11. Ashley
ASHLEY
W e got through the foot rub and Ikaika came back. For the next hour, none of us spoke while Fox and I were molded into a gob of warm clay.
I was lost to a hypnogogic state when Inga wafted a lemon scented cloth above my face to gently bring me back to the real world.
“Your fiancé is fast asleep,” she said softly. “I’ll let you wake him. If you’d like to put on your robes and enjoy our relaxation lounge, I’ll bring you some water and your complimentary champagne.”
I nodded, brain emptied of my ability to think or talk. I waited for the door to close then sat up and glanced at Fox. He was on his back and dead to the world, softly snoring. I sluggishly pushed my arms into my robe and belted it before I moved across to wake him.
“Fox?” I nudged his shoulder. “Can you wake up? We have to go to the lounge, but you can go back to sleep there.”
He sat up, but I could tell he wasn’t really conscious. I made sure to keep the sheet draped across his lap as I helped him put on his robe, then I had to risk a glance to see if he had managed to belt it properly. He had. Whew.
I picked up his slippers and we staggered to the covered patio where Inga was leaving champagne and cucumber water on a table next to one of the double hammocks. All the other hammocks and loungers were occupied.
As I crawled in, Fox followed right on top of me. His weight sagged me onto him and he swept me into an absent, one-armed hug that shifted me half atop him. His legs tangled with mine. We were squished together like shredded cheese in a taco. His whole body went lax on a long sigh and he was asleep again.
It was pleasantly warm, but there was a breeze. Inga draped a light blanket over us, handed me one of the glasses of champagne, then nudged the hammock into a lulling sway before she walked away.
I didn’t ruin the moment by thinking about whether it was inappropriate to be cuddled up with Fox. It wasn’t like I’d never been jammed up against him in a backseat or on a couch. It felt nice, actually, to be snuggled when I was so blue.
I carefully sipped, letting the sweet bubbles settle on my tongue while I listened to the distant pulse of waves and allowed myself to relax into the solid warmth of Fox’s body.
Relaxing wasn’t something I did very often. I actually couldn’t remember a time since elementary school when I hadn’t been stressing and trying to take control of some aspect of my life. I’d gone straight from the drama of my parents’ divorce to Whitney being pregnant to helping watch Fliss while Whitney finished high school and got her hair-styling certificate.
Once I graduated high school myself, I got a job at a bar and moved in with a workmate so Mom could sell our old house and buy a condo. I put myself through community college part-time between serving drinks and watching Fliss after school. My certificate in communications landed me a decent job by Pine Grove standards. I had reliable income if not a lot of it. The company supplied medical devices and offered decent benefits and a year-end bonus. I bought a used car, rented my own apartment with a bedroom and a den, and started a retirement savings plan.
Small towns were notorious for limited dating pools so I hadn’t had much luck there. Plus, between Mom’s lectures and Whit’s addiction to deadbeats, I was cautious about letting a man into my life. I instinctively held them at arm’s length, not liking to talk about my childhood or let my guard down.
When Whitney’s love life had taken yet another nosedive a year ago, she and Fliss had moved in with me ‘temporarily.’ My relationship status had suffered even more as a result, but that was as much my fault as theirs. I couldn’t be bothered dating once I had someone to come home to.
It had been crowded, all three of us living together, but the location had worked for Fliss’s school and with Whitney helping pay rent, I’d been able to save for the first time. I’d been trying to decide whether to apply to university to finish my degree or look for a condo to buy when Izzy had come home for a visit.
She had left right after high school for Calgary, where she got her degree and began working in an accounting firm. Her job prospects were endless and her bank account had already been very healthy when her grandmother had left her some money.
“Come to Australia with me!” Izzy had said while we caught up over coffee.
Mom had been appalled that I would consider blowing my savings on something so frivolous. The plane fare was outrageous and backpacking like a hippie for three months? Why couldn’t I want until I was approved for a work visa at least?
Why can’t you wait. That was Mom’s eternal refrain. Wait, wait, wait.
It had already begun to frost at night. The idea of being somewhere warm while winter settled in had tipped the scale for me. So had the idea of ‘being like Izzy.’
I pulled the pin, bought the ticket, quit my job, and climbed on the plane.
When Izzy had abruptly decided to fly home a week into our adventure, I hadn’t been able to stomach crawling home to Mom’s superior sigh.
