Ashlei
Balling up another Dove chocolate wrapper with my left hand, I close one eye and stick my tongue out, aiming for the ceramic decorative bowl on the coffee table.
“She lines up the shot,” I say softly. “And… she shoots!”
With a flick of my wrist, the blue and silver foil wrapper goes flying.
And completely misses the coffee table altogether.
I blow out a breath through flat lips, looking at the empty bowl and the tiny foil balls littered all around it. Then, I look at the TV, at the rerun of America’s Top Model, and then out the window at the palm trees swaying in the breeze along the beach.
Sighing, I grab another piece of chocolate.
I know without a mirror that I look as pathetic as I feel, and I wish with everything in me that I could snap out of my pity party and get back to the bad bitch I was before the accident.
So far, I’ve only been able to pull myself together long enough to go to work, give it all the energy I had, and then come home and cry about the fact that I can’t go to the pole studio.
Not that I haven’t been invited.
Karen has called me almost every day, has even popped by unannounced a few times, saying the girls miss me and they’d love to have me back — even if just to coach from the sidelines until I’m well enough to get back on the pole.
But she doesn’t understand how much even the thought of that scenario breaks me.
To be watching and unable to do, to coach without being able to show, to have this vital part of me ripped away… possibly forever…
It’s been akin to losing a lung, each breath reminding me that I’m closer to death.
I’m close to being able to start PT — or so my doctor says. But I’m healing slower than he first anticipated, and every time I hear him tack another week on the end of my sentence, despair creeps in and grabs ahold of me tighter and tighter.
I thought I knew heartbreak, thought I knew depression.
I’ve never known any kind of pain quite like this.
A whistle shakes me from my thoughts, my unfocused eyes drifting from the TV screen to where Brandon is standing at the edge of the hallway.
He’s freshly showered after his long run this morning, his short hair damp and glistening, gray sweatpants hanging deliciously off his hips.
Without a shirt on, I have a front row show to the phenomena that is his abdomen, with his pecs and biceps a solid opening act.
“I didn’t know I was dating a basketball star,” he muses with a grin, eyeing the wrappers all over the ground.
“Watch out, Lebron James.”
He chuckles, arching a brow at the TV as he makes his way across the room to the couch.
He plops down next to me, carefully pulling me into him while being mindful of my shoulder.
“So, what was wrong with her?” he asks, nodding to the model now wrapped in a blanket and looking pale as hell at the judging ceremony.
“Food poisoning,” I explained. “But look, she still showed up.”
“Think it’ll gain points with Tyra?”
“It should. She nearly died and still got her ass to work.” My heart sinks, and then against every ounce of willpower I have, tears burn my eyes.
Brandon notices immediately, and he looses a breath, tucking me closer as he balances his chin on the crown of my head. “It’s going to be okay.”
“When?” I manage on a shaky whisper.
The question breaks me — even more so when Brandon just holds me tighter in answer.
He doesn’t know.
No one does.
“Will you take a walk with me?” he asks after a while.
I groan, but before I can reject, he pulls back and meets my eyes with his.
“Please?”
I sigh. “That’s not fair. I can’t say no to you when you look like that.”
“Then say yes.”
I do a little temper tantrum flail, whine, and then concede, letting him help me up off the couch.
Once I’m dressed in shorts and a tank top, Brandon and I take the elevator down to the lobby and push out into the pleasantly warm morning.
Fall in Florida may not be cold, but there’s a break from the humidity, and the temperature hanging in the mid-seventies with little puffy white clouds and an otherwise blue sky make me smile in gratitude.
Brandon takes my hand as we cross the street to the park, a lush, green patch of land with running trails along the water and right to the beach. This was where we ran into each other in the spring, when he was trying to pretend like he didn’t still want me.
The prick.
He smooths his thumb over my wrist as our hands swing gently between us.
“I know it seems like your world has crashed down around you,” he says, eyes on the water, then his shoes, then me before doing the circle all over again.
“It’s hard not to lose hope when something so important has been taken away from you. ”
“It is,” I agree, but already just being outside has my soul feeling lighter, my heart a little less tight.
“But thank you for being here for me. For always being here for me. I…” I swallow at the truth of what I’m about to say.
“I honestly don’t think I could do this without you.
I think if I had lost pole in the spring when I’d just lost you, I… I…”
I couldn’t finish the sentence.
Brandon squeezes my hand tighter, and then leads us to a little bench in the shade under a wide oak. Spanish moss hangs from the limbs, and I stare at the sun rays peeking through it as we listen to the waves, to the people, to the soft sounds of a Sunday morning.
“You’ll never have to do anything without me,” he promises after a moment. “I’ll be by your side through PT, and when you go back to the studio and no doubt come home frustrated every night until you’re doing the tricks you were before the accident.”
I chuckle. “God, I will try my best not to be a nightmare, but…”
Brandon smiles, and it’s then that I see it — the worry etched in his features, the way his hands are trembling slightly.
“What’s wrong?” I ask him.
“Nothing,” he lies.
“Brandon…”
“Nothing is wrong, Ashlei,” he says, his eyes meeting mine. “And that’s just the thing, isn’t it? When I’m with you, when we’re together, it doesn’t matter what we’re facing. Everything feels right. Everything feels… whole.”
I smile, looping my arm through his and laying my head on his shoulder. “I love you.”
He’s silent for a long time, and again we sit and enjoy the sun’s warmth, the ocean’s breeze, the feeling of being together — even when things suck.
And then, out of nowhere, he says the absolute last thing I expected.
“Let’s elope.”
I balk, sitting up ramrod straight so I can look at him and make sure it isn’t some sick joke. But when I meet his gaze, it’s as serious and level as if he’d just made a business proposal.
“What?”
“Let’s elope,” he repeats, turning to fully face me and folding his hands in mine.
“Ashlei, I know without a fragment of doubt that you’re it for me.
You’re the one. You’re my one. I want you and me, forever, and I want it right now.
I want to put the biggest fucking diamond rock on your finger so everyone knows it, and I want to marry you somewhere far away where it’s just the two of us, and I want to make love to you on a tropical shore, and I…
” He swallows. “I want you to say yes. I want you to pack up what you need right now, today, and I want to be on a jet or my yacht by dinnertime.”
“Why by dinnertime?”
“So I can marry you in the morning.”
My heart is beating so furiously in my chest that I have to steal one of my hands from Brandon to press it against the bones, trying to soothe, trying to calm.
“Tell me what you’re thinking,” he begs.
I sniff against the tears welling in my eyes. “I’m thinking I can’t say no to you when you look like that.”
“So say yes.”
I laugh, nodding as tears slip free. “Yes.”
“Yes?”
Another laugh as I climb into his lap and kiss him all over, not even caring when he points out that I’m not supposed to lift my arm that high to rest around his neck. “Yes. Yes, right now. Yes, forever. What do I pack? When do we leave?”
He slams a kiss hard to my mouth, holding the back of my head in his palm as we breathe each other in.
The kiss grows deeper and more urgent the longer we sit there, until Brandon finally helps me up off the bench and we half walk, half run back to the condo.
It doesn’t take long to pick the place, and though I know we’re forgetting things we’ll need, we decide we don’t care as we haphazardly pack our bags in twenty minutes’ time.
And then we’re boarding the yacht and sailing off into the horizon.