Carrying his kayak back to his car, he didn’t expect to see Ashley waiting for him. “Ashley, what’re you doing here?”
“I stopped by the house to see you. Tom said you’d taken the kayak, so I figured you were either at Masonboro or here.”
He put down the plastic boat. “What’s going on?”
She shrugged. “Not much. I just wanted to see a friendly face.”
“Is everything okay on the home front?”
“Not so much really, no. Mike and I are not getting along and it’s just getting worse all the time. It’s becoming unbearable.”
“What’s wrong?”
“I don’t even know. I think we’re going to get a divorce. We just argue about everything lately. I’m just having a real hard time feeling good around him. I don’t want to be around him at all. I’m going to see a lawyer on Monday.”
“I’m really sorry.”
“Yeah, well, don’t get married.” She put her hand over her gaping mouth. “I’m so sorry, Jake. That was insensitive of me. I can’t believe I said that. I just slipped up. I forgot who I was talking to for a second.”
“It’s okay, Ash, really it is. I’m really doing so much better. I don’t want you to have to edit yourself around me.”
She smiled. “I’m happy to hear that. You have no idea.”
“Well, a lot of that has to do with you. I think you should know that. I think you do know that.”
She smiled. “I’m glad.”
God he missed that quirky little smile. Ashley had a smile that could always send his heart soaring. Even in his deepest love with Cassie, seeing Ashley smile had a special feeling. He didn’t know what it meant, if anything, but it was still there.
“Do you want to get a drink or something?”
She nodded. “I could use something.”
“Lemme put the kayak back on my car. We’ll just leave your car here.”
“That’s fine.” She picked up half the kayak and helped him mount it on the roof of the Beetle.
They drove off.
“Where do you want to go?” Jake shifted gears as the road smoothed out.
“Let’s go to the Tiki. We can sit on the pier and just listen to the waves while my brain turns into an alcoholic stew.”
He nodded. “Sure, we can do that. But we may end up walking home.”
“That’s fine as long as we stay on the island to drink.”
“Ha, of course we would…where else would we go?”
“Well, we could go downtown.”
He laughed and didn’t see the car that had sped up and bumped softly into the rear of them. “Whoa!” Jake exclaimed.
Ashley turned around. “What the hell?”
The car bumped into them again, a little harder.
Jake’s first reaction was to pull to the side of the road, and when he did, the car pulled up next to them unexpectedly. He didn’t realize what he was seeing until the cracking sound of gunfire tore into the night.
He hit the gas hard, sending them lurching forward. He glanced over at Ashley to make sure she wasn’t hurt. “You okay?”
“Fine, just get us the hell out of here.”
Jake had always been a top end driver, which was part of the thing that bothered him so much about the accident. He should have been able to drive his way out of it like he always had before.
But right now he wanted to get away from the threat. He cut the wheel hard, grabbed the emergency brake, and sent the Beetle into quick 180-degree spin. Then he mashed the gas pedal and sent the car screeching forward. Thank goodness this was a modern age turbo-charged Beetle with a good amount of giddy-up and go, not one of the old clunkers, or they’d be doomed. It just looked like an old clunker, but it ran well.
Their pursuer turned around with screeching tires and hurried toward them again. He thought he heard more bullets but wasn’t sure. The engines and tires and twisting of machinery was impossible to discern.
Jake cut the wheel again, did another 180-degree turn, and headed straight at the car charging at them.
“Jake, what’re you doing?”
“Trust me.”
Ashley reached up and grabbed the plastic handhold on the A-pillar. She gripped it for dear life. Jake drove straight at the oncoming car full speed, and at the last second cut the wheel so hard the car nearly rode up on two wheels. He cut the wheel back onto the road and just kept the gas pedal pinned, heading up the beach road toward the more populated areas. He looked up one more time in the rearview mirror and saw the chaser peel off down one of the side streets. Whoever they were thought better of the chase into the busy areas.
