44. Ashley
ASHLEY
“ A re you coming to the turtle beach with us?” Fliss asked as we finished up at the spa. Her moonglow purple toes had finally put a smile on her face. Whitney had gone with valentine red. Izzy wore neon green and I wore bubblegum pink. A safe choice because the rest of my life had drifted into such choppy waters.
“Sorry, hon. I forgot all about that.” I thumbed through my string of unread texts, all well-wishes from friends in Pine Grove. Ugh. Fox and I had posted the statement to the T&B website, but I would have to post the link on my social media and stem all this salt they were rubbing into my wounds.
Still nothing from Fox, though. Was he making progress with Shane? Or so furious with me, he didn’t want to talk to me? The longer this silence went on, the thicker the blanket of guilt weighed on me.
“You guys go ahead,” I urged Fliss and Whitney. “Tell Mom I’ll figure out something for dinner.” Mom had already been stressing about how to rearrange her meal plan since the wedding dinner had been called off.
“Izzy?” Whitney invited. “Want to come see the turtles?”
“Pass, thanks. I have a hot date with a lounge chair next to the pool.” Izzy nudged my elbow with her own. “Let me buy you lunch first. I haven’t had breakfast.”
“Me, neither. I’m starving,” I confessed.
Whitney and Fliss headed back toward the villa and I followed Izzy to the restaurant.
“Looks pretty busy.” Izzy made a face at the family in a booth chaotically trying to feed two little kids and a baby. “Let’s see if the other one is open.”
“It’s expensive and I think they only do dinner.”
“The beach one?” she suggested.
“It had a notice yesterday that they would be closed for a private event today.” The pharmacists were still here. “Oh, wait. I have a coupon for the golf clubhouse.” I had printed it before I left home and dug it out of my purse. “Want to try it?”
“Sure.”
By the time we had walked the short distance in the midday heat, we both gratefully ordered the pineapple margarita that was on special. Even with the lingering champagne in my bloodstream, however, I couldn’t relax as I sat across from Izzy. In the spa, we had thankfully moved on from discussing Fox and Shane and sex lives, but now all I could wonder was, “Are you judging me?”
“For ordering fries instead of salad?”
“ Pfft . Diet firmly set alight and launched over the ocean in one of those paper balloons. After I starved myself to fit into that stupid dress, too.” I propped my head on my hand and wondered what I could get for it.
Wedding dress, never worn . It probably had its own category on Marketplace.
“The whole time I was doing it, I was thinking, ‘Izzy would never punish herself like this. She’d order a dress that fit in the first place.’ But you have such a great body, you could wear a Snuggie down the aisle and look great.”
“So could you. Why do you put yourself down all the time?”
“I don’t know. Mom and her ‘be realistic’ lectures? She made sure I didn’t kid myself into thinking I was a supermodel. Therefore, I must be hideously flawed and have to work every second to look like a human.”
“She’s not that bad. Is she?”
“No.” I wrinkled my nose at my twisted self-esteem. “Mostly that’s me suffering the messages society sends me, but where’s the fun in taking responsibility for my own hang ups? Aren’t our parents supposed to be the reason we all need therapy?”
“No kidding. The other day, I told my boss we should market a savings account for counselling. Parents won’t need to go to confession, they can deposit their guilt as monthly contributions into their child’s future cognitive therapy fund. They’d never have to feel bad about the fixations and phobias they bequeath us. Win-win.”
“Did you get a promotion? Because that is seriously brilliant.”
“I know.” Izzy coolly sipped her drink and licked the salt from her lips.
“Yet another way I wish I could be like you. Bold. Innovative.” It was supposed to be a cheeky compliment, but Izzy gave me an impatient frown.
“What’s wrong with being like you?” she asked. “Why isn’t that good enough?”
“Because I don’t know how to do it,” I moaned. “You accept people how they are, especially yourself. You don’t make apologies for who you are, either. You say, ‘Screw it’ and go after whatever you want without letting it rot your stomach with anxiety. I went to Australia so I wouldn’t be so freaking boring and came home engaged. How predictable is that ?”
