Page 28 of Don't Love Me
7
Princeton
7 months later
Marc
I was studyingfor my last final and it was kicking my ass. Statistical Analysis of Financial Data. The money part never bothered me, but this was weighed heavily on the math, and it felt like I had to push my brain forward to make the numbers work.
There was no such thing as getting anything less than an A on my final. My GPA was holding steady at 3.8, and any dip might cost me summa cum laude, which wasn’t acceptable if I was going to get one of the top jobs in a New York brokerage.
My phone dinged and it was a welcome temporary escape from the numbers.
Ash:What are you doing right now?
I smiled when I saw the text. I’d gotten them every now and then since I’d gone off to college. Odd times, day or night. Just that one question. What are you doing right now? She said it was important we stay connected when we were separated. I humored her because I knew she spent the majority of her time alone.
Me:Studying. Why?
Ash:I need you to do something for me. This is serious.
I doubted it.
Me:What?
Ash:You need to tell Chris to back off. He’s been harassing me all year, and for the most part I’ve been handling it. But now he’s getting really nasty.
That pissed me off. He’d been harassing her all year and I was just finding out about that now? I knew he’d been talking shit about her the last time I saw him, but I hadn’t been worried about Ash brushing him off. She might have been a loner, but she’d never been a pushover. I knew, because of all the shit I’d given her, she’d never backed down from me.
Me:Tell me.
Ash:He’s telling everyone at school I’m giving him blow jobs. AS IF! Now I’ve got guys lining up at my locker every morning like I’m some kind of hooker. I wanted so bad to go to school and be normal…but here, without you, this kind of sucks. No pun intended.
Me:I’ll take care of it.
I saw the dots on the phone appear and disappear a few times. I knew her too well to know she wasn’t going to question how I was going to take care of it. She would simply trust me that it would be done. No, if she was hesitating about something, I knew what it was.
Ash:Are you coming home after the semester?
That was it. That was what she wanted to know. I wanted to say no so bad, but I couldn’t. For two reasons. One, I’d gotten an internship at a brokerage only an hour outside of Harborview. Which meant I wasn’t going to be able to do the internshipandhold down a job that paid enough for rent. So I needed a place to crash and the estate was my only option. Two, I didn’t like the reason I wanted to say no.
I wanted to say no because I had this feeling. In my gut. Like I was nervous about seeing Ash, which was absolutely ridiculous. There was nothing scary about Ashleigh. I’d known her for years.
I just felt like every time we came together now, there was this…thing. In the room with us. A thing I knew would land my ass in trouble.
Call it instinct, but there were times I looked at Ash and it felt like she was going to be my ruin. Which was stupid. She was just a kid. That’s all she’d ever been. Just a stupid, pushy, up-in-my-business kid.
I looked at the phone and considered not answering her. It was nothing to her what I did, or didn’t do, with my life.
Me:Yeah. I’ll be home next week after my last final. I got an internship in the city.
Ash:That’s awesome! And after only your freshman year! I knew it. I knew you would kill it. You can do anything. I’m soooooo proud of you!
What was this feeling? Why did it always happen around her? I shouldn’t care that I’d made her proud. I shouldn’t give a shit what she thought.
But I did.
Because outside of her and George, no one else did.
