Chapter 13 - Zelda #4
"She cares about you, Ashville. Plenty of people would kill for a parent who cares. Take it from me. It's not the worst thing in the world."
The second he swung that pinched-brow, sharp-eyed gaze in my direction, I knew I'd said too much. Way too much. Even as he returned his attention to the road, he watched me with thoughtful frowns and inquisitive furrows. Too much, too much.
Of course, I overcorrected for that slip by cramming every breath with mindless chatter. What was that rainbow-painted tank on the left? What's the story with that billboard? How did you pronounce the name of that street on the off-ramp sign?
Ash answered all those questions in a clipped, distracted way as he continued with his frowns and furrows. Then, "Who knows where you are right now?"
"I'm thirty-one years old, single, and owe money to no one. The only person who needs to know where I am is me."
"My siblings and I share our locations with each other. Either of them can open up the app and find me at any time," he replied. "It just…I don't know, it helps. It's smart."
I feigned a ton of interest in a large pond beside the highway. "Is it smart because it was your idea or is it smart because it's served a meaningful purpose on occasions unrelated to your micromanagement compulsion?"
"Meaningful purposes, for sure," he replied.
"Whenever we're supposed to meet up and Linden says he'll be there in five minutes, I can track his location and know he's still on the coast and at least ninety minutes away.
" He tapped my outer thigh. "You can't trust that guy to show up on time because his only concept of time is the sun.
I mean it. He doesn't wear a watch, leaves his phone in the truck.
He looks at the sky to tell time. If Magnolia and I didn't track him, we would've missed the first half of every game we've planned to watch together because we were waiting outside the stadium. "
"I'll grant you that one," I conceded.
"What about you? Any siblings?"
I ran my fingertips over the back of his hand. "Sort of."
A quick breath of laughter shook his torso. "I don't know what that means."
I shrugged. "You don't have to know."
He shot me a sidelong glance. "Let me ask you again. Who knows where you are?"
Since the lady protesting too much never improved her situation, I said, "There's you and me, which makes two whole people. And the artificial intelligence unit assigned to tracking everything I do."
He groaned but this time it wasn't the strain of downshifting with an injured shoulder. "Zelda," he said, in one breath my name twisting into a sigh, an admonishment, a sympathetic embrace. "What the hell is that all about?"
"I'm not sure what you're asking." When in doubt, pretend it didn't happen.
"We have a solid hour ahead of us. Use some of that time to tell me more about your relocation plans."
"No," I replied simply.
The stunned laugh of a man unacquainted with roadblocks and refusals echoed inside the car. "No?"
"I understand it's difficult to hear something exists outside your reach, Ashville, but you being unhappy doesn't mean I should roll over on my limits."
Even his sharp exhale was wrapped in exasperation.
I imagined this was a strange experience for Ash, what with not getting his way and all.
But this piece of me wasn't on the table for consumption.
I shouldn't have allowed the story of his doting mother to trigger a reaction from me.
I was better than that. I was beyond that.
And I just didn't discuss my family life with anyone.
All anyone ever knew was we weren't close, and when spoken with enough finality it paved over the possibility of follow-up questions.
Except for Ash.
He ran his knuckles over the outside of my thigh. I grazed his bicep with my elbow. "I'm sure someone is wondering where you are, love. If you were gone from me, I'd, well," he paused, reaching for my hand, "I'd want to know you were safe."
Yeah, except for Ash.
The truth of the matter was, Ash was a yard sale of exceptions. He was every mismatched emotion, every incomplete set of desires, every vintage experience I'd missed out on along the way. And I could have all of it, all of him, for the low, low price of my dusty, old secrets.
"There you go again with the sweet words," I said, affecting a breezy tone I didn't feel. "Much more of this and you won't be able to maintain your reputation as a tyrant."
He kept his focus on the road though returned his hand to my thigh, offering a quick squeeze. "I'd want to know, Zelda, and I'm sure I'm not alone in that."
And because I didn't run away—as much as any thirty-one-year-old single woman with no debts to pay could run away—to cut and shape myself into bite-sized pieces for anyone ever again, I said, "That's nice of you to suggest but I've never had a mother concerned with stocking my pantry."
He shifted his hand to tangle his fingers with mine. "Now you have my mother. Let's give it a few months and then you can tell me how wonderful it is for her to call in the middle of the day, ranting and raving about how much cinnamon we're going through."
"Why are we going through so much cinnamon?"
"Probably all the French toast we eat." He ran his thumb over my palm as he said this, as he allowed us to stop talking about the reasons no one cared to know where I'd gone or why I'd left home. "Seems like the next logical step, no? After the pancakes?"
