Five

Will Parke @TheoryOfBecause Dec 15

Opportunities are like sunrises. If you wait too long, you miss them. - William Arthur Ward #willwinbecause

Ashton

Molly did have the biggest bag in the world. I guess it was nice of Will to drop her off at JetBlue curbside so she could check her bag instead of hauling it from long term parking in the rain. It would have been even nicer if he’d dropped me off at United, but of course he was taking United too. So I had to grab my bag and race through the rain to the covered area and wait for the shuttle with Will. I was freezing and wet and stuck with him, waiting for the bus.

His hair looked darker when it was wet. And he looked…a little sexy, to be honest. Not that I would ever admit that.

“Mint?” he asked offering me a tin of Altoids.

“Is it poisoned?” I asked.

He looked at me like I was crazy.

“Or are you saying I stink?”

“Maybe I’m just trying to be nice.” Then he shook his head. “I don’t want you to hate me, Ashton.”

Maybe I was being a bitch. He had been nice all morning. And he hadn’t outed me to Molly. And…he said I was the prettiest girl at school, he even sounded like he meant it. But that didn’t mean I had to forgive him. He had made me a laughingstock, though that might have just been a case of bad luck. So I took the tin from him and smiled just a fraction as I a popped a mint into my mouth. “You know, I only hate you a little bit.”

A much wider smile spread across his face and his dark eyes twinkled. “That’s an improvement I can live with.”

The bus came just then, picked us up and shuttled us back to the airport. Luckily, we already had our boarding passes, and we started straight for the security line, which was insane. There was still a week before Christmas, and the airport was going to get a lot worse before it got better.

There was a family with kids in front of us and a little blonde girl spun around with a stroller and rammed it into my knees. I stumbled backward, right into Will’s chest and he caught my arms in his hands. Warmth shot through me from his touch and I looked back over my shoulder at him.

“You ok?” he asked at the same time the little girl’s mother started apologizing.

“I’m fine,” I said, shaking myself from his hold. And I told the girl’s mother I was fine; but I was a little shaken by that warmth. Why should I feel anything when Will touched me? I mean, I didn’t have to hate him, necessarily; but that didn’t mean I wanted to feel anything else for him either.

After TSA swabbed Will’s hands for explosives, a random thought popped into my head. Maybe that was why he’d made me so hot all of a sudden. He was dealing with explosives. But his hands were “clean” and we were free to go.

We stopped at line of bank of electronic screens. My flight to White Plains was hours away, but I’d be leaving out of D18.

“Shit,” Will muttered.

“What?” I looked over at him.

“Flight’s delayed.”

“Where are you headed?”

“LAX, through Houston.”

I glanced up at the screen and spotted flight 484 to Houston was delayed until 4:30 pm, going out of D21. We were going to be together a long time.

“My flight’s at four,” I said. “I guess we could find a place and grab something to eat.”

“We’re going to be here a while,” he agreed.

We found a pub not too far from our gates and settled in. We both ordered barbecue sliders, and Will got a beer on tap. Then he sat back and looked at me with those dark eyes of his.

“So you want to tell me about your fucked up family?” He quirked a grin at me. “I’ll tell you about mine.”

“Why? So you can tweet about them?” I bit back a smile. Even after all the shit this week, there was something charming about Will. Maybe it was just the way he looked at me, like I was so pretty he couldn’t help not looking at me. “I don’t think so.”

“Come on,” he prodded. “Even exchange. I bet I got you beat.”

That I doubted. “Oh yeah? How many times has your dad been married?” I asked.

A little laugh escaped him. “I, uh, I don’t have a father.”

“What?” I asked before I could stop myself. Shit. I shouldn’t have asked that. Was his dad dead or something? I—

“Sperm donor,” he said matter-of-factly. “I’ve got the medical history stuff, but you know, no father.”

My mouth fell open. I had not expected him to say anything like that.

“How many times has your dad been married?” he asked, like he hadn’t just dropped an enormous bombshell on me.

“Four times,” I answered, then shook my head. “But we’re not done talking about the sperm donor.”

“Nothing to tell you, Ashton. I’ve got the medical history. Irish, English descent. That’s all I know.”

How could that be all he knew? “B-but…Why? I mean why?”

He looked at me like I was crazy. “It’s confidential. The clinic only shares the stuff you need to know.”

