28. Ashley
ASHLEY
S ince the cruise had been cut short, I arrived at the villa early enough that the Holloways were still there. By then, the video had been uploaded and I’d been texted the link by the passenger who had filmed it. I was able to show everyone why Fox was absent. The rescue had everyone gasping.
Eddie said “Bloody idiot” with exasperation. Sandy had opinions on surfers who got themselves into trouble out of sheer ignorance. Then she gave me some pointers on how T&B could share the video and frame it to help people understand they were putting others in danger when they were thoughtless about their own safety.
“Can I watch it again?” Fliss asked.
“Sure.” I handed her my phone, then asked Whitney, “How was the champagne? Good enough that I can ask a favor?”
Whitney lifted amused brows. “Such as?”
“Harry, the guy Fox saved... He offered Fox a heli-tour tomorrow.” I wasn’t sure if Fox really wanted me to go, but... God help me, I wanted to spend as much time with him as I could. “I’m supposed to pick up Izzy from the airport tomorrow.”
“We can do that,” Oliver said brightly. “We’re happy to.”
“No, you and Ry go kayaking like you planned,” Whitney said to her intended. “I’ll go. Fliss can come with me. I want some mommy-daughter bonding time.”
Fliss lifted her head from staring at my phone and curled her lip at Whit. “Then take Grandma.”
“Grandma has been invited to join the Holloways on a tour of the resort,” Mom said.
“In a golf cart,” Sandy explained. “I can’t do long walks with my hip.”
“That sounds fun.” I was pleased to hear that Mom was doing something besides planning meals and deadheading the resort’s already well-tended flower baskets.
“Yeah,” Whitney said. “Way to wheel out of your comfort zone, Mom.”
I slanted her an admonishing smirk. Behind her, Fliss was still on the sofa, still looking at my phone as it pinged with an incoming text.
Fliss’s eyes bulged and she snapped an accusatory glare at me.
“What?” I instinctively moved toward her. “Something from Shane?”
“No,” Fliss said with disdain. She slapped the phone into my hand. “I thought vacations were supposed to be fun. This one sucks. I’m going for a walk.”
Oh, frig. The photo from Margorie of me and Fox hugging had come through.
I clicked off the phone and glanced with dread around the room, trying to think how I would defend myself, but everyone was watching Fliss kick into her flip-flops, completely misinterpreting her tantrum.
“It’s one hour to the airport,” Whitney said with tested patience. “You said you didn’t want to go kayaking.”
“It’s too late to go out walking around,” Mom said. “It’s dark. Practically your bedtime.”
“The four-year-old is still up!” Fliss pointed at Ryan where he was playing Go Fish at the table with Eddie and Oliver.
“I’ll go with her,” I said, snatching up my bag.
Fliss’s teeth lined up against her tight bottom lip, as though she wanted to tell me to eff-off, but after a quick glance at Ryan, she stormed out without saying it.
I jammed my feet into my sandals and hurried after her.
Fliss stayed where the path was paved and lit. Bugs fluttered against the lights overhead and a couple of teenagers were goofing around on the tennis courts. A tiger-striped cat saw us coming and shot into the shelter of a nearby shrub.
“I know what it looks like. That’s not what it was,” I said as I came alongside her.
Fliss threw me a look of pity. “I’m so sick of being treated like a little kid who doesn’t understand what’s going on or have any choice about anything.”
“I know you’re upset about your mom and Oliver. I’m sorry I went out tonight instead of hanging out with you. Do you want to talk about it?”
“And say what? She’s going to marry him whether I want her to or not.”
“Are you mad that she’s getting married or that she didn’t talk to you about it first?”
“I don’t know!”
“Well, at least let her tell you how she thinks it will be. Then you can tell her what you’re worried about.”
“Sure, I’ll go on a super fun car ride tomorrow to the airport so Mom can tell me how great Oliver is. Can’t you get Izzy with the helicopter? This is all really fucking stupid.” She plopped onto a bench.
I ignored the curse. Truth is, I never stopped her from swearing and barely filtered my own language around her. Hadn’t for years. I sat down beside her.
“I heard Mom tell Oliver that she told you to go to bed with Fox and get it over with. Have you?”
“What? No. And I won’t.” That felt like a lie as I said it. Because I wanted to. Not as revenge or rebound, but because I wanted to. Oh gawd.
I tried not to let that realization show on my face as Fliss chewed her nail and stared at me so hard, I felt the heat of it against my skin.
“I was really scared for him tonight,” I admitted, experiencing a fresh shiver in my chest. “It made me realize how much I care about him.”
“So what are you going to do?” She sounded both belligerent and anxious.
“Nothing,” I said, and feared it was another lie.
Fliss wanted reassurance that Auntie Ashley would be there for her through this latest upheaval in her life. I wanted to be there for her. Love wasn’t selfish, I reminded myself. My needs didn’t matter. They never had.
“I— Being with Fox is impossible.” I was reminding myself as much her. “He’s not just the best friend of my ex-fiancé. They’re business partners. They own a house together.”
“It’d be like having an affair with a married man. Like you caused their divorce.” Fliss said it gravely. It wasn’t a joke. Then her face crumpled a little. “I don’t even get why mom wants to get married. Sure, have a boyfriend. Have sex. I don’t care. But why make us all live together and everything?”
“You’re sounding a little like Grandma.”
“Harsh. Why did you want to get married, though? Just so you could move away? Did you even love Shane? Because now you’re into Fox. It’s very Twilight.”
“Why are you so mean?”
“I’m twelve.” Fliss bent and rubbed her fingers and thumb, trying to coax one of the feral cats closer. It grew skittish and retreated into the dark. She straightened and gave me a disgruntled look. “Don’t tell me I’ll understand when I’m older. Explain it to me now.”
