Chapter 12 #3
“Yes,” I said quietly, as if saying it too loud would make me get struck by lightning.
I didn’t want to die. At least I didn’t think I wanted to go that far.
It was more that some days I didn’t want to live.
Those two things had to be different, right?
I didn’t want to die, but at the same time I hated living, too.
I wished there was a word for that—for the space between living and dying.
Maybe it was numb.
I wanted to be numb.
“My brother killed himself,” Ash blurted out, making my heart skip a million and four beats. “He was thirteen.”
Thirteen?
Only a year younger than me?
Those words made me want to throw up.
“Ash. I’m sor—”
“Don’t,” he cut in, shaking his head. “Don’t be sorry. I’m just saying. If you have a lot of those thoughts about not wanting to be alive, can you just . . . maybe call me first?”
“What would me calling you do?”
“I don’t know,” he shrugged as his light-brown eyes glassed over. “Give me a chance to tell you to stay.”
“Was your brother sad?” I asked.
“Only when he was around people who made him feel that way. He was bullied a lot, even though he was the best person I’ve ever known.”
Oh, Ash . . .
Is that why he was so big on standing up to the bullies with me? Is that why he wanted to shut Colton down in the cafeteria? Because of how he lost his brother? “You blame yourself for his death, don’t you?”
“Yes.”
“But you weren’t the one bullying him, right?”
He shrugged. “I could’ve convinced him he was good enough. I could’ve made him feel more seen, so he would’ve stayed.”
His hands were in his sweatshirt pocket again. I couldn’t keep myself from finally asking about it. “What’s in that pocket?”
He looked down and then pulled his hand out, revealing a toy in his grip.
A red toy truck. “Rian loved cars. He and Dad had that in common. They’d always go to car shows together, and Rian would take a ton of photographs of them.
He had dozens of these toy cars in his bedroom, but this one was his favorite.
He left it in my room before he passed away, and I just hold on to it to feel . . . well . . . him.”
“That’s sad,” I said.
Ash didn’t say anything for a moment as he stared down at the toy in his hand. Then a small breath slipped through his lips. “Yeah, well. That’s life for ya.” He shoved the toy truck back into his pocket. “I’m good, though.”
“You don’t have to do that, you know,” I urged.
“Do what?”
“Pretend that you’re OK.”
He smiled. “But then there would be two of us who are sad, and we can’t have that. We need a more balanced friendship.”
“You’re still sad, even if you pretend that you’re not.”
He scrunched up his nose before raking his hand through his hair. I tossed a grape at him, and remarkably, he caught it in his mouth.
“Ohhh!” we both shouted at the same time, tossing our arms up in a unified victorious field goal sign. We needed that win exactly in that moment.
“Let me try, let me try!” Ash remarked, picking up a grape of his own. “Get ready,” he ordered.
I shouted “Ready!” and opened my mouth.
He tossed the grape toward me, and I caught it! “Ohhhh!” we shouted again in unison, this time louder than before. A stab of pain shot through my left hip.
Ouch.
I ignored it.
Ash pounded his hands against the marble countertop. “OK, OK. Grape me.” He opened his mouth even wider than before. I tossed the grape, and he caught it again!
“OHHHHH!” we shouted, jumping up and down.
Ouch.
My body hurt from the jumps, but my heart was bursting with so much excitement that I didn’t even care. I couldn’t stop laughing from shock that we somehow caught three grapes right in a row. I felt like we should’ve played the lottery.
Ash rushed over to me and gave me a high five. “Hell yeah, Karla!”
“That was wild!” I expressed, beaming with excitement from freaking grape catching.
I didn’t know why, but it felt like the most exciting thing that had happened in a long time.
I couldn’t stop laughing at it, to the point that I snorted from my giggles.
I covered my mouth from embarrassment, but instead of making fun of me, Ash seemed amazed.
“Your laugh is my favorite sound,” he told me, so straightforwardly, so sweetly.
My heart skipped a million beats, and my breath caught in my throat. For a millisecond, I saw something more than a friend when I looked at Ash. For a millisecond, I saw the faint hints of a crush.
Wait, no.
We were just friends.
Really good friends, Karla. That’s it; that’s all. Don’t make your one friendship uncomfortable. You have too much to lose.
Before I could reply to his comment, Ellie came into the room looking alarmed. “I heard a lot of noise. Is everything OK?”
Ash smiled toward Ellie. “We just realized that we are professional grape catchers.”
I quietly giggled.
Ellie noticed the sound.
