Ten
ASH
Somewhere along the way, I lost sight of the plan. With the strange disconnect happening between my body and mind, I’m lucky I still remember my name.
Following Calla had been an impulsive decision—one that I have yet to regret. I had just pulled up to the loading dock behind Jacob’s office when I saw a pair of tail lights inch down the alley, headed toward Bass Street. Since the alley is a narrow lane wedged in between two brick buildings, I saw the back of the familiar car clearly when it stopped at the end of the alley, waiting for the late rush hour traffic to clear.
I probably should’ve idled by the rickety wooden steps of the dock to weigh my options. That decision would’ve required logic and discipline, neither of which I seem to have around Jacob’s best friend. Instead, I slammed on the accelerator just as she pulled into traffic. Unfortunately, one of my side mirrors didn’t make it on the sharp ninety degree. I almost lost my front end to a cement delivery truck when I pulled out into traffic, but luckily he stopped just in time. I waved, thanking him for not killing me, and he waved back with his fists. Marylanders really are so friendly.
I followed close behind her, but had the presence of mind to leave at least one car length behind her—almost like my subconscious powered on my stalker alter ego. Luckily, Calla drove with perfect execution, putting on her signal far enough in advance that I always had plenty of time to make the turn. She kept to the right lane on the interstate, obeying all traffic patterns, allowing me to follow her in the middle lane.
When she pulled off onto an exit, I may have cut off a senior citizen van, but the driver was quickly able to get himself out of the fishtail. I waved at him in appreciation of his defensive driving, and he honked back a few times. I hadn’t seen her in the emergency lane until I was past her. Since the lane ended a few feet in front of her car, I had to drive past the bend in the road until I was able to pull over. Throwing the car into reverse, I waited until there was a pause in traffic and accelerated back up the exit ramp.
By the time I go there, Calla was gone.
Pulling off into the spot I swore she had been in, I idled for a few seconds, looking around to try to figure out where she went. I knew I would have seen her if she had continued on the exit. She didn’t seem like the kind of idiot who would put her car in reverse on an exit ramp. For a second, I considered alien abduction but then noticed a small gravel path lit up by my headlights.
Were I in my right mind, I would’ve remembered that I’m not a fan of the dark. Since I left my mind back with my side mirror, I turned the wheel and gunned the engine as branches scraped down the sides of my car with ear-piercing clarity.
By the time the cabin came into view, my auto-pilot disengaged and real fear took over. Since I’m a paranoid hypochondriac, my comfort zone is big enough to have its own zip code.
I’m scared shitless of the woods and anywhere that could hide spiders, snakes, and colonies of prehistoric bugs that have yet to be discovered. Why would anyone choose to live so close to all of that unpredictability? I grew angrier the longer I sat staring out the windshield—hating how little I knew about Calla. Hating how she’s become a compulsion my mind won’t let me forget.
By the time I threw open my car door I was pissed—not only at myself, but at the stupid clouds blocking the stupid moon. Crickets laughed at how fast I was walking, and I swear I heard a rattle snake chuckle at how tight my butt was clenched. I had run up the front porch steps on my tip toes, imagining a black window biting me from between the slats of wood and nearly yanked off the screen door just to get inside. I was determined to get Calla out of this oversized outhouse any means necessary.
Somewhere in the last few minutes, the dilapidated building has fallen away, and I’m now standing in a cozy space where everything around me smells like the intoxicating girl I refuse to walk away from.
I’m standing so close to her I can see the prickle of her goose bumps up and down her arms. I fight the urge to groan at her body’s confession while trying to stay focused on anything but the bed in the corner.
With my eyes closed, I let my nose continue its electric path along the dips and grooves of Calla’s ear. “Let me in.”
She shakes her head and a few strands of her golden blonde hair tickle the skin above my lips. I smile into her coconut scent and move my lips even closer to her neck. Feeling the warmth of her skin, I wet my lips as if wanting a small taste of the mystifying woman who’s set up residence in my mind and refuses to move out.
Wrapping her arms around her oversized sweatshirt, she ducks her head and whispers, “Excuse me” and walks around me into her small living room. Staring down at a picture on a wooden side table, she runs her hand up and down her other arm. I can tell she’s trying to wipe away the goose bumps, hating to reveal this part of her.
She picks up the picture frame and holds it out for me to see. “Meet Justine and Justin Kennedy. My parents. They live in a McMansion down in Howard county. Right on a lake.”
Nodding a bit too fast, I feel a pinch in my neck. “Great! I’m sure it’s not ideal but a McMansion gives you plenty of room to come and go as you please.” I rub my hands together, walk over to the back of the couch, and look around. “Where do you want me to start? I can pack up your negligees and you can start in the kitchen.”
