Chapter 40
Ash
Karla: Hi
I stared at her words as if trying to decide if Karla had truly texted me or if I was having an extremely bad hallucination. How did she get my number?
Karla: Sorry to text so late. But you’ve been on my mind for a while.
I’d been on her mind? The same way she’d been on mine since I walked out of her bookshop?
Karla: Your coworker Chase stopped by the bookstore today. We talked for a bit, and he gave me your number.
Chase gave her my number. I’d have to give him a piece of my mind the next time I saw him for interfering in my life. Or thank him. I wasn’t sure exactly which yet.
Ash: I’m sorry that he bothered you.
Karla: I’m not.
I read those two words at least ten times. It was wild to me that it had been years, and somehow that woman still made my heart skip from the simplest words.
Karla: I’d like to formally invite you over to my place so I can make you a “thank you for saving my grandmother” dinner.
Ash: You don’t have to do that.
Karla: I know. So when are you free for dinner?
I smiled at the phone before texting her that I was available the upcoming Saturday evening.
Karla: It’s a date. You can meet me at the bookshop, around six. Do you like spicy food?
Ash: I do.
Karla: Good! There’s something fun I have planned, but it only works if you like spicy food.
Ash: Would you like me to bring anything?
Karla: How about drinks and dessert?
Ash: Sounds good.
Karla: OK, great. Sorry for texting so late and keeping you up. Have a good night.
I texted her good night, but I wasn’t sorry for Karla keeping me up. Still, it was odd to have a piece of my past come back to me. I’d spent the last nine years of my life running away from my previous chapters. I’d been wearing a mask, pretending to the world that I was OK.
I was OK. At least that was what I told myself each day. I was fine.
My life was good. I had good friends. I was in great shape. I played basketball. I saved lives. I called my mother every Sunday to catch up. Overall, I didn’t have much to complain or worry about. I did a good job of keeping myself busy so I couldn’t overthink things.
Then I ran into her. Now my mind was doing somersaults thinking about Karla and our past together. Unfortunately, when I thought about Karla, I thought about my father and my brother, too.
I wished I could think about her without them being intertwined with all my thoughts, but it was nearly impossible.
I met Karla during the hardest times of my life, the same way I came into her life during her darkest days.
I couldn’t recall the good with her without feeling heavy emotions about the bad that I experienced too.
I shouldn’t have agreed to even hang out with Karla again, but I felt the same pull toward her that I did when we were kids and I saw her in the cemetery.
It was like a magnetic pull that she had over me, and now that she had reappeared in my life, I couldn’t help but want .
. . more. I’d been clean from Karla and the memory of her for nine years. I detoxed from our former connection.
Yet from seeing her a few times now, my mind relapsed.
I couldn’t stop thinking about her, which meant I couldn’t stop thinking about them.
And I couldn’t think about them.
I wouldn’t.
So I did the only thing I could think to do instead—I opened my phone and texted one of the women who was good at making me not think so deeply. A woman who I didn’t have to feel intense feelings toward.
April.
She was a sweet nurse at one of the local hospitals.
She was off that night, so I invited her out to dinner.
She talked a lot about meaningless shit, and that was what I needed for a few hours.
I needed meaningless shit. We laughed and got drunk and talked about nothing that mattered.
I loved it. It was the perfect distraction.
But then dinner was over. When the bill came, Karla slowly slipped back into my mind. I wondered how she’d been over the past nine years. I wondered what I’d missed. I wondered if she was in love with someone.
I wondered if she missed me.
I missed her.
I pretended that I didn’t, but how could I not? She was the last person who made me feel alive. Sometimes, I missed feeling alive.
Shit, Ash. Stop fucking thinking about her.
April tried to come home with me, but I declined the offer. That was odd.
I never declined that offer.
Instead, I kissed her cheek, got her a taxi, and then grabbed one for myself and headed home.
I sat in my childhood home with a bottle of whiskey in my hands, feeling annoyed that the second I was alone, my thoughts went back to Karla.
I drank for an hour, and still on my mind she stayed.
Then I went to bed and tried to force myself to sleep. I tried to erase the memory of her and those blue eyes from my brain. But when I closed my eyes, I could still see her, and when I fell asleep, I dreamed of her, too.
I’d fucked up by running into Karla. I’d fucked up by stopping by her shop afterward. My brain knew it was a dumb idea, but for the first time in years, my heart took the lead. And my heart missed her.
I missed her.
