SEBASTIAN
SEBASTIAN
"You're an idiot!" Ashleigh bursts into the snug, catching me in the act of painting Brianna's nails at the coffee table.
I narrowly avoid streaking the baby pink gel across my own fingertips as Brianna's hand is startled free of mine. "Excuse you?" She snipes at the same time that I look up and frown.
At some point in the last twenty-four hours, Ashleigh has turned her hair blue, and it's tied up high on her head to somewhat resemble a water fountain. She's dressed in her school athletics kit, soaked in sweat, her face shiny and her breath coming hard. "An absolute. Dick! "
"Did you run home?" I ask, refusing to bite back.
"Yes."
"I’d've come to pick you up if you'd called."
"That's not what this is about, and you very well know it," she escalates my confusion.
"I do?"
Brianna snorts, plucking the varnish brush from between my fingers and returning it to the bottle. "Just spit it out, Ash."
Collapsing on the sofa beside me, Ashleigh delivers a punch to my arm. "I saw Craig today," she says. "At the park with Alex and their equally adorable brother."
I give her bent knee a shove off the cushion. "Lucky you. So?"
"So, I went over to say hi, and he told me we should all just go screw ourselves."
"Such a pleasant boy!" Brianna is ignored yet again.
"Now, I know I've done nothing lately that could have possibly peed him off," Ashleigh continues. "And Judy's incapable of peeing off anyone. That only leaves you, Bas."
"Your powers of deduction are astounding."
"What did you do?"
"Because, of course, he couldn't possibly be held accountable for himself, right?"
It's been four days since Craig stormed out of the shed. My truck is just as he left it—in pieces—and our last conversation still sours my tongue. I've seen nothing of him in that time, and his absence has weighed on my mind far more than I'm comfortable with.
"What did you do, Sebastian?" She indignantly prompts me with another jab, this one to my thigh.
But I have no intention of talking about it. "What does it matter?"
"Maybe you should just take the hint," Brianna says, feigning an inspection of my paint job. "The boy's clearly not into you."
And Ashleigh finally snaps. "Maybe you should just take the hint. This has nothing to do with you, so keep your mouth shut and your nose out!"
"Oh, like I'm the rude one here, Ash? Like it's not you who barged in on us?"
"I live here, Bree , and I don't need your permission to enter a room."
Sighing, I flick Brianna a cautioning glance, but it's too late. "If you wanted your little bitch attack to stay private," she eagerly rises to the bait, "then you should have held it back until I'd gone."
"If you had any common decency, you'd not stick your oar in where it has no place," Ashleigh retaliates.
"I only called it as I see it. You're wasting your time with Craig. Sorry if that's not what you want to hear."
"Oh, please! You're not even on the right chapter, never mind the same page. So—"
"Enough." My patience cracks. "Time out." I abruptly stand. This is getting far too ridiculous. "Bree, you stay here. I'll not be long. Ash, you come with me."
"Sebas—" Brianna starts.
I hush her with a shake of my head, striding out into the hall. Ashleigh protests having to get back up, but I don't need to check to know that she'll follow.
A minute later, we're both in the kitchen, the door clicking firmly shut behind her, and I let loose. "What the hell is wrong with you, Ash?"
"How about you answer my question first, huh?" She waltzes past me to flump down on a chair at the kitchen table. "Seems only fair."
We've disturbed Dobby from his nap, and he lets us know with a cranky grumble. Jumping from his basket, he circle-eights my legs once before draping himself over my socked feet and promptly dozing back off again.
I don't move, immediately lowering my tone. "Was any of that at all necessary?"
Ashleigh's not quite so considerate. "Was whatever dickish thing you've done to Craig at all necessary?"
"We're not talking about him."
"Um, yeah, we are!"
There's not a chance I'm giving ground to her. "You don't treat anybody else the way you do Bree."
Ever stubborn, she holds out on me for a small eternity before breaking our stare-off with an eye roll. "Your dog can't even tolerate her. Surely that tells you something."
"Dobby can't much tolerate anyone," I retort, glancing down at my snoring footmuff. "Would it kill you to just make a bit more of an effort?"
"She doesn't make any effort with me either, you know."
"Right. And, what, Craig does?"
"That's different."
"Come on, Ash, I've lost count of how many times he's fobbed you off."
"Yeah, well," she shrugs, unruffled. Removing the bobble from her hair, she tousles her fingers through the blue waves. "What he does and what he means by it rarely ever match up."
"Seriously?!" My irritation flares, inciting a cautioning snort from Dobby. Ashleigh gets up from her chair, and I track her over to the laundry alcove. "Think maybe you just wish that's the case?"
Riffling through the basket of clean clothes on top of the dryer, she pulls out her favourite fleecy pj's before she turns back around. "You weren't about all that much when I first moved here, and you were dealing with your own stuff, so you probably never really noticed how tough I found it to settle in."
"Oblivious as you seem to think me, I'm fully aware Craig's not without troubles of his own."
"School was especially awful," Ashleigh barrels on over me. "Like, I'd never had anyone who cared so much about whether or not I went the way Judy and Kye did, and I didn't have the first clue how I was supposed to fit in."
"School's awful and awkward for pretty much everyone."