Calla throws the picture frame on the couch. “Did you know you could actually have a home owner’s association bylaw named after you?”
I roll my eyes at her exaggeration but then notice the stillness in her expression.
She nods. “No? You didn’t know? Well, you can and I do. My parents’ HOA came together and voted in Calla’s law, which states that any non-resident under media speculation for forty-eight hours or longer must vacate the boundaries of the HOA.” She waves her hand over her head. “That would be me. I swear that you haven’t really lived until you have a bylaw named after you.”
Calla sits on the bar stool and leans her forehead against the counter.
I stare down at her slumped posture then rub my hands up and down my face. “Calla. I get it. I do. People have written more shit about me than you can possibly imagine, and hell, my mom used to read all of it! She didn’t need to know her youngest boy has an elephant-sized…”
She picks her head up and looks back at me. With a tight mouth and wrinkled nose, she rolls her eyes. “I don’t really think you get it.”
Moving into the kitchen, I put my hands on the other side of the counter. When she puts her head back down on the counter, her hair sprays out all around her and, even in the dim kitchen light, my eyes are drawn to the different shades of blonde. A mental image of her hair fanned out on my bear skin rug taunts my mind. I’ve always thought it would be odd to have sex on a bear skin rug. I feel like it would be like a bear having sex on human skin. Not exactly sexy. But the vivid mental image is enticing enough to make me reconsider my opinion.
She sits up and eyes me in a way that makes me nervous, like I’m sitting for a pop quiz that counts for my whole grade. I keep my features as relaxed as possible, wanting to pass her test so fucking bad that I don’t even flinch when she leans down and lays her cheek on the back of my hand. Every single cell inside of my body screams in a moronic celebration, but I remain perfectly still not wanting to fracture whatever tentative trust she’s giving to me.
“I was normal once. I was this obscure girl who flittered in and out of the background of people’s lives, and I was satisfied. I was content dating douchebags, trusting that the right one would come along eventually. I had this fucking blind faith in the justice of the world.”
I feel her cheeks move when she swallows. I find myself swallowing, too. “Sometimes I feel like my life will always be divided. Before the videos and after. I doubt I’ll ever be that person again and sometimes I miss her. I wish I had an ounce of her naivety—of her faith.”
She wets her lips and then lets out a long breath. “I was numb the first week or so. Of course my box of wine helped. I had to turn off my phone because of the constant notifications—emails, texts, tweets, Snapchat. I became paranoid, afraid every time someone passed me on the street, or a kid passed me in school. The more videos that came out, the more my paranoia was irrelevant. People were more than willing to admit they saw the videos or at least admit they knew who I was. I couldn’t walk down the hallway without one of my students whispering about me. Parents demanding my resignation. My landlord evicting me because the photographers were disturbing the peace of the other tenants.”
I don’t know when my other hand found its way to the curls in the back of her head, but my palm is running down the length of her hair, getting lost in how soft it feels against the calluses on my hand. Calla doesn’t seem to notice either as she continues on, this time talking behind closed eyes. “I think I would’ve been okay if the emails were the only links I had with my fans. I could’ve dealt with anonymous senders because I had a digital world standing between me and the perverts. But then the letters started showing up in my mailbox. At my home. Taped to my front door. Flimsy pieces of paper accusing me of being a whore—of wanting the attention. Religious rants about the devil inside of me and how I needed to be exorcised.
“These people wrote comments like they studied the videos. Like they knew my body so intimately that they must’ve hit replay hundreds of times. They told me what they would do to every inch of my skin. Not things they wanted to do to me. Things they promised to do to me. After a while, I felt like I didn’t even belong to this body. So many people acted like it was theirs to leer at, to do whatever the fuck they wanted to do with. Like I was just property they could steal whenever they wanted. I hated my skin. I hated my curves. I just…hated.”
Calla lifts her head, but she doesn’t look me in the eye. Instead she looks out the window above her sink. I see the imprint of my knuckles on her cheek and feel an odd twist in my gut. “The night I ran…the night they finally broke me…it started with a tap. At first it was slow. Random. A tap on my kitchen window. Then one in my living room. The next in my bedroom. The next in my bathroom. Then it wasn’t slow anymore.”
She blinks and then looks over at me. Her eyes look clouded, unfocused, like she’s seeing nothing more than the appliances behind me. “I hid in the bathroom, curled up in the tub, and figured a bunch of the neighborhood kids were just screwing with me. But then I heard them. Fucking grown men. I guess they wanted to spice things up so they started kicking my doors, laughing, screaming everything they had written in the letters. Instead of hiding behind their computers, they were standing on the other side of my wall.”
