Chapter 49
Karla
Ouch.
My head hurt. My whole body hurt as I shifted in the bed. “What’s going on?” I asked, stirring as my vision began to unblur. I noticed Ash to my left side and my father to my right. “What happened?”
“There you are,” Dad said, sighing with relief.
Ash didn’t say anything; he looked as pale as a ghost as he took a step back.
My brain still felt foggy as I tried to gather what had happened. Dad told me there was an accident at the bookshop.
I grumbled as I rubbed my forehead. “Shoot, I fell off the ladder,” I said as I recalled the incident.
Ash wasn’t looking at me anymore as he said, “You shouldn’t have been on a ladder.”
I could feel the heaviness of his fear sitting in his chest. I could only imagine how his mind had spiraled over the past few hours. If it were the other way around, I would’ve been devastated.
“Ash,” I started.
“I’ll get a nurse, so they know you’re awake,” Ash mentioned. He paused and gave me a slight head nod and said, “I’m glad you’re OK, Karla,” before he left the room.
There was something so off-putting about how Ash was acting, but I’d have to face that once I gathered some of my energy back.
“Ash is right, you know. You can’t be climbing those ladders, Karla.” Dad combed my hair from in front of my face. “You really scared us.”
“I know. I’m sorry. It’s just that sometimes I want to be able to do normal things, like climb a freaking ladder.”
“I get that.”
“I’m guessing I scared Ash a lot.”
“I’ve never seen an individual more concerned,” Dad said. “He showed up instantly when he found out you were here. Him and a group of his friends. That boy loves you, Karla.”
I smiled a little. “I love him, too, Dad.”
Dad moved in and kissed my forehead. “You both deserve that kind of love, but please”—he kissed my forehead again—“don’t ever scare me like that again. Lorelai already gave me a shit ton of gray hairs. You don’t need to add more to my head.”
“You’d make a great silver fox,” I joked.
Dad smiled, and his eyes glassed over with relief.
“I’m sorry for scaring you, Dad. I thought I could handle it.”
“It’s OK,” he said with yet another forehead kiss. “I’m just glad you’re going to be OK.”
When I was discharged from the hospital, Dad, Ellie, and Lorelai drove me home. Ash shot me a text and said he got called into work, but he’d check in on me later on. That evening, Lorelai stayed with me to make sure I was OK.
Throughout the night, I sent Ash a few messages between my naps, and whenever I woke up, I’d see that he didn’t text me back. I tried not to overthink it, but not hearing from him at all was odd to me, even if he was at work.
The next day I texted him again.
I still didn’t hear from him. But the text messages I’d been sending him all said “Read.”
Now I wasn’t worried.
I was pissed off.
Was he ghosting me again? No. That would be crazy. He swore he wouldn’t.
He promised.
* * *
Around one the next afternoon, I received a text from him.
Ash: Hey, Karla. I checked in with your dad and heard you’re doing better. I’m glad.
I tried to call him right away. It went straight to voicemail.
Ash: Sorry, busy with work for these next few days. My responses might be short. We’ll talk soon.
Karla: Are you mad at me?
Ash: No. Of course not.
Karla: Well if you were wondering, I’m freaking pissed off at you for ignoring me.
He started to type something but stopped. He did this a few more times, the ellipsis appearing and disappearing on the text chain.
Ash: It’s not what you think.
Karla: So you aren’t ignoring me? Because it looks that way.
Ash: We’ll talk soon. Enjoy your week.
Enjoy my week? My WEEK?!
That jerk was ghosting me!
* * *
The only thing that kept me from tracking down Ash and raging at him was the fact that I had a bookshop to run. If it wasn’t for fictional characters, I would’ve tracked the jerk down and given him the biggest piece of my mind—after I made sure he was OK.
I hated that my biggest concern was his well-being after he was the one to ghost me, but I couldn’t help it. I knew Ash kept a lot of his dark moments to himself. I hoped that wasn’t why he was keeping me at a distance—so he could drown by his lonesome.
I knew he struggled, but I also knew he was waking back up and becoming more of his true, authentic self.
He was coming back to life. His eyes were starting to sparkle more, and that made me happy.
Yet now, it felt like we’d taken two hundred steps backward in his healing journey, and I wasn’t allowed to be there as he struggled.
That was what hurt the most.
“I haven’t seen Ash around much lately,” Daniel mentioned as he wiped down the countertops after a work shift had come to an end. “He missed the last book club meeting.”
“Yeah. I guess he’s been busy,” I said as I stacked books on a shelf. I was short with Daniel because the last thing I wanted to do was talk about Ash. When I talked about him, it made me want to cry. I didn’t feel like crying over him. I’d already cried for him all those years before.
“Did you two get into a fight?” he questioned.
I shook my head. “No. We just decided . . .” My words faded off, because that was a lie. We didn’t decide anything. Ash made a choice on his own, just as he had when we were teenagers. He walked away and left me.
Daniel walked toward me and tossed the cleaning rag onto his shoulder. He sighed as he crossed his arms over his chest. “Listen, I know it’s not my place to try to give you advice, especially after I confessed my feelings for you and you so kindly declined my date offer—”
“Daniel—”
“I’m not upset about that, Karla. Truly, I value our friendship, and I’m happy you were honest with me. But I think it’s time for you to be honest with yourself, too. You love him, don’t you?”
I paused as my eyes flashed with tears. “I do.”
“Then get him back. Call him.”
“It’s not that simple . . . he pushed me away. He has things that he’s dealing with, but he won’t let me in. He shut me out.”
“Well, clearly, I don’t know shit about love, but I do know that what I saw between the two of you seemed real. I saw how you look at him.”
“How do I look at him?”
“Like he is the whole world wrapped in one person.” Daniel wrapped me in a sideways hug. “And unfortunately for me, friend, Ash looks at you in the same exact way. I’d never seen two people who just . . . fit.”
I began crying, because I knew he was right. Ash meant the world to me. He always had and always would, but what was I supposed to do about that when whenever he got scared, he ran away?
I deserved someone who stayed.