Not that. “Why did your Mom…”

And then a genuine smile settled on his face. “She wanted a baby. Her biological clock was ticking. She had the means to provide for a child, just turns out she’s not very maternal. She didn’t really know that until after I was born, though. An excellent attorney. Very pragmatic. Smartest woman you’ll ever meet. But not maternal.”

“Ok, so your family might be more fucked up than mine.”

He laughed, a real laugh that time, and I got the feeling he didn’t laugh all that often. I couldn’t help but smile at that.

The waitress dropped off our order and Will snatched up one of his sliders. “So your dad’s been married four times?”

“Yeah.” I nodded and picked up my own sandwich.

“And your mom was number…”

“Wife number one. And each subsequent wife gets younger and younger. Gianna’s even younger than my brother Matt. It’s kind of gross.” And then something he said a minute ago hit me. “Your mom’s not maternal. So you don’t have any brothers or sisters, huh?” I took my first bite.

“No.” He shook his head. “But my aunt’s in La Crescenta, not too far from Mom’s in San Marino. Twenty, thirty minutes. I was over there a lot of the time. My cousins are a little older than me, but they’re like my brothers in a lot of ways.”

“Wow.” That just sounded so sad. Mom and Dad hated each other, but they loved us. They’d have never shipped any of us off to an aunt’s house. They’d have fought each other to the death to get us all to themselves. And even though my dad is an asshole a lot of the time, I couldn’t imagine not knowing he was my dad. That just was so strange.

“So your dad’s on wife number four. What about your mom?”

“Husband number two. But she’s wife number three for him. I have two brothers that are mine, and five step-siblings. All older than me.”

“So you’re the baby.” He smiled again, like that meant something, like maybe I was spoiled.

“For at least the next nine months,” I muttered, taking another bite.

He looked at me with a strange expression. “Excuse me?”

Oh shit! He didn’t think… “No, not me.” I shook my head. “I mean, my dad. I think Gianna’s pregnant.”

“Ashton.” He reached across the table, squeezed my hand in his and then said with a mock sincerity, “I think your family is more fucked up than mine.”

And I laughed. How in the world was Will Parke making me laugh? I was supposed to hate him. And I did kind of hate him, but…Well, I kind of liked him too. He had been really nice today. And how could you not feel a little something for a guy who had the kind of childhood he’d had? Sperm donor father. I was still trying to wrap my brain around that. There were probably a lot of people who had sperm donor fathers, I’d just never met one. But Will had a mother who wasn’t maternal too? Did he raise himself? He seemed so well-adjusted. Was he more well-adjusted than I was? And if so, did that mean my family really was more fucked up than his?

Will

We completely lucked out and found a couple chairs with electric plugs. And that was no small feat. There were a million people at the airport after a whole bunch of delayed flights, including mine. But with power, we were able to connect to Netflix and watch the first couple episodes of Daredevil. And sharing a pair of earbuds and sitting close to Ashton Sommers was a fairly nice way to spend a day, actually.

She was so close to me, I caught more than a couple peeks down her V-neck sweater. I liked Daredevil, but it was nothing compared to the glimpses I got down her shirt. Sitting that close to her and breathing in the light perfume she had on, my dick was hard as a rock. And that was with a million people crowded around us. If I ever had the chance to have her all to myself…

“Shit.” She sat up suddenly.

“What?” I pulled my gaze away from her breasts.

“You didn’t hear what they just said?”

They? Pretty hard to focus on anything other than her at the moment. “What?” I asked again.

“My flight. They cancelled my flight.”

I glanced up at the departure screen not too far away. My flight was still going. At least for now.

Ashton scrubbed a hand down her face. “Shit. I’m stuck here too.”

Because she’d ridden with me. I glanced again at my flight on the departure screen. Still delayed, but odds were they’d cancel mine too. Or it would go, and I’d have to abandon Ashton. And that was pretty much the last thing in the world I wanted to do. I mean, I didn’t really need to go back to LA and see Aunt Jill, intrude again on another of their family holidays.

“Well,” I said leaning back in my chair to see her a little better, “as I see it, you have three choices.”

She frowned at me. “Yeah?”

“One, you can get a hotel room and fly out tomorrow, if you can get on a flight.” With all the cancellations and it being Christmas, she could be stuck for days.

She scowled at that choice. And I couldn’t blame her. She’d already been up before dawn today. Who wanted to be stuck at Dulles for days?

