Six
December
Asher
I fidgeted nervously, waiting for the Uber to pick me up.
This was such a bad idea.
What started out as a trip with Avery, quickly turned into one where, oops, I was going on a plane by myself, because Avery was taking a different one to St. Louis, where CJ would be waiting for her.
Witch.
I was still incredibly confused about the whole Avery and CJ dynamic, but I never had the opportunity to ask about it. Every time she brought up CJ’s name, it was on her way out the door.
It was as if she didn’t want the questions.
I should have left the airport when Avery left me.
But Avery must have known I would have, because she sat with me at my terminal, walked into line with me when our—well, my, I guess—boarding group was called. Then, right as I scanned my phone on the ticketing platform, she left me.
“Have fun!” she’d said with a smile on her face.
If it weren’t for the people pushing me down the jet bridge, I may have likely turned around.
When I landed, I had a text from Avery, saying she was sorry, but that an Uber would be picking me up. She gave me the details and about ten different smiley faces, as if they would make up for her failure as a friend.
Other than this one time, she turned out to be a damn good friend—
Which had me remembering another friend, and the fact that I wasn’t a very damn good friend.
Carter.
I hadn’t spoken to her since I left boot camp, before ending up in Wisconsin, in her brother Hunter’s car. I hadn’t spoken to Hunter, either, since things were squared away with the insurance-deemed totaled car.
I should probably call one of them.
I looked down at my phone and pulled up my contacts as I waited, only to remember that I broke my phone at Thanksgiving—I dropped it in the snow behind a car, and someone rolled over it—and I didn’t have either Douglas’ phone numbers in this new cell.
I gnawed on my lip. I should try to find their numbers.
Before I could figure out a way though, a car matching Avery’s description pulled up in front of me.
“Asher Spence?” the woman asked, rolling down the passenger window. I offered a smile and nodded.
She got out and moved around to open the back door. “You can just put your bag back here,” she said and, before I could do it, she lifted my carry-on suitcase into the back.
Another purchase from the Prescotts.
However, I was making a paycheck these days with Studio 11, and that was incredibly exciting. I loved doing the shoots, and after Ryleigh taught me editing, I learned I loved the artistic side of it.
It wasn’t painting or drawing, but I could still tell a story with pictures.
The excitement on the clients’ faces when I delivered the images gave me a high I’d never experienced before.
Things were starting to look up for me, and I couldn’t be any more excited for the direction my life had taken since that disastrous September day when I met Avery Prescott.
The woman, Laura, I learned, opened up the passenger door of the hatchback Focus for me—in lime green, I’d like to add—and when I pulled open Avery’s phone for the address, she just smiled and shook her head. “I’ve got it.”
Of course she did. That damn Avery.
I just nodded and looked out the window, taking in the scenery as we left the airport and went toward the city line. Before we could enter the city limits though, Laura took a turn into a residential area, lined with brick townhomes. I sat up in my seat, watching the house numbers as we went by.
Twelve.
Sixteen.
Twenty.
The closer the numbers grew to thirty, the more the butterflies in my gut circled.
Porter was expecting Avery.
Well, and me, I guess, by extension, but he wasn’t expecting just me.
“Here we are,” Laura announced, stopping in front of one of the redbrick homes. I guess I stopped paying attention after twenty.
I offered the woman a smile and a tip, but she pushed my hand away. “It’s taken care of.”
I mentally scowled at Avery and got out of the car, grabbing my bag and, after a deep breath, made my way up the walkway toward the door. I rolled my bag behind me and fisted the sleeve of my hoodie in my hand, feeling like I was taking a damnation walk instead of a walk to see a friend.
A friend who was expecting his sister, who was nowhere to be found.
Oh, that’s right, because she was visiting someone else this weekend.
This long weekend.
This five-day weekend.
I felt my stomach bottom out.
