“No?” he questions. “Something I said?”
“I’m not leaving immediately, but well, you know. I’ll be doing my thing after the summer, and you’re destined for greater and better things.”
“Are you letting me down gently?” His lips break into an infectious smile, “I was hoping you might stick around a while.” His fingertips slide against my palm, gliding over the surface of my skin, linking with my fingers. My pulse beats faster, which is so wrong after what just happened in front of me. Another girl was flavour of the month a short time ago, and he gave her the brush off. Could I be that girl in a couple of weeks or even tomorrow and would it matter if I was? “Hmm,” I give him the side-eye, playing it cool. “Let’s just see.”
“But you’re going to let me walk you home, right?”
“How very gallant of you. How can I say no?”
“We could go via the beach?”
“We could?” I flutter my lashes over-doing the innocent act.
“Come on; you know you want to.” He tugs at my hand. “Please?”
I’m about to float on air behind him until I remember who we’re with, pulling him back to a stop. “Shouldn’t we say goodbye to everyone, won’t they wonder where we’ve disappeared to?”
Ashton laughs, looking over to the remainder of the table. Before I can stop him, his thumb and index finger are in his mouth, wolf-whistling across the room. Heads turn and the chatter lowers around the restaurant for a second at least.
“We’re heading out to the beach,” Ashton announces to the whole place. Luckily there are enough people around for his words to drown in the rising noise, but even so, his goodbye is not good enough. Someone, I’m guessing Bernie, has paid for our dinner and he deserves a proper thank you. I pull Ash in Bernie’s direction.
“What are you doing? What happened to the beach?”
“In a minute,” I tell him, not giving him time to question until we’re back facing Bernie. “Thanks so much for dinner and a great evening, Bernie. It was such an honour to meet you.”
“You’re welcome, young lady,” Bernie replies. “It’s good to meet friends of the band. It helps us to know them better; we learnt a lot about Ash tonight.”
Ash puts one hand on my shoulder from behind me, thenleans over to shake Bernie’s hand with the other. “Thanks for tonight. We’ll catch up soon.”
“Don’t leave it too long, Ash.” Bernie returns his handshake firmly, also giving him a look of friendly warning as if he’s resisting saying more. Ash simply bobs his head before leading me away.
“What was that about?” I ask Ash as we leave the noisy restaurant.
Ash leans against the bus stop shelter, looking up to the night sky. “They want answers we’re not ready to give just yet. It’ll work itself out.” He lifts his chin back towards the restaurant. “Anyway, what did Scott have to say?”
“Oh.” I sigh. “He apologised for the stuff that happened between us. It took me by surprise. I shouldn’t find it so tough to deal with, but it must have hit me harder than I thought.”
“You know, when I saw him last time around, he told me if he ever saw you again, he would apologise for everything. It’s been on his mind for a long time now.”
“Wow, and I thought he’d forgotten all about it. Just shows you.”
“How do you feel about it?”
“Strange. Standing there, talking to Scott; it brought back all those old feeling of sadness. It was like stepping back in time. I believe he is sorry, but I felt like I wanted to make him suffer a little longer. Sounds shitty, doesn’t it? To be honest, it isn’t how I operate, so I don’t know where these feelings came from.”
“What did he do to you exactly?”
I take in a breath, letting it out slowly, “I… I can’t talk about it now.”
“No, it’s fine. I shouldn’t have asked,” Ash’s gentle tonereassures. “I know he regrets whatever it is he did, Cal. He hasn’t had the easiest of times either.”
I push back, looking up into Ash’s eyes. “In what way?”
“It’s not for me to say, but he is one of my oldest friends. I don’t want to ignore him if you’re around, especially if you and I are going to see more of each other. If you want to, that is.”
I’m smiling, I know it. “We could hang out,” I agree. “The summer’s short and it’s been good catching up with you. I’d like to do a little more.”
“And what happens after the summer?” he asks, teasing me.