He pulled into the busy boardwalk and shut off the car. They sat in silence while they caught their breath.
Ashley looked over to him. “What the hell was that, Jake?”
He shook his head. Not a single part of him wanted to tell her the story, but every single part of him knew he had to. If there was anyone on this planet he had to trust right now, it had to be Ashley. He could kid himself and say it had nothing to do with Ariel, but he knew that was a lie.
“Okay, Ashley, I’m about to tell you a story. You’re going to think I’m crazy, I’m sure of it. But you have to trust me it’s all real.”
“You’re freaking me out a little bit.”
“Well, this is some weird shit.”
“You can tell me anything, you know that.”
Jake went on in detail about everything. He told the story from the first night he’d seen Ariel while he held a gun to his head, to the last conversation they’d just had tonight and everything in between. He’d left out only one part, the part about the kisses. That was one detail he didn’t need to share. He watched her face the entire time, trying to pick out at what point she assumed he’d lost his mind, but she had a good poker face.
Finally, when he was done he sat back into the seat, waiting for her response. She sighed and just said, “Let’s go get that drink.”
After a short walk across the boardwalk to Hurricane Alley, they slid up to the wooden bar. They ordered some strong drinks and downed them, then Jake looked at her and asked, “Are you going to say something?”
She looked at him. “Jake, I don’t know what to say. And I’m not being funny. I literally don’t know what to say. I mean, I thought you were doing so well, and now I want to think you’re cracking up.”
“That’s fair.”
“Are you cracking up?”
“No, Ashley, I’m not. I haven’t been this lucid in months.”
“I just don’t…I mean…what would you say to someone who told you that stuff?”
He shrugged. “I’d say they were nuts.”
“Right? I mean, what else could it be?”
He downed the shot in front of him. “That guy with the gun in the car wasn’t an illusion.”
Ashley downed her shot of whiskey. “Well, I know, Jake, but that’s easier to believe than some sort of crazy mermaid conspiracy.” She laughed. “I mean, next thing you’re going to tell me is that you’re in love with her.”
Jake didn’t answer right away. Ashley took that as a yes.
“Oh, come on, Jake, don’t even.”
“No, I’m not in love with her. I’m intrigued by her.”
“That seems to be like the same thing right now.”
“I wish I could explain it but here we are. And she’s real.”
She took another drink and asked for another. Then after a few minutes, she looked at him and said, “Okay, let’s play. Maybe this is all real. What does it mean?”
“I don’t know what it means.”
“I’m sorry, Jake—I can’t wrap my head around this.”
“Ashley, do you trust me?”
She looked at him, met his eyes. “You know I do.”
“Then believe.”
“I want to.”
“Then do it.”
She sipped the pineapple-spiked rum the bartender placed on front of her. “Okay, Jake. I’m going to trust you. You’ve seen something out of this world. I will believe you.”
“Thank you.”
“But you have to give me some leeway here to doubt a little bit. Okay?”
“Okay.”
“I do trust you, and that’s the only reason I’m willing to bend my belief in reality.”
“The world is a strange place.”
“Yeah, but I don’t believe in any of it. I believe in things I’ve seen. And I’m sorry, but I’ve never seen a ghost, or a UFO…or a mermaid.”
“Just because you haven’t seen it doesn’t mean it’s not real.”
“That’s fair.”
“Someone tried to kill us, Ashley. We didn’t imagine that.”
“I can’t argue with that, but for all I know that has nothing to do with any mermaid.” She gulped her drink again. “I’ve never been shot at before.”
“It was a first for me too.”
“I don’t even want to go back and get my car.”
“We can get it in the morning.”
“Mike is going to flip his plugs.”
Jake chuckled, feeling a little tipsy. “He’s got plugs?”
She laughed. “He started going bald at like twenty-five.”
“Somehow that seems like karma.”
She gave him a look. “How come you never liked Mike?”
“He’s a big flapping douche bag.” They laughed.
“No really.”