What in the hell would I do in Porter’s company for five whole days? The three—which was incredibly generous, as it was hardly two and a half—days I spent with him last were so long ago. He was a professional athlete now! And I was still…
Some stray his family picked up.
This was such a bad idea.
I should get back in the car.
I looked over my shoulder and watched as Laura drove away.
I sighed heavily.
Alright, so that wasn’t in the question.
I turned back to the door and lifted my hand to knock, hating the obtrusion of doorbells, but before my fist could connect, it swung open.
My breath caught in my throat.
Porter
“Ports! Visitor!”
I paused the game video I’d been watching, getting prepared for tomorrow afternoon’s game, at Nico’s voice. Having a four-in-the-afternoon game in the middle of the week was less than ideal, but it had something to do with the local schools and an after-school trip.
I wish we’d had fun field trips in school.
I didn’t have a freaking clue who would be visiting. It wasn’t like I made a ton of friends outside of the hockey club in the three-ish months I’d been here. I went out with the guys, met girls…but I could never bring myself to bring one home.
Nico even started calling me a hung-up bastard, saying if “this Asher chick ain’t here, ain’t comin’ here, then it’s time to move on,” but he didn’t know the half of it.
I knew shit about the girl, and I was—yep, he said it—hung up on her.
It was my own infatuation with a girl back home that was cock-blocking me from any number of available pussy. I cringed at the thought.
The last visitor I had, unannounced, was Mo, and look how that disaster turned out. I think it was safe to say that any friendship I had with her was fully, truly, out the fucking window. I hadn’t heard from her since the day she turned back around and out the front door.
Absently, I rubbed my left side over the spot that currently said ‘Mom,’ but once, very much so, said ‘Mo.’
Stupid, seventeen-year-old boy stuff.
Everyone said to not mark a girl’s name on your body. Thank God her name could be changed to another name I loved.
I left my bedroom and could hear Nico talking, but whoever he was talking to, didn’t answer back. I rounded the corner just as he was telling this visitor about my unhealthy Boba Ball addiction, and stopped dead in my tracks at who was standing in my kitchen.
Asher.
Asher was here.
In my kitchen.
In a hoodie that left everything to the imagination, but yoga pants that certainly did not. And those ugly fucking boots that Avery wore as a staple.
What the ever-loving fuck was Asher doing in my kitchen?
“Ash?” I frowned. “What are you doing here?”
She turned from Nico, facing me, and the unsure look on her face almost had me racing across the distance and holding her.
Almost.
We didn’t know each other like that, though.
“I know you were expecting Avery, but—”
“Huh?”
“Avery was supposed to be here with me.”
I shook my head. Not that I knew of.
Nope. Last I talked to Ace, she was getting to San Diego for Christmas an hour before my flight and we were going to rent a car together.
Asher’s panicked face morphed to one of comical anger. “That little conniving…”
Suddenly it made sense to me too, and I chuckled. Ace was playing matchmaker and sent Asher on a trip here on her own, knowing Asher wouldn’t do it herself.
Not that I would ask her to. Maybe I would have after Christmas, if she made her way to San Diego with the family. I’d hoped she would, and I tried telling myself it was because I didn’t want her to be by herself at Christmas time.
“This isn’t funny!” Asher exclaimed. “Good God, I need to get home,” she mumbled, reaching for the handle of her bag, but before she could, I darted forward and took it from her.
“You’re welcome to stay,” I said quickly. “How long did Avery plan this trip for?”
Asher reached up and squeezed the bridge of her nose, closing off those psychedelic eyes from me. “Through the weekend,” she admitted.
“Alright, cool. I have plenty of time to show you around.”
“You don’t have a second helmet,” Nico offered his two cents from the kitchen counter. I forgot he was in the room. He stood there, ankles and arms crossed, looking the picture of cool, calm, and collected. Hell, after the show with Mo a few weeks ago, he was probably soaking all this all. “And it’s sixty and cold. You are not putting the girl on your bike.”
Thanks, dad.