"True," she concedes. "But one day in particular sticks in my mind. A day when I'd stupidly joined a group of girls at their table in the lunch hall, even knowing their prime interest was in giving me crap — about my dad, about Judy. Asking me stupid questions I wouldn't answer. Their taunts weren't anything I hadn't already heard before, many times over, and I sat there thinking only of making it through to home time, packing up my stuff and taking off."
A withering look is fired at me when I interrupt again to ask, "Where are you going with this?"
"Then I saw Craig, a couple of tables away, surrounded by friends. He was looking at me, and—"
"Okay, let me guess," I can't help myself. "He stood up for you? Told those bitches where to go? Did you swoon?"
"Shut up, Bas! No, nothing quite so grand. Nothing he's probably ever given a second thought to, even. It was just a look, and honestly, it was mortifying. Because back then, you see, Craig—gorgeous, smart, athletic Craig—seemed to have it all so perfectly together, and there I was, on his radar for what felt like the first real time, passively submitting to being ripped to shreds.
"He turned away when I caught him out like he'd witnessed nothing of interest. Right as the girl beside me had an accident with her cola all over my bag." She hugs her pj's to her chest. "I almost cried. I wanted nothing more than to just erase myself as easily as he'd done. Except, then—" a rogue smile steals across her face— "he said something to Lyndsay. Something that had her glancing over. After that, she and Steph were at my side, and they were taking my side."
Silence greets the blunt end of her story, my cogs whirring over it while she stares at me, expectant.
"Now he's the one letting himself be shredded," I finally deduce, "and you're not willing to turn a blind eye. Fine, I get your point—"
But she's shaking her head at me. "You know as well as I do that it's the small things that often matter most, right? The smallest gestures that can give the most away? You're too general."
My sigh is deep and long.
"Think about it. If not for that one look from Craig that day, at just the right time and the discreet nudge he gave in the right direction, nothing might ever have changed for me, you know? I may never have found my place at YCS. He could have blanked me exactly as I thought he had, and only I would've known. But it's Lyndsay and Steph who followed through, and it's them who got all the credit for coming to my aid."
"With you so far." I don't know why I'm going along with this.
"Craig was ever so careful to dodge notice. Because, even then, respected and adored as he was, he didn't really want to be seen any more than I did."
"Wow, your brain must constantly hurt."
"I'm an artist. I analyse."
I roll my eyes and turn to stare out the window at the darkening sky as she pulls her pyjamas on over her sweaty track shorts and tee, hesitating before offering her the same words of advice Judy gave to me. "By all means, Ash, keep trying to get through to him. But until he's ready to accept your help—"
"That's just it, Bas," she explodes. "He is ready! And he was starting to open up until you drove him off!" I'm thrown neatly back to where we started. "Seriously, all the messed-up kids who have passed through here, all the lives that've been changed for the better, ours included. Why are you so determined to make Craig the exception?"
"Craig's made himself the exception. He's not one of us. And I'm not my uncle."
Stalking past me to the sink, she fills a glass with water and downs it. Thirsty work, this crazy cause of hers, obviously. Exhausting, too, it would seem as she then returns to her seat at the table, dropping down on it like a brick.
I make the mistake of shifting my weight from one foot to the other, and Dobby instantly reacts, springing up off me like I've pulled the floor from under him. He blinks up at me, bewildered. "You were giving me pins and needles, bud," I wince an apology at him, and his tucked-in tail relaxes from between his legs to wag his forgiveness.
"You remember the poor state Dobby was in when you saved him, right?" Ashleigh's looking down at him as I raise my head back to her. She holds out a hand to let him sniff her fingers as he passes by to his water bowl. I'm spared no pause to reply, though. "Turned against by the people he thought cared. Left out in the cold, alone, for reasons he had absolutely no control over."
"Oh, for the love of—"
"And you remember how much work it took for you to win his trust? But you never gave up on him. Even when he did bad things, acted out, and ran away, you never once doubted his worth."
" Fuck , Ash!"
"Because, for all that you're not your uncle, you're sure as hell cut from the same cloth, Bas. And Craig is—"
"Craig is pissed at me for telling him I'm queer, okay?" I watch as her eyes spring wide, snapping to mine, her mouth forming a perfect O. "Yeah. Not quite such the heinous act you imagined, huh?"
"Bas," Ashleigh says with a sigh.
"I honestly thought… well, it doesn't matter what I thought, does it? Because clearly, I was wrong. So, if you don't mind, now that you have your answer, I'll return to my waiting girlfriend and be done with this. Okay?"
I only make it as far as the door.
"Oh, sure. Toenails next, is it?" She whirls me right back around. "Or if you're lucky, she might let you braid her hair."
"Seriously?"
I'm met with a shrug. "If you really want to know what my issue is with Brianna, it's that she's just such a completely wrong fit for you."
"What?"
"You shouldn't be with her."
"And since when is that your call to make?"
"I never claimed it was. But you asked, and now I'm answering. There's no chemistry between you, only this weird awkwardness, and honestly, it's unbearable to witness. Neither of you is having fun."
"As if I need your blessing, Ash." I fling the door open as she stands. "What I have with Bree is exactly what I want right now."
"No fireworks, no challenge," her parting shot trails me along the hall. "And damn the thrills!"
"You're not half so clever as you think you are," I refuse to give her the final word.
She takes it anyway. "Whatever."