Chapter 64
Ethan
Seeing Ashley at the door should have been enough to stop me from drinking.
It should have snapped something into place. It should have made me close the door and apologize for the trouble. It should have reminded me that this was the week I was supposed to be becoming someone else.
Instead, my mind slid sideways.
Ashley stood there with a paper bag hanging from one hand. The smell of fried food drifted toward me, sharp and greasy and suddenly nauseating.
She was dressed like she was going somewhere. A short dress that clung to her body. Heels that made her taller than usual. Her hair was done, her makeup careful, her mouth already curved into a smile that faltered when she saw my face.
“You look like hell,” she said.
I laughed. It came out too loud.
“Come in,” I said, stepping back without really deciding to.
She hesitated, then walked past me, the door clicking shut behind her. The apartment felt smaller with her in it, too warm.
She set the bag down on the counter. “Nate said you were drunk,” she said. “He asked me to bring this over because he was tied up.”
That was true. Or close enough to true.
Earlier, when the alcohol had just begun to loosen its grip on me, I had called Nate. I remembered fumbling with my phone, squinting at the screen, the television noise bleeding into everything.
I had told him I was starving. That I needed food. That I was dying.
“Order a pizza,” he had said.
I had scoffed at that. Had felt suddenly indignant, like I had been wronged.
“I’m getting married,” I had told him. “You’re supposed to bring me food. That’s your job.”
He had laughed at me. Called me an idiot. Told me to get over myself.
I had whined. Dragged it out. Leaned into the joke because it was easier than admitting I did not want to be alone.
Eventually he had sighed and said fine. That he would figure something out.
I had not asked questions after that.
Standing there now, watching Ashley move through my kitchen like she belonged there, the weight of that small decision settled in my gut.
“Thanks,” I said, though my appetite was gone. The smell that had seemed comforting a moment ago now made my stomach roll.
Ashley looked at me more closely then. Her eyes narrowed.
“How much have you had to drink?”
I shrugged and turned back toward the living room. I picked up my glass from the table. It was half empty. Or half full. I could not tell anymore.
“Enough,” I said.
She followed me. “You shouldn’t drink this much,” she said, reaching for the glass.
I pulled it away from her, annoyed by the gesture. “I’m fine.”
She straightened, smoothing her dress, and for a moment my eyes caught on the curve of her body. On the way the fabric pulled across her chest. On the unfamiliar awareness of someone else in my space.
I felt a flicker of something like fear.
“I should call Claire,” Ashley said abruptly. “She should know you’re like this.”
The name snapped me back.
“No,” I said, too fast. “Don’t.”
She froze.
The silence stretched. It felt loaded in a way I did not understand yet.
“Are you two fighting?” she asked slowly.
I laughed again, a short, broken sound. “We don’t fight.”
She studied me. “I didn’t know you ever did,” she said. “Everyone thinks you’re perfect.”
The word lodged in my chest and twisted.
Perfect.
I sank onto the couch, the cushions giving way beneath me. The room tilted. The football game played on, the crowd roaring, distant and unreal.
“I’m not,” I said quietly.
Ashley sat down beside me.
“I’m not good enough for her,” I said. The words came out before I could stop them. They had been circling me all week, waiting for a crack.
She did not answer right away.
I expected her to disagree. To tell me I was being dramatic. To wave it away with a joke.
Instead, she nodded.
“I know,” she said.
The shock sobered me faster than anything could.
I turned to her, searching her face. “What?”
She shrugged, looking down at her hands. “I’ve always thought so,” she said. “Not just you, everyone. Claire is too good for all of us.”
The room seemed to close in.
“She settles,” Ashley went on. “I think she always has. Maybe because no one ever told her she deserved better.”
She went quiet then, thoughtful. “My dad also didn’t want me,” she added after a moment. “I think that does something to you. Makes you desperate enough to take love wherever you can.”
Her words echoed inside me, hitting something raw and exposed.
Because they sounded too much like my own fears. Like the thing I had been trying not to name.
That Claire had chosen me not because I was enough, but because she did not know how to ask for more.