same tone Troy is using. I narrow my eyes as I look at all three of their faces and then realize what’s going on. Slowly I turn around and see Mitchell and Becca walking into the restaurant.
Great. This is my life.
“We can leave if you want to,” Demi offers.
“No, it’s fine,” I say. “It doesn’t even bother me.”
“It doesn’t bother you that the man who left you because you wanted to be a mom is sitting with his new wife eating miso soup like life is good?” Troy asks.
It sounds bad; I know. What’s worse is me wanting to be a mom, obsessing over trying to get pregnant, only to have him get frustrated and walk out isn’t the only terrible thing that happened.
I also lost my job at the daycare because as a recently heartbroken woman who wanted nothing more than to be a mom, it was nearly impossible for me to continue working with babies and little kids.
I knew in my heart that was the closest I was going to come to motherhood.
So no. Seeing Mitchell isn’t the sore spot. Seeing him move on while I turned my love for photography into a career in paparazzi makes the bruise tender. It’s also what makes those photos of me and Zane’s proposal more degrading.
I do my best to hide it all, though. Demi knows the real me and shifts the conversation in a different direction. We finish dinner within the next thirty minutes, and while everyone else is ready to hit up a bar, I decide to just go home.
I have a lot to think about. Whether or not I like it, Zane consumes my thoughts.
Despite being annoyed that any of this ever happened, there’s something about him that is impossible not to think about.
And by think about, I mean even as I stand in the shower of my studio apartment, a pile of bills on my kitchen counter, and a pile of laundry I have yet to put away, I find myself daydreaming about him. Every part of him…
As the hot water hits my skin, my nerves heat up too. My thoughts drift back to last night and the way he carried me into his house. I remember watching him strip down right in front of me, relishing every single second.
I rub my neck, facing the water as it sprayed down the front of me, down my breasts that are now throbbing, nipples hard, heart surging.
God, that man! That mouth. That tongue. Never in my life, even in my short, failed marriage, have I met a man that could work his tongue like that.
The way it teased and tickled, awakening every nerve, pushing me towards arousal. Then want. Then need. Hunger.
As I fall back into the memory, my fingertips find my nipples, teasing them like his tongue did.
Tugging on them like his mouth did. Meanwhile, my other hand finds my pussy, rubbing and stroking between the layers of sensitive skin until pressing into my clit.
I flutter my fingertips over it, imagining that it’s not my finger at all sending waves of pleasure through my body, but that magic tongue.
Then, as I cry out, giving into the orgasm, my knees nearly give out. But they aren’t the only thing that gives out.
With a gurgle and spurt, the water shuts off. And a confusing moment later, the lights shut off too.
Shit.
I suppose the utility company really did mean final notice.
And as I fumble out of the shower, nearly falling on my ass, groping around in the darkness for a towel and my phone.
The screen offers the only light in the room.
But with my battery at a skimpy fifteen percent, I’m going to lose this too.
And suddenly it’s not about gray morals. It’s about survival.
I just hope I can survive Zane Calloway.