So now, I couldn’t shut her out of my thoughts. I couldn’t erase the fact that she’d appeared back in my life and flipped my whole world upside down with the most beautiful smile I’d ever seen.
Karla East was back in my life. I couldn’t close up Pandora’s box after it was opened.
A part of me didn’t want to break my connection with her.
A part of me wanted to lean more into Karla, because she’d always felt safe to me.
It had been a long time since I felt safe.
But leaning into her meant feeling deep shit that I’d tried to bury a long time ago.
No, stop being dramatic, Ash. You don’t have to feel shit.
I could be friendly with her. I was friendly with a lot of people.
Maybe the new connection I had with Karla didn’t have to feel heavy. I’d become a master at pretending that I was all right to the world. I could do the same with Karla. We’d keep our connection at a surface level. Just light conversations. Nothing heavy. Nothing personal. We’d be strictly public.
I’d keep Karla the same way I kept my connections with the rest of the world—at a distance.
* * *
Was I still alive? Yes. Barely breathing, though? Also yes.
It had been a few days since Karla and I exchanged messages.
My heart felt as if it was going to fly straight from my chest based on how fast it was beating against my rib cage, not only from the idea of dinner with Karla, but from an exhausting game of basketball.
I tried my best to catch my breath as I lay on the hot concrete, soaking wet, sweat in places that sweat didn’t belong.
It was the first full-blown perfect-weather day in Chicago that season. A solid seventy-five degrees, not a cloud in the sky. And somehow, the guys and I managed to have the day off to play basketball.
We played for a solid amount of time, hardly taking breaks. I’d never been so exhausted in my life. Chase collapsed to the court beside me with a water bottle in his hand. He took a long swig from it before splashing my face with the bottle.
I was so tired, I didn’t even react to getting drenched. It felt very much needed.
“I may never walk again,” I muttered.
“You and me both.” He wiped his forehead with his arm before taking another sip of water. “I can’t believe it’s already four in the afternoon.”
I sat up. “What? It’s already four? Shit, I gotta go,” I said as I stood.
“What happened to never being able to walk again?” he joked.
“That was before I realized what time it was. I gotta get home and shower before going out.”
“Going out?” Shawn asked as he tossed his towels into his duffel bag. “Who’s the chick of the moment?”
“She’s not a chick,” I spat out. I didn’t know why hearing Shawn call Karla a chick rubbed me the wrong way.
It felt demeaning to everything she’d been.
She wasn’t just a chick. She was . . . well .
. . her. She was kind and beautiful and funny and strong.
She was intelligent and had a smile that—stop thinking about her, Ash, for fuck’s sake.
I shook my head and felt stupid for getting defensive and snappy toward my friend. I cleared my throat to try to play off my overreaction. I softened my tone. “I’m just hanging out with an old friend.”
“An old friend?” Chase asked with an arched eyebrow. “An old friend who happens to own a bookstore and happens to be named Karla?”
I gave him a look and smacked my sweaty towel in his direction. “Don’t think I’m not going to give you shit for giving her my number.”
Chase had a smirk on his face. “But she texted?”
I nodded. “She texted.”
Chase hopped up from his sitting position, turned toward Luke, and shook his cousin’s shoulders. “She texted! She texted!”
“She texted! She texted!” Luke echoed, shaking Chase back.
“Yeah!” the other guys cheered. I rolled my eyes at their excitement while trying to downplay my own. But the truth was that I was excited. It bothered me that I was excited. I hadn’t felt excitement in years.
I stood from the ground as I rolled my eyes. “Like I said, I have to get back home and shower.”
“Yeah, you can’t show up to your girlfriend’s place smelling like shit,” Adrian chimed in.
“She’s not my girlfriend.”
Adrian arched an eyebrow. “Is she a girl?”
“Yes.”
“Who used to be a friend?”
“Uh-huh.”
He patted my shoulder. “So one might say a girlfriend.”
The other guys chuckled as they gathered their things to leave. I wasn’t going to entertain Adrian’s comments. It would only add fuel to the fire, and my nerves were already too high about hanging out with Karla for me to allow the guys to get in my head, too.
I agreed to play ball with the guys that afternoon because my nerves were all over the place, and I couldn’t for the life of me stop myself from thinking about Karla. Truthfully, she hadn’t stopped crossing my mind since I ran into her in that bookshop.
Karla said she was going to handle dinner, and I agreed to bring the drinks and dessert.