She pulls down the sleeves of her sweatshirt and then wraps her arms around her stomach like she’s protecting herself from the images in her mind.
She nods at the laptop sitting on her small kitchen table. “People say I asked for it because I wrote all of those books. I asked for it because I wore shirts that showed cleavage. I asked for it because I turned one of my students over to the authorities. I asked for it because I hid away instead of fighting back in the court system. No one fucking asked me what I wanted. No one. So yeah, I live in the middle of nowhere. Those savages are scarier than anything in these woods.”
Fury is an emotion that I’ve only tried on a handful of times. I have felt pissed and indignant, angry and vengeful. But rage is the one emotion that scares me—the one emotion that I can’t control when it consumes me.
Sitting here, staring out unseeing eyes, I feel the claws of fury inching up my back. Imagining Calla sitting in her bathtub with her hands over her ears is a visual that I doubt I’ll ever be able to forget. I admit that I didn’t get it at first. I didn’t get what the big deal was. She starred in a series of videos that were definitely juvenile, but I couldn’t see how they would affect her entire life.
Now I see.
This isn’t about some high school kid trying to ruin her life because she stopped his prostitution ring. This isn’t about a bunch of losers trying to get attention by slandering a school counselor. This is about a group of grown men who didn’t do it for attention. They didn’t even claim responsibility for the videos. This is about a group of grown ass men who wanted to destroy someone, who sought her out at her home, who took apart any sense of security she might have once had. Something wasn’t adding up and the longer I stand here trapped inside the fury, the less likely I’d find logic and reasoning to help me figure it all out.
Simba pulls my attention back to the single room shack when he lets out a startled woof from the front door. His ears are tilted back with his furry chin dipped down. The hair on his scruff stands while he looks at me as if he’s debating whether to rip me a part with his teeth or his claws.
Calla whispers words of comfort, and I cling to them like she’s speaking them to me. It’s okay. I’m okay. Her words ease some of the tension in my clenched fists as Calla opens the screen door and Simba walks in. He immediately sits down between Calla and me but extends his nose like he’s inspecting my scent. The dog’s eyes stay locked on mine. By the stiffness of his body, I can tell he’s waiting for me to make the first move. I can also tell that he hopes my move is far away from Calla.
Sitting on the kitchen chair, I lay my palms up on my knees like a dealer showing his empty hands. Simba comes over with his tail low and sniffs every inch of me while I try to release some of the anger holding my body stiff. He’s still watching my eyes as if seeing everything going on in my mind, but finally he lays his chin on my knee. He sighs, and I swear I feel the physical warmth of his relief.
That’s right, buddy. You did good protecting her, but I’ll take it from here.
After years of experience, I know I’m not very good at having deep talks with women. I’ve learned that a lot of women come to conversations with a screenplay already scripted in their mind. The woman will say something and then the man is supposed to say his line with proper tone and inflection. The only problem is men have no clue what the fuck their lines are.
But somehow I’ve been able to convince this woman to open up to me. In spite of her words begging me not to, I can’t just leave her fears dangling without at least trying to help. If she trusted me with her fears, she must trust me to allay them somehow.
Her expression has softened as she looks between Simba and me with a curious stare. I run my hand down Simba’s back and then scratch behind his ears. “Simba and I have been talking.”
Calla arches her eyebrows.
“Let me get some of my best guys on this and get the videos shut down.”
She drops her gaze down to the counter next to us and draws in an unsteady breath. Lowering her voice, she shrugs. “Your buddy, Shawn Rethers, already tried that. The internet isn’t a bulletin board you can just remove stuff from. It’s there. Always.”
She looks up, her features locked behind a pained smile. “Jacob has always said you’re a good man. That you would give the shirt off your back if someone needed it. You see me as Jacob’s friend, someone you could help fix a problem that I can’t fix myself. But I promise you I’m fine in this life. I have my dog, Jacob’s organization, my column, the roof above my head, and a car that gets really good gas mileage. Try to understand. The last thing I need is for the media to pick up on Prince Ash becoming friends with the princess from the films. Every last bit of peace I’ve found will go up in flames the minute anyone sees us together.”
I lean forward and rub my face with my palms again. I liked it better when I thought Calla was mentally unstable. I do still have the occasional doubt, but overall she seems competent enough to make decisions. She just isn’t making good decisions. Something about her voice, about all the question marks in her life, makes me want to fill in every blank. Makes me feel like I might have just as many blanks as she does.