Way to dodge that bullet , I thought sourly as I drained my champagne.
Fox had saved me, which had been very unexpected since I’d been getting a vibe off him that Izzy and I had already overstayed our welcome. Our night at the pub had turned into an invitation to accompany a group of their friends on a camp and surf weekend. Izzy had shared Fox’s tent while they were away and kept doing so when we returned to the men’s beach house a few days later.
I had moved slower with Shane. He hadn’t pressured me at all, which was part of his charm. He flirted in an easygoing way and didn’t ask a lot of questions. Taking the step into intimacy had felt casual, but not in the derogatory sense. Sex with him had been nice, but it hadn’t been loaded with deep meaning or great expectations.
If Izzy and I had moved on in those following days, I probably would have kept Shane in my heart as a fond memory of my travels, like a hike that had been worth the shortness of breath because I had slept well afterward.
Instead, Izzy had picked up an email from a former colleague in Calgary who had moved to Winnipeg. He thought she’d be perfect for the team he was assembling at the branch of a bank there.
“Are you coming back with me?” Izzy had asked as she had looked up flights.
Without answering, I’d gone to the beach to soul-search. By that I mean sulk. Fox had found me and I had poured out my dilemma, repulsed by the idea of going back to Pine Grove so I could update a website selling medical devices.
“‘Our vision care diagnostic tools will change the way you see patient outcomes,’” I quoted. “That’s the sort of pun I’m reduced to, in order to keep my sanity.”
He hadn’t laughed. Or pitied me. “Could you do that kind of thing for T&B? Our website is a heaping pile of feces. I know because I made it myself. The good ones are so dear, though.”
It always made me smile to hear him use Aussie expressions in his mostly-American accent.
I had fully intended to find my own place as soon as possible, not continue sleeping with Shane. The house itself had been a worksite since the men were constantly renovating one thing or other in their spare time.
Somehow our arrangement had turned into a quid pro quo, though. I retooled the website and taught them how to stay on-brand with social media. I worked the retail counter and caught up a bunch of filing and other admin in exchange for rent and groceries. That trade-off rescued my pride and allowed me to keep from draining my savings, but the whole time I was staying with them, I’d been anxious to earn my keep. I cooked and swept sawdust and kept my showers under two minutes. I helped Shane organize his parents’ thirty-fifth wedding anniversary. Actually, I organized it. He paid for it, but at least I hadn’t been seen as a freeloader.
Apparently, I’d been seen as his extremely well-organized, hard-working, gem of a girlfriend who would finally pin Shane’s feet to the ground because, days before I was due to fly home, Shane proposed.
If I was honest, I’d been in a state of anxiety about accepting ever since. I had called it wedding jitters and natural stress over emigrating, but there’d been a part of me that had gone into existential crisis. Was I trying to be someone I wasn’t? Or was this a natural discomfort at stepping outside my comfort zone. Was I being courageous? Or ignoring my gut at my own peril?
In quiet turmoil, I had listened to Mom list reasons it was a bad idea, which only made me dig in my heels and pick up shifts at the bar again, to pay for an overseas move and a destination wedding.
A wedding that wouldn’t even happen.
God, I still had to track down the wedding planner and cancel the ceremony.
Maybe Mom was right. Our family wasn’t meant for reaching high. We just fell farther and harder when we tried.
That wasn’t something I would dwell on now. I twisted to set my empty glass beside the full one.
My movement rocked the hammock and disturbed Fox. He sucked in a startled breath and caught me in tight arms, as though he thought we were falling. His eyes blinked open, confused and hazed with sleep.
“It’s okay,” I said, touching his chest and feeling the knock of his heart through the robe. “Go back to sleep.”
“I’m really sorry, Ash.” The regret and sincerity that husked his tone cut past my turmoil and eroded my lingering anger.
“I know.” I let myself relax, head going onto his shoulder with forgiveness.
He rubbed my back once. His breath exhaled, and he was fast asleep again.
I stayed where I was, not wanting to disturb him, but had to close my eyes against the sting of tears.
No more of that , I promised myself and inhaled the fragrant scent of the nearby flowers and salty trade winds from across the ocean. I focused on the simple human connection of reclining next to another live body. Fox smelled like... I concentrated, trying to pick apart the pieces of his specific scent. Surf and the essential oils Ikaika had used, maybe leftover sunscreen and a hint of something very familiar…