“Two, I can drive you back to school, or—”

“You’ll miss your own flight.”

But my flight didn’t really mean anything to me. “I’m not even seeing my mom. So, it’s no big deal.”

Her blue eyes rounded in surprise. “You’re not seeing your mom?”

I shook my head. “I was supposed to, but she’s not going to be around.”

“She’s not going to be around for Christmas?”

She just didn’t get my mom. “Look, if I don’t make it back to LA, it’s no big deal. You care a lot more about making it to Connecticut. So, option three is I can just drive you there. It’s what six, seven hours or so?”

Ashton blinked at me. “You’d drive me home?”

It wasn’t a big deal. It was a couple hours back to Wheston anyway. We might as well go forward instead of going back. “I mean, it’s not that far, right?”

She shook her head. “And what are you going to do? Come back here or fly to LA from White Plains or…?”

“I’ll probably just go back to school. It’ll be quiet in Wheston. No one’ll be there.”

“No.” She shook her head.

“Ok.” Well, I’d offered. If she wanted to sit around Dulles—

“You’re not going to spend Christmas by yourself in Wheston.”

“It’s really not that big a deal, Ashton,” I started.

But she was still shaking her head. “You can drive me to Westport, Will, but you have to stay.”

“What?” I frowned at her. Was she serious?

She shrugged, looking uncomfortable all of a sudden. “Then you can, you know, judge for yourself if my family is more fucked up than yours.”

Spend Christmas with Ashton Sommers? There were a lot of things I wanted to with Ashton, but I hadn’t considered spending Christmas with her. Six hours in the car was a start though, and her friend Molly wouldn’t be with us this time. It would just be the two of us…until we were with her family, which would be weird. “I don’t want to be in the way.”

The prettiest smile settled on her lips. “You’ll be my excuse to escape anything we don’t want to do, Will. It’s perfect.”

That didn’t exactly sound perfect. And it wasn’t exactly flattering to be an excuse, but…Well, who knew what could happen if I went? I knew what I wanted, what I’d wanted really from the first moment I’d seen her – to have her in my bed and wrapped around me. But would going to Connecticut help or hurt me getting that? After six hours in the car, she could easily hate me. That was a distinct possibility. And, honestly, I could hate her at the end too, though I didn’t think I would. Right now, I just loved being with her, teasing her, talking to her, just being near her. It would suck if going to Connecticut would ruin all of that. But…what if we didn’t hate each other at the end of this? What if this was just the beginning of something. “Where would I stay?”

“Braden and I were supposed to stay at Dad’s. His place is bigger. We’ll just do the same thing.”

Her dad. “And he’s going to be ok with some strange guy staying at his house for the holidays?”

“As long as you’re not in my room, he won’t care.”

Yeah, I didn’t think I’d be sneaking into her room in her dad’s house. That seemed like the fastest way to end up dead. Even still, it might be worth it. “Ok. Let me just call my cousin real quick.”

Then I tugged my phone from my pocket and started toward one of the far windows where it seemed a little quieter and where I could talk without her overhearing me.

Jake answered on the first ring. “Hey, man,” he said. “You here?”

“Hey,” I replied. “No, I’m, uh…Well, I’m not coming home after all.”

“You ok?”

“Yeah, yeah,” I reassured him. “It’s just there’s this girl and—”

“Is she sexy?”

“Yeah.” She was. She really was.

“Well, I’ll just tell Mom you’re gonna get laid for Christmas. She’ll understand.”

“Jake,” I grumbled.

“Yeah, ok, I’ll tell her something else.”

“I’m just helping her out is all.” And for a brief moment my gut tightened. Maybe I should go home. Stay with Aunt Jill and forget Ashton Sommers. They were my family. It was Christmas for God’s sake. But then I caught sight of Ashton again, still sitting with our luggage and waiting for me to come back. I really liked the idea of spending the rest of the day with her and the rest of the week, maybe two. “Tell everyone I miss ‘em, ok?”

“Yeah, of course. Merry Christmas, Will.”

“Merry Christmas.” Then I pocketed my phone and started back towards the prettiest redhead on the East Coast.

She smiled at me when I got closer and she pushed out of her chair. “They weren’t mad?”

“No.” I shook my head and bent down to pack my laptop back into my carryon. “You ready?”