“You two are very close.”
“Yeah. We can tell each other anything, and we do. Shit you not, he’d be the one I’d go to if I needed to hide a body. Do you have anyone like that?”
“William. He’d be the closest comparison.” I nodded toward Asher. “But even he doesn’t know about this side of me.”
“Is it okay to ask you why? I mean, why you never told anyone, even your best friend?” When I hesitated, he added, “For Jamie, I get it. He’s still livin’ at home, and his daddy’s a psycho bigot. But you’re an adult. I mean, you’re on your own, successful. What hold does it have over you?”
I spun my glass a few times and thought how to answer, but the truth was … “I’m not completely sure. I wish I could say something as clear as Jamie’s reasoning, but I don’t have that. It’s a lot of little things. Pressures. Image. Reputations. And there’s more than that.” I took a deep breath. “I’ve been as tall as my father since my senior year of high school, but it never fails. When I don’t agree with him, he towers over me. Same with my mother. There’s something about the thought of her disapproval that makes me cringe.”
Asher laced his fingers with mine under the table. “That took guts to admit.”
“Yeah? Then why does it make me feel like such a coward?”
“Self-awareness isn’t cowardly. It’s quite the opposite, really.”
Asher pinched his lips, then took a deep breath. The shimmer of lotion on his collarbone tried to distract me, but then his words did a better job of it.
“Have I told you about my cousin Shelley?”
I chuckled, half in love with him for making me smile in spite of the shit I just said. “No, I don’t think so.”
“Okay, well, Shelley’s momma never married her daddy. Some teen pregnancy between a dumbass and an asshole.”
“Which was which?”
“Aunt Carol was the dumbass for messin’ around with Shelley’s daddy, and not just him either. Aunt Carol eventually married, but Shelley’s stepdad was a right bastard. Hateful. Meaner than a bag of snakes. He’d whoop Shelley’s ass for nothin’ at all. And when she got a little older, he started beatin’ the tar out of her.”
“Fucking Christ. Where are the damn police in your town? Child protection services?”
Asher waved that away. “You know, things have a way of workin’ themselves out on their own. I’m not sayin’ Shelley couldn’t have used some help, but let me finish the story.”
I nodded, wary.
“Okay. Where was … Right. So Shelley was gettin’ her ass kicked on the regular by the time she started middle school. The teachers asked questions to start with, but by that point, Shelley had a bad rep.”
“What do you mean?”
“Shelley was a fighter. She kicked ass and took numbers. Every boy in school was afraid of her. Bullied kids stayed near her like she was a hero. And still, she went home every night and let her stepdad lay into her.”
“I hope this has a happy ending.”
“Eh, yeah, eventually, but it gets worse first.”
I waved him to continue.
“This was Shelley’s life until she dropped out of school in tenth grade. She got a job at a grocery store to help my dumbass aunt and her worthless stepdad. She almost lost her job once, too,because the bruises on her face scared the customers. But shoot, it’s a small town, they all knew.
“Anyway, Shelley wasn’t one to take no shit off nobody. She was the one the managers sent to handle unhappy customers. They called her over to negotiate with suppliers. Eventually, Shelley moved up the ladder at the grocery store without a diploma but still got her ass kicked at home.”
“How old was she by this point?”
“Hmm, maybe twenty or so? Momma thought maybe Shelley reckoned she deserved it. I wasn’t so sure.”
“Did she move out? Get away from her family?”
“Nope. Well, not exactly. You see, the grocery store had a problem with stray cats. They were attracted to the trash and hid out back a lot. One day, Shelley found a tiny thing and couldn’t help but take it under her wing. She was like that. Always looking after the little ones and never herself.
“So she got the cat home, washed it up, and started taking care of it. The kitten got bigger and turned into this really pretty, solid black cat. Shelley loved him. Named him Tiger, of all things, used to buy him these silly hats he never wore more than a second.”
