Chapter 5
Ash
Not long ago, I'd thought this day was off to a rough start.
I'd considered traffic and text message breakups and airport lines and smashing my shoulder into hard flooring to be rough.
That was before I reached for a woman's breast without her enthusiastic interest and then had to sit next to her for three more hours.
I was certain I could stare out the window that long.
That was my only option as I saw it. I couldn't open my laptop and bang out a few reports while we pretended my hand hadn't been close enough to the underside of her breast to feel the heat of her.
I couldn't pick up the mess I kept creating with Zelda and go back to business as usual.
And I wanted business as usual but the inertia was all wrong.
Instead of working or staring out the window, I chose the next worst option: I fell asleep.
Now, I considered myself an experienced business traveler. I was in the air several days each month. That was all to say I knew how to nap on an airplane. I knew how to nod off without incident or neck injury.
All that business traveler's experience died with my watch today because I didn't simply fall asleep.
I fell asleep on Zelda's shoulder and I slept there for the duration of the flight.
This wasn't an innocent case of resting my head on her shoulder.
No, it wasn't that at all. I'd shifted my entire body toward her and nestled myself into the cove of her shoulder.
I was breathing—and I couldn't stress this enough—on her neck.
I woke up only when she patted my hand—the one I'd dropped onto her thigh—and whispered, "Ash, we're landing."
It took several seconds for those words to mean anything to me and I spent that time stroking my thumb along the inseam of her jeans. Then, the wheels hit the runway and I realized what I was doing.
"Oh—oh fuck." I jolted away from Zelda with enough force to knock me back against the window. "Oh, fuck," I said, groaning at the pain radiating through my shoulder. "That fucking hurt."
"Are you all right?" She reached for me but I kept myself plastered against the solid safety of the aircraft's wall.
I waved her off. "Fine, fine," I replied, flattening my hand against the offending shoulder. "I can't believe I, you know, I did that. I'm sorry." I glanced at her, too deep in my embarrassment to meet her eyes for long. "You should've pushed me away."
"So now it's my fault?"
We stared at each other while the pilot and flight attendants made announcements about baggage claim and items in overhead compartments shifting during flight.
When quiet settled between us, I said, "It's not your fault.
I was, um, no. Not your fault. I was only attempting to indicate that you were well within your rights to elbow me in the throat. "
"Yeah." Her lips pursed in a pout as she nodded. "I know." Her gaze darted to my shoulder as I doubled down on my attempts to ease the pain there. "Are you all right?"
I bobbed my head. "Completely fine. There was an incident in the terminal this morning and I clipped it at a strange angle."
Zelda unbuckled her seat belt and shifted to her knees. She reached for my collar, loosened the top three buttons, and slipped her hand under my shirt.
I yelped when her fingers connected with the most tender spot. "Sorry," I murmured. "Like I said, it's completely fine. Just a little sore."
A quiet laugh slipped past her lips before she gazed up at me. "Listen, my friend. I think your shoulder is dislocated. I don't know for sure but after enough years as a camp counselor, you learn how to spot these things."
Her hand traveled down my chest, over my collarbone, and along the back side of my shoulder, and my body was so confused. Her touch wasn't meant to be intimate, I knew that, but my skin hadn't received the same message.
I was a sucker for little touches like that. I didn't need to paw at someone in public—contrary to my behavior this morning—but I loved the little touches. And right now, my skin was under the impression we were adoring these little touches.
"In my first act as your assistant, I'm telling you this needs to be examined by a medical professional," she said, her palm still pressed to my back. "Why don't you tell me your doctor's name and I'll make you an appointment. All assistant-y and everything."
I blinked at her because—holy fucking shit—I'd tacitly hired her, and then—then all of this happened. "I'm sure it's fine but thank you for your concern."
"Okay. I see how it's going to be. I have to convince you to do things even though we both know they're the best course of action.
That's cool. I can do that." She buttoned my shirt and gave the placket a quick pat when she was finished.
"Ash, your shoulder is probably dislocated and if you allow it to stay in that condition, you'll have long-term damage.