“It’s not cold,” I thought I heard Asher mumble, but Nico was on a roll.
“Which means you’ll want to take my car.”
I shook my head. “I’m good friends with my Uber driver.”
“Yeah. Me.” Nico chuckled to himself.
It was true that Nico did a lot of driving for me—I didn’t bring my car down, choosing to spend the auto-relocation allowance on my bike. And aside from these rainy, sixty-degree days, my bike was a good mode of transportation. It didn’t get snowy and freezing like back home. I mean, it got to forty sometimes during the day, but…
Asher shifted uncomfortably.
“Did you meet Nico appropriately?” I asked her, suddenly finding my gentleman card.
She nodded. “Yeah.”
“She did. It was good to finally meet Asher,” Nico said, a pointed look in my direction. At his ‘finally,’ Asher’s eyes darted to mine.
Yep. I talked about you a time or two.
But I kept that quiet.
“Here, let’s bring your bags to my room.” I took her suitcase and led the way down the hall, hoping she’d follow. I entered my bedroom, grimacing at the mess. I easily became distracted when watching game footage, and between our practice schedule and the games and the traveling…
There were clothes all over and Nikes littering the floor near my closet. My bed…I didn’t know the last time I made it.
The light gray comforter was balled up at the end and the equally gray sheets were bunched. A black pillow had made its way to the floor.
“I’m sorry, it’s a mess,” I told her, walking in and trying to avoid her expression. I immediately started balling up all the sheets into the middle, pulling at the fitted sheet to make a large ball. “I’ll wash these. I have clean sheets somewhere. It will just be the comforter you’ll need to wait on.”
“I can sleep on the couch,” she said absently, looking around my place.
“Abso-fucking-lutely not. I will sleep on the couch,” I told her, holding the bed linens to my chest. “Hang tight while I get this started. I’m sorry.”
She stepped aside and I shuffled out of the room to throw the entire load in the large washer. Nico moved from the kitchen and met me at the laundry closet in the hallway between the bedrooms and kitchen.
“So, that’s her.”
“Shut it.” I dumped everything in the washer and pulled open the detergent drawer, eyeballing the formulas before closing the drawer and pushing buttons, turning nobs, and hitting the start button.
“It’s cute, watching you do laundry for a girl,” he taunted, blocking the hall and therefore, my escape route.
“Nico, not now.”
“Dude, you’ve been stuck on this girl since the moment I met you.”
I moved toward him, intending to push past him. “Yeah, and she ended up here by way of a conniving sister of mine, and if I don’t get back in that room, she’s going to freak and find a way back to Wisconsin.”
“And you want to keep her around.” The bastard was laughing at me.
“Nico. Not now,” I repeated and thankfully, he let me pass. I jogged through the hall and toward my room, partially convinced that Asher would have found the back door in the kitchen and let herself out.
When I got back to my room, Asher was kneeling on the floor, a pile of clothes in front of her and another folded to her side. “Asher, no.” I stepped into the room and went to close the door, but didn’t know how she would feel about that, so I left it open.
Surprisingly, she could tell the difference between clean and dirty, as the piles she had were extremely accurate. “I’ll just…” I scooped a bunch of the clothes she hadn’t touched into my arms and dropped them into the empty, unused hamper by my closet.
“I just needed something to do,” Asher said from her spot on the floor, her hands in her lap and one hand fiddling with the hem of her sweatshirt sleeve. “I really shouldn’t be here,” she added, a strained laugh in her voice.
“No!” I shook my head and worked on reeling back the enthusiasm. “No, it’s fine. I’m…” I shrugged. “I’m glad you’re here, really.”
“Even though you’re going to be sleeping on a couch before a game?” she asked, her brows crooked and staring at me.
“I’ll be fine. I promise.” I moved toward her and held out a hand, hopeful she’d take it. “How about this. I have nowhere to be; let’s order dinner and pull up a movie On Demand."