Twenty-Nine
Ashley kept walking past the WHSmith and the gaming arcade until she found a fast-food place near the back of the service station food court. The smell coming from the kitchen was not a great advertisement.
While Ashley was trying to decide if she wanted to poison herself, she spotted Jax, sitting at a laminate table near the back with a massive paper cup of tea, staring at a perpetually buzzing phone on the table in front of them.
They looked like they were having a worse day than Ashley, which was saying something.
‘Don’t start,’ Jax said without looking up as Ashley slid into the plastic chair opposite them.
‘I wasn’t going to start,’ Ashley muttered, pulling her hood further over her ears. ‘What’s wrong with your phone?’
‘Elena is over at the M&S on the south side of the concourse texting me because she thinks I’m with Toby, and Toby is over by the Krispy Kreme stands texting me because he thinks I’m with Elena.
And they’re both waiting for me to decide if we’re doing this properly or if I’m just playing them off each other.
Or maybe they're wondering if they’re the ones who should be together.
Fuck knows.’ Jax took a massive gulp of tea and finally looked at Ashley.
‘Anyway, you look like shit. Did Molly finally bite you?’
Ashley chewed on the inside of her cheek, staring at a discarded salt packet. ‘She’s a nightmare, Jax. A literal, genuine nightmare.’
‘Right.’
‘She’s just bloody impossible,’ Ashley said, her voice rising slightly before she caught herself and dropped it to a harsh whisper.
‘We had sex last night. She initiated it. Practically jumped on me. And then this morning I try to ask her how she is, and she acts like I’m a disease. She compared me to dog food.’
Jax blinked. ‘Dog food?’
‘She’s completely self-obsessed,’ Ashley went on, the anger bubbling up now, hot and fast. ‘She twists everything into a fight. She thinks my career is this big, evil monster out to get her. I tried to help her with her script—she’s doing this BBC thing—and she just started digging up stuff from five years ago.
I was twenty-five, Jax! I didn’t know how to manage a career and a girlfriend. ’
Jax didn’t say anything for a minute. They just watched Ashley, their face remarkably calm for someone whose own love life was currently a logistical disaster. Jax reached down and slid the buzzing phone face-down.
‘You’re very loud for someone who doesn’t care,’ Jax said flatly.
‘I do care. I care that she’s ruining the tour vibe.’
‘Ashley.’ Jax leaned forward, resting their elbows on the plastic tabletop. ‘This was always a really stupid idea. Like, you knew that, didn’t you?’
‘It wasn’t my idea.’
‘But you went along with it. And for what?’
‘For the tour. To make sure the label doesn’t drop me.’
‘You’re ruining your life for music execs and their bullshit? Not buying it.’
‘It’s not life-ruining,’ Ashley said quickly. ‘It’s just fucking annoying.’
‘Annoying? You brought the ex to the tour. Sounds a bit more than annoying.’
‘What makes you think she’s the ex?’ Ashley replied, as casually as she could manage.
‘Because you got hammered one night on the last tour and started telling me about how much you missed her, how no one else compared, that type of shit.’
Ashley was shocked. ‘I didn’t. Did I?’
‘You really did. It was pretty sad. And endless.’
Ashley sat quietly with her horror.
‘So don’t think you can sit there shit-talking her and I’m gonna buy a word of it. Keep your lies for the mirror.’
Ashley sighed. ‘I know, okay? I guess I just wanted to be… pissed off at her. That’s easier than thinking…’
‘What?’
‘That I had another chance and blew it again,’ Ashley admitted.
‘You love her,’ Jax said. It wasn’t a question.
Ashley looked away, out across the crowded concourse toward the automated glass doors where bleary-eyed travellers were wandering in from the car park. Her fingers traced the edge of the table, finding a spot where the laminate was peeling.
‘I do,’ Ashley said, the admission sounding small and stupid. ‘I always have. That’s the problem.’
‘Have you told her?’ Jax asked, irritated.
‘What? No. Of course not.’
Jax raised an eyebrow. ‘Not even five years ago?’
‘No,’ Ashley muttered, her throat tight. ‘Things got big so fast. It felt like… I don’t know. I was overwhelmed by the way she made me feel. I didn’t see how she could feel like I did. And then…’
Jax waited patiently.
‘Then she did say it. And I didn’t. I panicked, I guess. And it turned out to be our last conversation.’
‘Why didn’t you just call her back?’ Jax demanded.
‘I tried. She’d blocked me.’
‘Then you should have gotten on a plane and gone to her and told her.’
‘Easy to say that now. But she hated me by then. She wouldn’t have cared.’
Jax let out a short, dry laugh, shaking their head. ‘You two are fucking exhausting. Look at me. I have Toby and Elena both ready to skin me alive in the middle of a Welcome Break. And you two are sitting on a tour bus acting like MI5 agents.’
‘It’s different for us,’ Ashley said. ‘She doesn’t want it. She literally told me five minutes ago that the real part of us makes her want to jump out of a moving bus.’
‘She could be feeling the same things and protecting herself in the same way,’ Jax said, their tone suddenly shifting into something older and wiser than the messy bassist Ashley had always known.
‘But neither of you will know for sure if you don’t actually grow a set and say it.
So you can keep protecting yourself, or you can risk rejection.
But nothing changes until one of you two risks something. ’
Ashley looked at her friend, then down at the table. The advice felt like being told to jump off a roof and hope there was a mattress at the bottom.
‘I can’t say it,’ Ashley said quietly. ‘She won’t let me.’
‘That’s a pathetic excuse.’
Ashley groaned. ‘But what if I say it and she laughs… How the fuck do I come back from that?’
Jax sighed, their phone buzzing against the table again. They picked it up, thumb already flying across the screen. ‘Suit yourself.’
‘Look. I’m gonna say it. Why aren’t you lot making a go of it together, the three of you? Why are you doing all this bullshit instead of the obvious thing?’
Jax looked at Ashley like she was stupid. ‘Because,’ Jax said, setting the phone down with a heavy, deliberate click, ‘a throuple requires three people who possess basic honesty and maturity. What we have is a volatile three-way Mexican standoff.’
Jax leaned back in the plastic chair. ‘I think a throuple only works if everyone wants similar things,’ Jax added, fixing Ashley with a pointed, heavy look. ‘And Toby wants a quaint, domestic life. Elena wants an open-ended polyamorous playground.’
‘Right,’ Ashley said slowly. ‘And you?’
‘I want to play bass. Beyond that, I don’t know,’ Jax said.
Jax’s phone buzzed again, skittering an inch across the laminate. They didn’t even look down.
‘But how do you know if you’re on the same page if you don’t talk?’ Ashley asked.
Jax laughed. ‘Look, don’t deflect your tragic love life onto my tragic love life. I know what this is. I’m not blind. It’s a mess, and we all like it that way. I might have had enough, though.’
Ashley sighed deeply and wondered… could she? Could she just say it? Be honest? Let herself walk into the chainsaw of love face first?
She stood. ‘I’m going.’
Jax looked up. ‘Where?’
‘To talk to Molly.’ Ashley took off at a brisk walk.
‘Don’t fuck it up!’ Jax called after her.
Ashley didn’t know how feasible that was, but she was going to try. She was ready to take the risk.