“You think you’re boring and predictable?”
“Don’t you?”
“No.” Izzy seemed genuinely perplexed.
I faltered, then decided to wade all the way in.
“I guess I thought you must because you don’t really want to hang out with me lately. Which is fine,” I insisted, holding up a hand. “You live in the city and even I don’t want to be in Pine Grove anymore. I don’t blame you for not coming back or calling. You have a busy career and a life. But that’s what I mean. You do things. Mom is all like, ‘Keep your head down and save for a rainy day. Don’t reach too high or you might fall down.’ It’s my fault that I listen. I know that. I thought I was changing by boldly marrying this Australian surfer, then I realized I wasn’t. Not really. I was settling for what I thought was as good an offer as I was liable to get.”
“Oof,” Izzy admonished.
“I know. It sounds awful when I hear myself say it, especially because he’s a really great guy. For someone else.” I took a shaky breath. “Now I don’t know what I’m doing because it turns out that being impulsive and going after what you want without giving a rat’s ass for the consequences has consequences.”
“Imagine,” Izzy tucked her wedge of pineapple into her smile, nodding with sympathy. “I get what you’re saying, though. It’s hard to admit what we want and go after it, especially when it’s something people don’t expect us to want. Or want us to want.”
“Exactly.” I sighed, relieved to be understood.
Izzy rolled her lips inward, then pushed aside her drink and stacked her forearms before her on the table. She leaned in.
“Ash, I’m bi.”
“Bi...? Bisexual?”
“Bicoastal,” she said dryly. “Yes, bisexual.”
I stared at her, genuinely dumbfounded. After a second, I managed to close my mouth, but my brain was a four-by-six, freshly hung, shiny blank whiteboard.
“I had no idea,” I managed to say. “I mean, obviously that’s cool. We’re friends and I love you no matter what, but I’m feeling really stupid for not even suspecting. You’re so open about how much you’re into guys. It didn’t occur to me that you might like girls, too.”
“That’s called hiding in plain sight. Please don’t tell anyone, especially your family.” For the first time since we were little, Izzy revealed a hint of insecurity.
“Of course not. Not if you don’t want me to, but they wouldn’t judge. I mean, Mom would give you the safe sex talk—again.” I bit my smile, recalling how receptive we’d been the first time she’d lectured us, simply because we’d both got our period that summer.
Izzy snorted with old humor, too.
“But she ran a program at the women’s resource center for years,” I reminded her. “She’s got a modern view on gender and attraction.”
“I know. But my parents don’t know. Neither does anyone at work. I don’t want to be worrying it’ll somehow get to all of those places before I figure out how to tell them myself.”
“I’m one of the first people you told? Thank you for trusting me.” I was genuinely touched. “And I’m sorry your parents are...” I pushed my mouth to the side. Izzy’s father wrote papers for conservative think tank and her mother was very active in their church. “Stuck in their ways?”
“Mom literally tried to set me up on a blind date with an oil lobbyist the last time we talked. I march for climate change. She knows that . But she’s really proud of me for getting that job at the bank.” Izzy lifted her fists in a mini-cheer. “Because it means I can go back to work part time as a teller after I have kids.”
“Oh, brutal.” I had to chuckle. “And there was my mom pretty much taking us for spaying after Whit came home pregnant. Did you ever tell your mom that mine is the one who got you on the pill?”
“Do you want your mother’s car lit on fire? Of course not.”
We chuckled.
“This is why I love you,” I said. “Even when everything feels broken, you make me laugh.”
Our food arrived and we tucked in.
“So...” I asked around a French fry. “Do you have someone special?”
“Besides you?” Izzy asked, flashing me a cheeky grin. “I’m kidding. Don’t get all full of yourself like you’ve won a trifecta or something.”
