Page 29 of Don't Love Me
Me:It’s not a big deal. I’ll be on the job every day, so don’t think we’re going to hang by the pool and swap stories about your boyfriend problems.
Ash:I don’t have a boyfriend problem. I have a blow-job problem. You’re going to fix that.
I was. I was going to call Chris and tell him if he even looked in Ashleigh’s direction again, I was coming to hurt him. I still had enough clout in that town for him to know it was true.
I wasn’t the kid who grew up with a silver spoon in my mouth. I was the kid with the heroin-addicted mom who grew up in a shitty apartment until CPS took me away. It meant I knew how to fight dirty.
Me:Stop talking about blow jobs. You shouldn’t know about shit like that.
Except I’d been the one to teach her about shit like that. Letting her know that horrible night of the dance what I let other girls do to me.
More dots.
Ash:I’m not a kid anymore, Marc. I know that’s what you want to believe, but it’s not true.
It was what Ineededto believe. Because I couldn’t have it any other way. It messed with my head too much.
I didn’t answer her. Instead, I ran through my contact list and found Chris’s number. After a short conversation where I’d made myself crystal clear, Ash’s blow-job problem was fixed.
It was time to come to grips with the fact that I was going back to the Landen estate.
Back to Ashleigh.
* * *
August before senior year
Ashleigh
I looked out the window situated at the end of the guest wing and saw Marc out by the pool messing with the filter. He’d been right about his internship. I’d barely seen him all summer and, any time he wasn’t working, Daddy had him doing any errand he could imagine.
“He’s a man now. He’s got to earn his board. This isn’t a charity home I’m running.”
I’d tried not to roll my eyes when he’d said that over dinner days after Marc had come home from college. However, it was one of the few times I’d seen my father in months, and I wasn’t prepared to get into any fights with him.
Not to mention, Daddy had been different lately. It was hard to identify the change. Part of me thought maybe he was just getting older, and, because of that, he was getting even more protective of me. As if seeing me grow into a woman was jarring to him, and he wanted to do everything he could to keep me younger longer.
Except I might have believed that he didn’t want his little girl to grow up more, if he’d spent time with me while I was actually growing up.
He insisted I wear dresses that made me look thirteen at dinner. He was a hard no on letting any boys come to the house to pick me up for a date. Not thatthatwas a problem.
And all extracurricular activities had to be run by him. For example, I was allowed to be on the school paper, but not allowed to be on the cheer squad. I was allowed to join the community outreach club—we tutored students in disadvantaged areas of towns outside of Harborview for free—but I was not allowed to join the drama club.
My classes, my extras, my SATs were all selected to present me well to Princeton. Which was great, because I’d be there next year with Marc.
But my father wasn’t real big on activities that might actually be fun.
I’d loved cheering on Marc at his soccer games. Add a few leg kicks and pompoms and I could have been a cheerleader. I wasn’t sure how I felt about acting, but the people who worked behind the scenes on the plays always joked about how much fun it was just to goof around with everyone during rehearsal.
But those clubs meant socializing with the locals, something my father had always frowned upon.
Because of my health.
Or so I’d always thought. My asthma had been manageable since my last bad incident, and at some point my father was going to have to accept I was leaving next year to attend Princeton. Once there, I would be able to do, and be, with anyone I wanted.
One year away from college, yet he barely let me bring up the subject. When I did, he got agitated.
So when he’d gone on his rant against Marc, I’d said nothing. The farther down on my father’s radar, the better. For Marc, too, for that matter. It was like my father simply rejected him on principle.
