Chapter 18

Ash

“You’re sitting here talking to me like our entire breakup is inevitable. You’re having this stupid conversation with a woman you’ve fucked a few times and admit to liking, but you’re talking as if we’re eventually going to end and I’m going to have my heart broken while you go skipping off into the sunset.”

“That’s not what I—”

“Hush,” I commanded.

I was over his bullshit and this fucked-up conversation. I hadn’t rolled myself out of bed two hours before I had to be at work just to sit through some dead-end conversation when I could’ve just blocked his number and gotten on with my life.

“We have such a natural chemistry, Mason. The way we talk and the way we interact, it feels like home. You mean to tell me that has no bearing on the world you’re supposedly from?”

“That shit matters to me, Ash,” he said. “I swear it does.”

“You sure as hell aren’t acting like it does. You’re ready to declare this relationship over before anything even gets off the ground! Our chemistry is wonderful,” I continued. “In and out of the bedroom. Our bodies gravitate toward each other’s, and you’ll never convince me you weren’t sitting at the edge of your seat while I peed this morning when you asked me if I wanted to get brunch with you.”

Shock rolled over his face before he gained his composure, and I knew I’d hit a soft spot.

“I do that with your messages, too,” I said, “because I enjoy talking to you. We enjoy talking to one another, and not a lot of couples like doing that. They have great sex, they eat some food, and then they go their separate ways to work, and that’s how they define relationships.”

He sighed. “Ash…”

“What is it now?” I asked.

“We do have all those things, and it’s nothing I’ve ever experienced with another woman. But you can’t deny that there’s a massive gap in our lifestyles.”

“You act like we’re crossing the fucking trenches of Vietnam. So you have money. Big whoop!”

“The mere fact that you think of it that way tells me you don’t know the first thing about the way I was raised,” he said.

“Oh, but you’ve got my lifestyle all figured out?” I threw back.

“Ash, I didn’t come here to argue.”

“But you came here to warn me about our imminent break up, right?”

His silence boiled my blood, and I grew stiff in my chair. I picked up a piece of fruit and popped it between my lips. The silence on my end provided an opening for Mason to start spewing things I never thought would come from him.

“I just don’t think our chemistry is enough to bridge our lifestyles. That’s all I’m saying. Look, you work and I don’t. That doesn’t seem like such a big thing until I want to take you out to do things like this and you can’t because you have to work. I travel, and you can’t afford it. That’s all good until I want to bring you on a trip you can’t afford. My friends and familial connections are, literally, the richest people in the world, and your best friend is mooching off the little you bring in from your job while she puts off looking for her own apartment. And that’s all fine until we want to do things like that night you invited me in.”

I clenched my jaw, and I felt a fire burst behind my eyes. Who the fuck did he think he was, judging me because of my lack of money? Money was not that big of a fucking deal. I’d lived my entire life without it.

“You wanna know how I know your excuses are all bullshit, Mason?” I glowered at him.

“How?” he asked.

“Because my entire life has been lived without money. I’ve worked for as long as I can remember, and everything I have, I’ve bought with my own money. And no, my best friend isn’t perfect, and no, I don’t buy all these lavish pieces of clothing and attend stuck-up, snobbish ‘charity dinners’ where rich bitches throw their bodies at me. But do you know what I haven’t ever done to someone?”

His jaw clenched, and I knew I had him by the balls. I was about to twist them off and throw them into the road.

“I’ve never once screwed someone worse off than myself and thought I was doing them a favor,” I hissed.

“Hey, you’re the one who put up the ad about never having had an orgasm from a guy,” Mason said.

“And you’re the one who came off your high horse just to see how ‘our kind’ lives ‘down here.’ Mason, you don’t need a reason to break up with me. You want out? Just say so.”

“Ash, come on. I didn’t come here to fight.”

“You just came here to warn me of our impending doom before asking me to bone in your car.”

