I didn’t want Ash to go to Portland. Selfishly, I wanted him to stay in Chicago so he’d be there when I got home from my second double shift on the bounce. So he’d be there when I crawled home through the snow andintobed.
So he’d be there when sleep didn’t come and his warmth beside me reminded me tobreathe.
But I couldn’t ask him to do that. And I wouldn’t. If he wanted to go to Portland, I hadhisback.
Always.
* * *
“You sureyou want to take all thosesocks?”
Liam nodded mutinously. “Seattle is cold, and Ash is taking all his socks toPortland.”
How Liam knew that, I had no idea. Ash wasn’t leaving until the next day, and I found it very hard to believe that he’d even thought about packing his clothes yet. Or maybe I didn’t want to. Getting Liam ready for his trip had taken my attention away from the fact that I would soon be without Ash too, but I couldn’t deny the flutter in my gut every time I thoughtaboutit.
Ash hadn’t traveled alone since an ill-fated trip to New York eighteen months ago, when he’d turned around at JFK and gotten straight on the next plane home. I remembered his distress and frustration then, and I didn’t want that for him again. And more than that, how on earth would he even get home if he was on his own in the van in the middle of fuckingnowhere?
I swallowed a lungful of anxiety. Ash had told me little of the route he was planning on taking, and I hadn’t asked for more. We’d reached the kind of stalemate that our relationship was prone to every once in a while. To break it, something horrible had to happen to bring some much-needed perspective, or one of us needed to see sense. And I couldn’t see that being me. “Come with me,” he’d kept saying. But I couldn’t, and heknewit.
“Pete?”
I looked at Liam and his piles of unnecessary clothes. “Yes,buddy?”
“Can I take some of yoursockstoo?”
* * *
Ash didpack all the socks—at least the ones that Liam had left us, which meant I’d have to go shopping while he was gone.Great.I couldn’t think of anything I’d like to do less, but I didn’t say anything. What would be the point? Somehow in the twenty-four hours before Ash was due to leave, we’d gone from communicating badly to barely communicating at all, and complaining about socks didn’t seem a valid reason tofixthat.
“What are you going to do whileI’mgone?”
I glanced up from stamping into the soft tennis shoes I wore for work. “What do youthink?”
Those were the first words we’d exchanged all morning, and the weariness in Ash’s eyes matched my own. “I think you’re going to work even more shifts than you’re scheduled to, eat pizza and toast, drink too much beer, and not talk toanyone.”
“You say that like it’s a badthing.”
“What? That you don’t look after yourself, or that you make yourself lonely onpurpose?”
“I’m not lonely.”Yet.“And from what I remember, you’re not so hot at taking care of yourselfeither.”
It was a low blow I regretted the moment it was out of my mouth, but Ash didn’t react. Didn’t tell me that my hypocrisy was as fucking galling to him as it felt to me. I’d spent years lecturing him on self-care, sometimesbegginghim to be kind to himself, and the pain I’d felt when my pleas had fallen on deaf ears still haunted me. Was that how he felt now? I couldn’t see it. Back then, Ash had been so sick he could barely raise his head. I wasn’t sick. Just tired… of everything except him and the family we’d patchedtogether.
I didn’t want himtogo.
Ash stepped into my personal space and put his hands on my shoulders. “Comewithme.”
I pushed him away. “Ican’t.”
* * *
“What’s up with you?”Glenn rolled closer on his chair and kicked my feet. “You’ve been in a funk since thismorning.”
That Glenn had noticed said a lot. He’d only known me nursing my dying mother or mourning her death. It was a wonder we’d become friends at all, given I’d conversed mainly in monosyllabic grunts for the last year. “Ash is going away today. We had one of those silent fights before I left, so I didn’t really saygoodbye.”
I rarely talked about my relationship with Ash, but Glenn was different. Nothing fazed him, and besides—he knew something about me that no one else did, so I knew I could count on him to bediscreet.
And brutally honest. “Are you being a dickagain?”