Jake shrugged. “I don’t know exactly. He always just rubbed me the wrong way. He’s kind of a dork but he thinks he’s cool. He thinks he’s smarter than everyone but not in a professor-y kinda way. More like, in an I’m a rich guy so by default I’m better than you kinda way. He acts like an Alpha male but he’s really not.”
“He rubs a lot of people the wrong way. But what was it specifically?”
“Well, I guess at that time I didn’t think he was good enough for you.”
“At that time? Why?” She flashed a coy smile.
“I think you know.”
She smiled at him and just shook her head.
“You’re going to make me say it.”
She smiled and nodded.
“Fine, and you know this already, so you’re just acting dumb. But I had feelings for you.”
“And you felt guilty.”
“I always did because I was supposed to be in love with Cassie.”
“You mean Cassie?”
“What did I say?”
“You said Cassie.”
“Huh?”
She laughed. “I’m screwing with you.”
“I hate you.”
“No, you don’t.”
Jake nodded. “No, I do not.” Jake looked at his drink and wondered if he was feeling drunk already. Now that the adrenaline was fading, the drinks he just downed in record time were hitting him hard.
“You were in love with Cassie.”
“I know I was. I really was. But it always bothered me. I always felt that if I was so in love with Cassie, if everything was so perfect, how could I fall in love with someone else?”
“Life isn’t perfect, Jake. We make choices and time goes by, and we struggle with the decisions all our lives. Sometimes what we have we don’t want, and what we want we can’t have.”
“It wasn’t even about wanting what I didn’t have. I had it.” He looked at her more directly. “It was just you more than anything else. You just got me, more than anyone I’d ever met before. We had some unspoken connection that just locked me up.”
“That’s fair.”
“Did you feel it?”
“Jake, are you kidding me? Of course I felt it. But what was I going to do about it? You were freshly engaged to be married. I was already married. What was there to do?”
He shrugged. “I don’t know. Sometimes I wish I’d thrown it all away just to be with you.”
“Remember that night?”
“The aloe plant?”
“Yes, with the aloe plant. How come you didn’t kiss me?”
“I told you, I didn’t want to be that guy.”
“Really? Is that the only reason?”
He searched his feelings and sighed. “No, that’s not the only reason.”
“What was it?”
He blew out a long breath. “I didn’t want to ruin what we had. But most importantly, I didn’t want you to be the other woman…I wanted you to be the only woman.”
Ashley’s face flushed. She brought her hands up to her face and ran her fingers through her hair. “Jake, what’re you doing to me?”
“What?”
She emptied her drink and slammed it on the bar. “That was one of the most heartfelt, romantic, beautiful things anyone ever said to me.”
“I’m sorry?”
“Don’t be sorry. I’m just…it just couldn’t have come at a more impossible time. I mean, we’re being shot at, you tell me you’re in love with a mermaid, me and Mike are one inch away from visiting a lawyer and dividing our things. My head is just a mess right now and then you hit me with that.”
“It was a long time ago, Ashley. We’re not the same people we were. We’ve done a lifetime of growing up since then.”
“Is that what you tell yourself?”
He shrugged. “It’s the truth.”
“The truth is an illusion, Jake. We make the truth up as we go along.”
“I don’t make the truth up, I just speak it. Some people can’t handle that, some people want to think it’s easier to lie. But that’s not me. I have no instinct to lie or conceal the truth. I speak what I feel.”
“Maybe you shouldn’t.”
“Trust me, I know. People claim they want honesty and truth, but really they don’t. They like the security of their lies. They like the illusions and the fantasy and the games. The moment things are real they run away scared, like immature little babies.”
“Not everyone and not all the time.”
“I guess I’ve struggled with it all my life.” He downed another drink.
“So, you don’t feel that way about me anymore?”
He shrugged. “I don’t know what I feel anymore.”
She played with a coaster. “Maybe you should figure that out.”
He looked away and let his eyes fall on the stuffed monkey on the wall. “I guess maybe I should.”