He went silent, but I knew my self-imposed ban of texting Marc was over. I considered telling him about Evan and my father and the totally weird vibe at dinner tonight, but I didn’t know how to express it. Not in text anyway. Instead, I changed out of my dress, one my father insisted I wear that made me look like Alice in Wonderland, and into my pajamas, and went to sleep more content and at peace than I’d been these past four weeks.
My life was finally back to normal.
* * *
Princeton
Marc
Ash:A little bit…
I looked at my phone and grimaced. She was right. It had taken a solid two weeks to understand why I’d been in a bad mood since returning to school. My roommate had mentioned it. The girl I was fucking said she liked the way I anger-fucked her. Which was messed up, but I realized it was true. Coming back to school, I’d wanted to pound someone hard.
The fact that she was blond with curly hair was a bonus, especially when I was drilling into her hard from behind. She didn’t mind how I treated her, but I did. I enjoyed women; I didn’t use them.
Sometimes you did. Sometimes you used them to fuck Ash out of your system.
I threw my phone at my bed to both express anger and ensure I didn’t break the damn thing. I wasn’t stupid enough to blow money like that.
Fuck. She’d gotten under my skin. By week three I’d acknowledged I was missing her…support? Her cheerleader bullshit? Did I need that? Someone to tell me they were proud of me, they were impressed by me, they loved me.
By week four I was pissed at her for making me miss her. Pissed at her for being so freaking honest all the damn time. Pissed at her because when I got hard in the middle of the night, it was to the image of her in that black bikini.
Knowing I couldn’t break and text her first. Not knowing how long she could hold out.
Longer than I could. The minute the douchebag Jeff asked me if it was okay to ask Ash to Homecoming, I had what I needed. An excuse. I must have scared the fuck out of Chris, if I’d been gone for two years and still the threat of me when it came to Ash was alive at Harborview High.
I also wasn’t entirely honest with Ash about what I’d told him, either. I might have texted that I didn’t think it was a good idea. For health reasons. His health. Not that I had any assurances he would listen to me. I was two hours away at school. He and Ash were seniors. She was hot as hell, so why wouldn’t he want to go to the dance with her?
Not that her looks were the best thing about her. No, the best thing about Ash was her unflinching, unending, relentless loyalty.
What the hell was I going to do?
Nothing. For now, things would return to normal and maybe I would stop acting like a lion with a thorn in its paw. I dropped onto my bed and lifted my phone so I could reread our conversation.
She was jealous I was fucking other women. She probably thought she needed to lose her virginity to someone else, if for no other reason than to keep things equal between us.
That made me smile because I knew she wouldn’t do it. I knew she’d wait for me. For a hell of a lot longer than she’d already waited. That didn’t make her less equal. That gave me a necessary advantage.
Because I was starting to understand something else she’d been right about.
I needed her like air.