He continued exploring my palm while I watched the passing scenery. It was different here—I was different here—and it was never as obvious as when I glanced upward only to find a wide blanket of sky. Nothing interrupting the serene blue, not a single mountaintop to be found.
"Here's a story I don't share every day," Ash said after the subject of cinnamon was miles behind us. "My parents are hippies. Flower children in the first degree. Peace, love, and the rest of that bullshit."
"Wait, what?" I peered at him. "I've met your mother. She was wearing Tory Burch sandals. I'm sorry to be the bearer of bad news but Tory didn't follow the Dead, and any true hippie would've gone barefoot before walking around in a luxury brand."
"I don't know anything about sandals but that sounds like my sister's handiwork," he replied.
I thought about Ash's very posh, very beautiful sister. "I can see that."
"From what I've gathered, the free-range parenting approach was out there at the time," he continued.
"That's the general thesis of growing up in my family.
It was all a bit out there. We had the most random toys and were the only kids at school with homemade almond butter and cherry preserve sandwiches and—"
"Those sound amazing," I interrupted. "Who do I need to beg for some cherry preserves?"
"Offhandedly mention to my mother you like that sort of thing and we'll have a case of jam in the fridge when that season rolls around," he said. "You'll have more than you'll know what to do with."
"If that's my biggest problem, I don't have any problems," I said.
"Back to you telling me how extremely difficult it was to have a mother who canned her own preserves for your school lunches.
Because I sympathize with that, Ashville.
I really do. My heart goes out to you. Thoughts and prayers for your difficult time.
I can only imagine the hardships of eating real, unprocessed foods and playing with an abacus or some other wooden instrument because everything at Toys'R'Us was too commercial and consumerist. And clearly, it's had a terrible impact on you.
You only have one graduate degree, the refrigerator in your apartment has just a few of the features I'd believed to be exclusive to the space program, and you're driving a car that's older than I am yet fully tricked out with sat-nav and cupholders. I get it. You're struggling big time."
He was gracious enough to look affronted. Good man. "All I'm saying is growing up with recovering hippies for parents is not nearly as amusing as it sounds."
"Yeah, I get it. You have nice shiny things now because you were only allowed to play with sticks and rocks," I replied.
"I'm not sure I can allow you to caucus with the Society of Banana Babies unless you want to share a juicy story about the first girl to break your heart or the time you were passed over for something really important and that's why you work your tail off to avoid the tiniest suggestion of failure now. "
Ash was silent a minute or two before saying, "I don't think anyone's ever broken my heart."
Without thinking at all, I replied, "That's funny because everyone breaks my heart."
Why was I doing this? Why now, why here?
I'd always managed to keep a lid on it all.
No one ever knew my true stories because I never gave them reason to look for one.
No one looked at me and saw loss or fear or abandonment.
I'd always been cautious about letting loose the frayed, knotty bits because I couldn't take them back once they were out.
Yet here I was, unraveling those knots with Ash as my witness, nearly begging him to pull the threads and tear it all apart for me.
"Zelda." He plucked my hand from my lap and slipped his fingers between mine. "What's the Society of Banana Babies?"
"People who grew up in completely, unbelievably, indisputably bananas situations."
"Give it to me. Let me take it off your hands."
My defenses gathered around me, rising and closing until I could only speak in fast, snappish words designed to fill the gaps in my armor. "It's weird. The weirdest thing ever."
"Weren't you the one who said something about being outside the mainstream wasn't grounds for disparagement?"
I knew what he was doing and I fell into the trap regardless.
"All right, Ash. You want to know, I'll tell you.
My mother and father aren't my mother and father.
They're my grandparents. My sister is my mother.
Since my life is an actual mistake deep fried in shame and regret, I have interacted with them no more than a handful of times in the last ten years.
" I yanked my hand back because I needed everything inside the crispy shell of my defense mechanisms. "So, no, Ash, my family hasn't noticed I'm gone.
The truth is, they're much happier when my sister-mother's teenage lapse in judgment doesn't trouble them. "
"I heard you when you told me to fight fair.
Now I want you to listen to me about sharing fair.
" Ash reached for me again, his touch gentle yet steady.
"Take yourself away from me if you need space.
Don't do it because you're bracing yourself against my saying something terrible.
I told you I could take this. I meant it. "
I nodded. "Okay."
"Can I ask how—how that all happens?"
I stifled a bitter laugh. The leather-wrapped steering wheel protested, an impolite squeak of skin I wouldn't have noticed if not for the sudden silence between us. I followed his white-knuckled grip to the bulge and twitch of his forearm muscles up to the stiff set of his jaw. "Which part?"
Ash cut a hooded glance in my direction, his eyes burning dark and serious like a storm. "The part where anyone could ever look at you and see a mistake."