@Gossip24: Asa and DJ Ash, sitting in a tree? No, sitting on a private jet. But where are they headed? Anyone see Rune lately?
Asher sits beside me with his shades and a tank top on. I can see the edge of his nipple through his arm hole if I look close enough. His baseball cap is backwards and he looks so fucking comfortable beside me in the backseat of this car, I’m jealous.
It isn’t that I’m uncomfortable. It’s that with his presence comes an acute sense of my sexual frustration. It causes me to press my legs together, to keep from looking at him for too long, to wonder if his chuckle is as deep as the sounds he makes when he comes.
I'm disoriented, yanked from my dirty thoughts, when the car stops and he's opening the door without a word. I inhale deeply, finally relaxing in the space created between us.
“Welcome home?” I call after him. When I step out, he's pushed his sunglasses into the distended collar of his tank, his eyes squinting in the summer rays that hit the treeless path toward the front door.
“Fucking hate travelling,” he says with a frown, and I smirk before taking a deep breath of the clean air. “The driver will bring our bags up. Let me give you a tour of the place.”
He steps toward the house in front of me and ‘cabin’ isn’t what comes to mind when I finally take it in. It’s large and brick, with large windows that do offer no privacy. The air isn’t too hot, and I glance around at the few trees around before catching sight of the beach about a quarter mile behind the house.
“First shower I see, the tours over,” I tell his back as he leads us inside.
“Go ahead and shower first. I'll make sure your things are in your room by the time you're done.”
He gives me directions to my room; my space is up the stairs, second door on the left. As I climb the steps, it takes all my self-control not to look back and see if he’s watching me.
I’ve seen the entirety of his cabin and we’ve managed to share a meal together without it getting too awkward. But now, as we sit on lavish patio furniture on the back deck, a heaviness settles between us. A silence that makes me think I made a mistake by coming here.
“Do you smoke?” he asks, reaching for what looks like a fancy silver cigarette case. I’m about to twist my face in disgust when he flicks it open and shows me its contents.
A row of neatly rolled joints stare back at me.
“Not in a long time,” I tell him, thinking back on my younger days. “It used to make me lazy.”
“Isn’t lazy just another word for relaxed?” His grin only lasts for a split second before he’s got the joint between his lips and lifts a lighter to the end of it.
What can I say to that?
The silence stretches too far and thin as he inhales, so I start talking. It's not like we can leave here without him somehow knowing it all. I want to leave this all in the music, anyway.
“I don't know what I was looking for when I found him. Or, when he found me. I don't know,” I say as he continues to smoke silently. “I was so tired of dating. I wanted to steer clear of relationships, but he was there, and he was...good.” I smile a little at the memory of being swept up so quickly. All that charm, it happened so fast that it blinded me. I was an idiot. I see that now that the figurative smoke has cleared. Even as the smoke leaves Asher’s lips in a large cloud.
“Sounds like a nice guy,” he muses, leaning forward but looking back at me.
“Maybe once. Maybe never.”
“Why'd you stay?”
It’s a question I’ve asked myself a million times.
“By the time I realized he wasn't mine, he was already gone,” I answer, my voice quiet.
Ash pulls the joint from his lips and passes it to me. I stare at it for a moment before I take my first hit. And the more I smoke, the easier the words come.
“It didn't matter that I only knew him for a few months. People think that just because we got engaged quickly, it meant nothing.” Not to me, anyway. I inhale and hold the smoke in my lungs. Or maybe I was keeping the emotions inside. When I pass Ash the joint back, his eyes hold mine, I exhale and it's like he's wordlessly telling me to continue.
“I think what hurts the most is that the world was right about him. I heard so many things about him, but I thought I was different. I thought he was different this time, but I'm realizing people don’t change."
“You can't generalize all people just because he was a tool," he says on an inhale, and before he passes it back, he hits it again. It’s insane but the orange ring brightening at the end of the joint as he pulls has nothing on the green gems assessing me.
“You have a staring problem.” I take the joint he offers back. I try to ignore my easy smile, blaming it on the weed.
“You have a fear of being looked at," he counters. Shit.
“People look at me all the time.” I lean forward and inhale, trying to look haughty.
He shakes his head as I take another drag.
“They aren't looking at you. Who you are to them and who you are right now aren’t the same.”
I exhale and nod my head slowly. The twilight makes it harder to see him now, but I hear the certainty in his words. I used to talk like, too. Used to believe myself a lot more than I do now.
“You think you see me?" I ask, wanting to hear how he answers. Because a man like him always answers.
He leans forward and I hate that I sit back even an inch.
“I know I see you."