I had to spit my food into my napkin so I wouldn’t choke on it, I was laughing so hard. I took a deep drink of my slushy margarita, trying to get hold of myself.
“Oh, my God.” I dabbed under my damp eyes with a fresh napkin. “Yeah, that’s what I was thinking. That I’m irresistible. Please don’t tell me that’s why you invited me to Australia last year.”
“No, that was...” Izzy grimaced before confessing, “I was getting over someone. My first girl friend. I presumed we would move in together and... It didn’t work out. Obviously.” She forced a smile, but her eyes were sheened with old hurt. “So what you saw as me being bold and not giving a shit was standard, post-breakup madness. I wanted to run away from who I was. Fox was... I told myself I was going back to only dating guys. And he’s a great guy. For someone else.” She was mocking me with my own words, but being gentle about it.
Because she knew how hard it was hitting me.
The server came to ask if we wanted another round of drinks. We both nodded enthusiastically.
“When I got this job offer,” Izzy said after the woman was gone, “I saw it as another way to go back to being who I’m expected to be. And all of this is literally why I brought up the therapy fund idea with my boss. I wanted to know if our benefits covered counselling. I realized I wasn’t processing who I am as well as I could. Which is also why I was wishy-washy about making my travel arrangements and didn’t fly in until yesterday. It took a while to get in with the doctor I wanted. I had my first appointment on Monday.” Izzy apprehensively waited for my reaction.
“How did it go?”
“Pretty good.”
“Good. But what I’m hearing is that your stomach does rot with anxiety.” I pointed a fry at her. “And you’ve been keeping that from me. Unbelievable.” I shook my head with dismay.
Izzy bit back a smile while her eyes dampened. “That’s what I love about you ,” she said sincerely. “You’re still my friend even though I wasn’t completely honest with you about why I wanted to go to Oz and left you there to fend for yourself. I’ve been feeling guilty, wanting to explain it all. That’s why I’ve been weird about hanging out. I knew we had to have this conversation, but I’m still not sure how to talk about it. Or how much I want to say. It’s confusing.”
“It’s okay. Truly. I’m really glad you felt like you could tell me. And it’s a good reminder to me that not everything is about me. Everyone has their own thing going on. It’s as if everyone has their own lives and problems,” I said with mock wonder.
“Right?” Izzy picked up her cutlery. “As if we’re each the star of our own story and the rest of the world is our supporting cast.”
“Oh, I never feel like a star. I’m more like a key grip. If I drop a light, it’s all over. Cut! Start again. Everybody is giving me dirty looks.”
“Hate to break it to you, but you’re not important enough to ruin everything.”
“Oh, Joanna. So nice to see you.” I tilted my head in a scold at her.
We shared a grin, but mine faded as quickly as it formed.
“I feel like I screwed up Fox’s life pretty badly without even trying.”
“How? By sleeping with him?”
That and, “By wishing for a chance to see what we could have?”
“You think that wishing for a chance to see what you might have could ruin his life? You are full of yourself.”
“And sleeping with him,” I admitted with a grimace of guilt.
“Was it consensual? Did you force him?”
“You and I are not going to trade notes.”
“I’m just saying, if it was something you both did, he shouldn’t blame you . Is he trying to?”
“I don’t know what he’s thinking.” I nudged my phone with its lack of messages. “He went after Shane who was so mad.” My chest filled up with rusty nails all poking this way and that inside my lungs. “It’s not just the house and the business. Shane’s mom and dad are like family to Fox. If they turn their back on him, I wouldn’t blame him for hating me.”
“For God’s sake, why is it all on you?”
“Because I knew we didn’t have a chance at a future. Not the way things are with Shane.” My voice dwindled with the rays of hope I’d been clinging to. “I knew we should have stayed friends, but I.... I wanted to be with him, even if it was only once. I listened to my heart, not my head.” My libido, really. “Now my heart is going to wind up broken.”
“Oh, sister,” Izzy breathed. “Do I hear that.”
Our drinks arrived and we tapped the salted rims.