“I wasn’t going to say that.” I usually did try to explain things to her in an age-appropriate way, but this one was hard. I barely had a grasp on it myself. “First of all, grownups aren’t that smart, sorry to tell you. We’re basically a bunch of twelve-year-olds who can drink and drive. Not at the same time,” I hurried to add.
She rolled her eyes.
“We want kids to believe we’ve got shit figured out because life would be really freaking scary for you if you knew we were as confused as you are, but we are.” I slouched deeper on the bench, tilting my head back to look at the stars. “I’ve been thinking a lot about marriage and how important it is to me and why.”
This afternoon, when I’d been trying to write the press release about why the wedding had been cancelled, I’d realized how much I’d been thinking about a wedding and not the marriage itself.
“Want to know a secret? I hadn’t even read the vows we were supposed to take. When Fox first told me that Shane didn’t expect us to stay married, I was really upset. Because I’m stubborn, right? I can make anything work. That’s what I thought when he said Shane felt that way. Like, ‘I’ll show him.’ But is that a good reason to be in a marriage?”
Fliss was bent again, offering her empty hand to a skittish kitten, but I was pretty sure she was listening so I kept talking.
“Shane and I would have come here and said those vows if Fox hadn’t stopped us. They’re supposed to be promises and we probably wouldn’t have meant them. Realizing that made me think a lot about whether I’ll ever be able to say anything like that to anyone and mean it.”
“Grandma has told us a million times that we don’t need to get married.” Fliss sat up and looked at me.
“I know. But I still had this sense that I should. And I always expected I would. I’m not sure why.”
“Peer pressure?”
“You’d think we grow out of it, but we don’t. The messages are everywhere, right? Don’t you feel as though you’re expected to marry and have kids?”
“Everyone at school is like, ‘Josh is so cute. I want to have his babies.’” She made a gagging noise, tongue curling out to her chin. “I’m like, do you know how babies come out of you? Because, no thank you.”
“And we know we’re supposed to be skinny and eat vegan even though no one says it to our face.”
“And have clear skin and wear the right clothes.”
“And men are supposed to be sex machines and women are supposed to naturally love children, even though kids can be very challenging and petulant.”
“And children are supposed to be respectful of their elders, even when they can tell when an adult is talking down to them.”
We made faces at each another and jostled elbows.
“So you don’t want to get married anymore?” Fliss asked.
“I don’t know.” I looked back at the stars. I kept thinking about what Fox had said about wanting to see someone every day. About missing me. “I can’t say I never will, but...” But the man who inspired the closest thing I had to that feeling in me felt firmly out of my reach. “I think—please don’t tell Grandma I said this. I think I wanted to show her that I could get married and make it work.”
“Because she got a divorce from Grandpa? And thought you should never marry?”
Fliss didn’t know all the gory details of that time, only that my dad was an alcoholic who hadn’t wanted to seek help and that was the main reason Grandma wasn’t married to him anymore.
“I guess,” I said. “Like I wanted to prove to her that I was smart enough to make a better choice than she had, maybe. I wasn’t really making a choice, though,” I realized. “I was still doing what I thought was acceptable. What I thought Grandma could accept as a valid reason for me to leave Pine Grove and all of you. I understand why she wants us to live this small, careful, safe little life and stay close to her. It makes her feel safe. But it’s stifling.”
“Tell me about it,” Fliss muttered, then cut me a glance. “Do you think that’s what Mom is doing? Showing Grandma she can do it better?”
“No. I think she really loves Oliver.”
Fliss grimaced.
“Look. Being twelve sucks.” I picked up her hand and squeezed it between my own. “It also sucks when you feel like your Mom controls your whole life. Believe me, I know . But your mom loves you, same as Grandma loves me. She wants to give you a good life, but she also wants to have a good life. Your mom wants to feel loved and have someone who will be in her life when you decide to get the fuck out of Pine Grove yourself.”
“In six years.” She pulled her hand away from mine.
“At least you’re not waiting until you’re twenty -six. And it’s not like I’ll never come back to see you. We’ll still text and call?—”
“It’s not the same!”
“I know, but Fliss, nothing stays the same.” I started to add more, hesitated, then decided to give her the courtesy of being raw and real. “Are you going to stay twelve and need me exactly this same amount? You already don’t.”
She snapped a look at me and I could tell she wasn’t sure if she wanted to deny that or assure me that she didn’t need me at all . Twelve. Such a ridiculously difficult age for the person in it, let alone the people around them.
“I wasn’t much older than you when your mom had you,” I reminded her. “Grandma was working and your Dad...” I shrugged because I barely knew the guy and his absence had made things less complicated in the long run so I didn’t run him down to his daughter. “Your mom’s friends were doing what teenagers do. They weren’t around to help her. I was the one she leaned on and I don’t resent it. I love you, Fliss. I love you so much , but you’re finally old enough that I can leave. I can think about what I want to do, rather than what Grandma thinks I should do, or what your mom needs me to do. You’ve already started making a life of your own. You’d rather hang out at Sofia’s than hang out with me. Which is fine .”
She had her arms folded and wasn’t looking at me, but I could see a gloss on her eyes.
“This is the age where you’re going to want more and more independence. Growing up is like learning to walk. You want cushions to fall back on, but once you figure it out, you keep going with it. You never go back to not walking. Not if you can help it. Shane was my cushion. He’s gone and I stumbled and it hurts, but I have to pick myself up and keep trying. I can’t go backwards.”
“You thought you would feel more independent by getting married? Grownups really are stupid.”
“We really are. But you realize I’m not leaving you at the pound, right? She’s your mom. And wherever I end up, you can come visit.”
“Promise?”
“Pinky promise.” I offered mine.
After a discontented sigh, she hooked hers into it and gave it a jiggle.