“Damn it, Ash, come on!” he exclaimed. “Can’t you see I’m just a little bit right?”

The thing that made me so fucking angry was that he was more than just a little bit right. If we really wanted to do this, we had a hell of a road to traverse, especially with how judgmental people would be of how I looked and where I came from. They’d automatically accuse me of using him for his money, and people would look at him and wonder why the hell he was with someone like me when he could obviously have someone like Eva.

Someone who was just like him.

“I want to spend time with you, Ash,” he said.

My chest collapsed and tears welled in my eyes. I was half an hour late for work, and I knew my phone was vibrating because Luna was calling. I felt my entire world collapsing around me. Yet again, I’d gotten involved with a guy I thought really enjoyed being around me, and yet again, I was about to be left alone due to some bullshit excuse he had for why we’d never work.

Only this time, I had been under the impression that he was different. With the others, I’d been pleasantly ignorant of the fact that they were all the same, but Mason had taken just enough time to convince me that he was different.

Different than all of them right up until he pulled the rug out from underneath me.

“I hear you loud and clear, Mason,” I said.

“Ash, please. Sit back down. Please?”

I didn’t even realize I was standing until he mentioned it, and when I looked down, my tears dropped onto the fluffy pancakes sitting in front of me.

“Thanks for brunch and the orgasms. Hope you have a nice life.”

“Ash, wait! No!”

I hurried away and weaved my wide hips in and out of the other tables. Even though I could hear Mason calling after me, I couldn’t hear much else above the noise of my thoughts. They all collided and crashed into the walls of my mind.

By the time I took in my surroundings, I was walking into the craft shop. Luna looked up at me over her the rims of her glasses, and her anger at me for being late dissipated completely when she saw my makeup running down my face.

“Come on back here, sweetheart,” she cooed. “I’ve got some inventory that needs taking care of.”

I nodded and turned my phone off before I shoved my purse underneath the counter. I followed Luna into the back. My chest heaved with sobs while I opened box after box of new craft supplies. I entered them into the system while my mind continued to scream at me. Images of our bodies writhing together drifted into my memory, and the feeling of his arms wrapped around my body while we danced warmed me to my core.

That was when I realized what was actually going on. My greatest downfall as a human being was rising to the surface, and finally I could do something about it. I had hinged my self-worth and happiness on some idiotic rich boy who licked a pussy well, and I couldn’t live my life like that any longer. I couldn’t live under the assumption that other people would eventually make me happy.

I had to start living my life under the assumption that I could make myself happy.

“You doing all right in here?” Luna asked.

I nodded and sniffled hard before I took out some tissues and cleaned myself up. When I turned to face my boss, she smiled at me and nodded.

“Don’t be late again, all right?” she said.

“Can I still not convince you to let me do a mockup of a website for you so you can sell some of this stuff online?” I asked.

“Nope,” she said.

“You know it would really boost business in this little shop of yours,” I said, smiling.

“Ours,” she corrected.

“Huh?”

“This little shop of ours. Girl, you’re the only person I’ve hired who’s stayed on more than a few months. This shop is just as much mine as it is yours.”

“Well, if it’s just as much mine, then I make the executive decision to have a website to sell some of this stuff on. We could ship it to people and everything.”

“Then what’s the point of having the store?” she asked.

“We won’t put the whole inventory online, just some of it. Some things they can get there, some things they gotta come in for.”

“Sounds complicated,” she grumbled.

I smiled. “Welcome to the future, Luna!”

I didn’t need some stuck-up, rich-kid billionaire to make me happy, even if he did do things to my body that no one else had. If he could do it, I was sure I could post another ad and find someone else who could do it just as good.

Or maybe even better.

Fuck him, and fuck not being in control of my own happiness. After work, I was going to treat myself to a nice cocktail and a decent dinner, and then I was going to go home and get started on a few more pieces of jewelry that had popped into my head not too long ago.

And who knew? Maybe I’d even try to sell them to see if anyone would be interested.