I could be wrong but I think you like being able to pull shirts over your head and wash your hair and, I don't know, play squash. "
"You think I play squash?"
She held up both hands, shrugging. "Let's just say I'd believe it if you did."
Another one of those growl sounded in my throat. "I don't play squash."
"Well, you're doing something to maintain"—she zigzagged a finger at me—"all of this. I'm sure you'll want to be able to kick the golf ball and swing for the field goal and long jump to home plate."
"Now you're just being ridiculous," I said.
"Maybe," she conceded. "But don't forget you won't be able to type real fast on your laptop if one of your arms is fucked-up." Her eyes widened in amusement as I considered this. "Yeah. That's a big one, huh? Bigger than giving up pickleball or cornhole."
"Giving up what?" I asked, laughing.
"Oh, come on. You know, pickleball. The game you get when you screw with the genetic code of tennis, ping-pong, and badminton.
" She nodded as if this should make sense to me.
"And cornhole is the hipster cousin of horseshoes, quite frankly.
If I had a slab of plywood, I would definitely drill a hole in it and then ritualistically toss some beanbags into that hole.
For sure. That is good, old-fashioned entertainment right there. "
"I think I heard my sister saying she's having some cornhole games set up at her wedding reception next weekend." I glanced out the window, hoping I'd find an explanation as to why we were still trapped in the airplane despite being parked at the gate.
"See? You'll need to be in top cornholing shape," Zelda replied.
"And I don't know your sister but I'm positive she wouldn't want you and your jacked-up shoulder situation ruining her photos.
By next weekend, you're going to have a teeter-totter thing going on, one shoulder higher than the other.
Sorry, Lurch, but your sister isn't allowing that.
" She shook her head. "What do you say? Why don't we call that doctor now? "
Finally, the aircraft doors gusted open and the passengers around us surged to their feet.
Zelda shrugged her backpack on and waited in the aisle for me to join her.
I followed but made the error of trying to swing my laptop bag over my injured shoulder.
The pain nearly buckled my knees. Zelda observed all of this and tried to take the bag from me but I brushed off her advances and shifted it to the other arm as if I wasn't choking back a horrible cocktail of vomit, tears, and wounded animal whimpers.
We walked up the jetway and through the busy terminal in silence. When we reached the escalator to the baggage claim, I gestured for her to go ahead of me.
"It's funny that this is your chivalry," she said, paused at the entrance. "Of all the ways for you to show any gendered deference, you choose the ladies-first route here."
I had fifteen different things to say to her.
Most of them contradictory and too opaque to form into clear thoughts.
Most of them lurked around the reality that I didn't know how to interact with Zelda.
She didn't fit into a tidy LinkedIn headline.
She wasn't the standard formula of adjective, job title, career goal.
And she was unlike anyone else in my life.
I didn't know anyone who existed the way she did, all blue-streaked hair and moon tattoos and math tricks.
And the rest of it too—her willingness to let me get away with shit as long as she could point it out in the process.
Her refusal to take no for an answer. Her addictive warmth. I didn't know what to do with her.
All I could say was, "Zelda, people are waiting behind you."
She stepped onto the escalator. I followed.
If I was the kind of man who measured masculinity by shows of strength, that masculinity would've been shredded after a visit to the nearest urgent care clinic with Zelda.
It'd started long before this point but it went downhill when I tried to grab my luggage from baggage claim.
I was certain I'd heard bone scraping against bone when reaching for the handle and pulling the suitcase off the belt.
It sounded awful and felt a thousand times worse, but I didn't have to tell Zelda any of that.
No, crying out and dropping the item on my foot was plenty of an announcement.
She was good enough to gather me up, busted shoulder, sore foot, nasty mood and all, and cart us and the sum of our luggage out of the terminal. She poured me into a car and pointed the driver in the direction of the clinic while I grumbled about my terrible day.
Then, I hadn't objected when she followed me into the exam room.
I should have. I should've instructed her to stay in the waiting room but I didn't. I told myself I allowed her to join because I wasn't thinking clearly.
I wasn't myself. The whiskey—what a terrible idea—and my shoulder and the entirety of this day. And I let myself believe that.