CHAPTER NINE
Asher
Twelve Years Ago
“It’s everything I’ve ever dreamed of, Nita.” I spin around my dorm room with an outfit held up to my body before looking at myself in the mirror. My smile is wide and my eyes are wild with excitement. These first two months at the Pratt Institute have been incredible. Everything I ever dreamed of.
I’m finally chasing my dream.
“Tell me all about it,” she murmurs in her sleepy voice.
“It’s the city. It’s like it’s alive with all its lights and high-rises and big classrooms with floor-to-ceiling windows.
There’s culture and refinement right beside the gritty and raw reality of life.
” Even I’m not immune to the dreamlike quality of my own voice.
“I feel like it’s a mixture of every place I’ve never been—”
“I think anywhere would feel like that compared to Cedar Falls.”
“It’s more than that.” I sit down on the edge of my bed.
I recall what felt like the endless undergrad classes I took at the community college to try and cut down on costs.
The promises from Pop that he’d do whatever it took to make my dreams come true and give me the opportunities to be whomever I wanted to be.
My chance to be the someone others thought I couldn’t be.
All the blood, sweat, and tears, and it’s finally happened. “It’s like I’m meant to be here.”
“Of course, you are. It’s all you’ve ever wanted. And with your crazy, mad talent, you deserve to be there.”
I smile. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t be going on and on. Especially when I’m here and you’re—”
“Still in Cedar Falls?” She chuckles. “Don’t you dare hold out on me. I want to hear everything. Let me live vicariously through you. What about the men? Tell me all about them.”
“You’d die. Finely tailored suits and dress shirts rolled up to the elbows.”
“Forearm porn. Yummy.”
“Definitely forearm porn. But it’s so much more than that. They’re educated and refined with a little bit of street thrown in. Ugh. Each one I meet is better than the next.”
“These are the guys in the program? Because if so, you need to pull some all-night study sessions.”
“No.” I laugh because the guys in the program are eccentric and quirky along with talented.
Even though I’m artsy, it has never been the vibe I’m attracted to.
“I’m talking about the men in the city. The ones who walk fast on the sidewalk as if they are off to a very important meeting.
The kind that makes you want to stop and stare because they exude an air of authority.
They look . . .” exactly how I imagined Ledger would look in his element.
The thought comes out of nowhere. A flashback to a past I’ve learned to stop giving a second thought to.
I shake the thought away. How weird that it crept in, right now in this moment, after I’d permanently scrubbed him from my mind.
Or at least tried to.
But truth be told, I have looked for him in the crowd every once in a while before coming to my senses.
“Right?” Nita asks, bringing me out of my thoughts and to the present.
“I’m sorry. Your phone cut out,” I lie.
“I said, so they’re basically the polar opposite of every man here in Cedar Falls.”
“Exactly.”
“So older men, then. Classy. Worldly. They are right up your alley, then. You’ve always had a thing for that type.”
“Maybe.” I giggle. “You’ll still come visit me, right?”
“Yeah.” Her voice is soft, and I hate that she doesn’t have this opportunity. Hell, I can’t even believe that I am getting the chance. “I will.”
“And everything back home is—”
“The same. Boring. Lonely without you here to be my partner in crime.” She sniffs, and I hope I haven’t made her sad.
We’ve been inseparable since we met during our first semester of junior college.
She had just moved to Cedar Falls with her mother and needed help finding her way on campus.
I offered to show her to class since we were in the same general education math class.
We’ve been thick as thieves ever since. She’s the sister I never had.
And doing this here without her feels like I’m gloating.
My heart constricts but my happiness overshadows it. And she’d want that for me. I know it, but it doesn’t make it any easier.
It’s like I’m starting over. No one knows me, knows my name or my history, and since I arrived months ago, I feel like I can be whoever I want to be.
I can reinvent myself so I’m not Asher Wells the small-town girl and product of a promiscuous mother who isn’t going to amount to anything, but rather Asher Wells, the aspiring artist and cultured city girl.
It’s the most liberated I’ve ever felt.
My cell beeps, and I look at the screen to see that it’s Pop. “Hey, I’ve gotta go,” I tell Nita. “Pop’s on the other line.”
“Sure. Dump me for Pop,” she teases, but she knows my love for my grandparents. “Call me later. Love you.”
“Love you too.” I end the call with her and pick up Pop’s call. My cheeks hurt from smiling so much. “Pop! Hi. Oh my God. I have so much to tell you. I’ve—”
“Asher.” His voice is a whisper with grief-laced despair in its threads.
“Pop? What’s wrong?” My heart sinks to my feet.
“It’s Gran. She collapsed. They’re saying that—” His voice breaks into a sob. “I can’t lose her, Ash.”
My hands shake. The dress I’m holding falls to the ground as the world drops out from under me.
“I’m . . . I’m on my way.”
“No. It’s okay . . .”
But it’s not.
I have to go.
I have to be there for the only people who have ever been there for me.
What I didn’t know when I walked away from that world of opportunity—of utter happiness—was that I’d never get it back.