She grinned. “OK, sorry. Just wanted to check in.” She gave me a wink, then headed out of the kitchen. I wished the woman would stop winking at me. It was such a millennial thing for her to do—so awkward.
Ash and I stood quiet for a moment before he cleared his throat and slid his hands into the pockets of his jeans. “Got any board games?”
Ouch.
My leg.
It was achingly painful.
I shook it off the best I could.
Board games, board games . . . gosh . . . I hadn’t played a board game in ages.
Not since Mom . . .
“Yeah. In my room I have a drawer of games. You can follow me.” We headed toward my room, and the moment we stepped inside, he glanced around.
There wasn’t much to take in, seeing as how I took down all my posters and photographs after Mom passed away.
The walls were bare, and the space pretty much summed up the emptiness I’d been feeling for a while now.
His eyes fell to the closet door with the caution tape and “Do Not Enter” sign. He parted his mouth as if he was going to ask about it, but instead, he shut his mouth and pushed out a tight smile.
But I wanted him to know that he wasn’t the only one holding on to things like toy trucks. Maybe that was what sad people needed—to know they weren’t the only ones struggling to get by.
“It’s my mom,” I mentioned, nodding in the direction of the closet.
“What do you mean?”
I walked over to the door and waved him over. As I opened it, I pointed inside the space. “It’s my mom. All her things that I love. Her clothes, her favorite candles, her perfume. I sleep in here to feel close to her. This closet is my mom.”
Ash looked into the space, and a small smile landed on his face. “Nice to meet you, Nicole. I really like your daughter.”
My heart skipped a beat or five.
“I sometimes sleep in her clothes,” I confessed. “When I miss her the most.” I didn’t know why I told him that. I hardly told anyone anything about Mom and me.
“This is my brother’s hoodie,” he said. “I’m afraid I’ve been washing it too much, and it’s falling apart at the front pocket.
” He showed the thread of the pocket coming apart.
“I could get another hoodie, but this is the one he left in my bedroom before he passed away. The others are in his bedroom, but I haven’t set foot in my brother’s bedroom since he passed.
I’m too scared to see him not in there.”
“Maybe going in there will help you.”
“Maybe. I’m just not ready to open that door.”
“Then it’s OK if you keep it shut.”
We were quiet, but it didn’t feel uncomfortable. It seemed like a good quiet.
“That wasn’t very public of us,” Ash whispered, nudging me in the arm. The slight brush of his skin against mine gave me goose bumps.
“I guess we are officially personal,” I whispered back.
“About damn time,” he playfully teased.
Heat rushed to my cheeks from his mischievous smile and the lightheartedness of his tone.
I cleared my throat and went to the dresser drawer that had all the board games.
I used to love game night. Dad used to, too.
It was our favorite weekend tradition. Sometimes, he and I would play all on our own while Mom was with Lorelai, since she was too young to play the games that Dad and I found to be entertaining.
“Jenga!” Ash remarked, hurrying over to pick up the game. “I freaking love Jenga.”
I smiled a little.
That was my favorite game, too.
He sat down on the floor and instantly began to build the Jenga stack. I held on to the edge of my bed frame and used it to help me sit down on the floor.
Ouch!
I must’ve made a face of disdain, because Ash raised an eyebrow. “Will you be comfortable down here? We can play at the dining room table.”
“I’m fine,” I lied. There was a sharp pain cruising down my left leg. It was the most pain I’d felt in quite a while, but I was doing my best to play it off. I didn’t want to be the crippled girl who couldn’t even sit on the floor for five minutes without being on the verge of tears.
Ash scratched at the back of his neck. “Actually, I’m pretty uncomfortable,” he said. “Is it OK if we move to the dining room?”
I sighed, knowing he was just saying that to be nice to me. “Ash, I’m fine . . .”
He smiled a goofy grin and shrugged as he packed up the Jenga pieces. “Not everything is about you, Karla.” He then stood and held a hand out toward me to help me do the same.
The second my hand fell into his, my breath caught as I was hit with the feeling of butterflies.
That was a weird sensation.
I was so used to feeling sad things that the butterflies almost made me cry.
Butterflies.
That was it.
My new favorite word—two wordlets.
“Thanks,” I muttered, embarrassed but grateful.
“Always,” Ash replied.
I had a feeling he meant that, too.
We played a few games of Jenga, and I had a suspicious feeling he was allowing me to win, but I didn’t argue about it because I liked him letting me win. A little bit later, Lorelai came rushing into the room with her butterfly wings on, skipping around like a freaking fairy.
Butterflies, butterflies, butterflies . . .
“Karla! Can I play with youuu?” she sang, spinning in circles.