Ash:You should be sorrier for my bathroom.
Karla:Nothing a little potpourri can’t handle.
Ash:Karla, men don’t have potpourri. I don’t even know where women buy that stuff. But thanks for having me over. Sorry we never made it to dessert.
Karla:All the more reason for you to come back. I won’t poison you next time, I swear.
Ash:How about next Saturday? It’s my next day off.
Karla:We can make that work. Does eight work?
Ash:Perfect time for dessert. I’ll bring a new one.
Karla:Good, because I already ate half of the lemon bars. I hope you don’t have many regrets for coming over, even though I almost ripped you apart from the inside out.
Ash:No regrets.
The ellipsis popped up a few times and then disappeared. It popped up again, then disappeared once more, showing thatKarla was going back and forth on what to write. She then typed once more.
Karla:Good night, Ash.
Ash:Good night.
A few minutes passed before another text message popped up on my phone from her.
Karla:Ash?
Ash:Yeah?
Karla:I missed you.
A restless stir kept hitting me. I wasn’t certain if it was from the chicken wings or from Karla’s words. Maybe a little bit of both. I texted her back with the only thing I knew I could say in response to her words—the truth.
Ash:I missed you, too.
More than she’d ever know. It wasn’t just that she wasn’t there with me over the past nine years. It was the way her absence settled into the quiet parts of me. It felt like a weight I couldn’t lift from my chest. I’d sit with myself sometimes and try to identify the strange ache that wasn’t sharp enough to hurt but was deep enough to stay.
Maybe that was my heart yearning for the missing piece, yearning for her. I never talked about how I’d missed her to anyone. I hardly faced that truth on my own. But missing Karla was the one thing that was consistent over the past nine years.
I would’ve missed her forever if she hadn’t come back to me.
41Karla
That following Monday, I showed up to Dad and Ellie’s for our weekly spaghetti dinner. The whole family was over, including Grandma Claire, Uncle Landon and Shay, and their two kids. Everyone’s eyes were on me as Grandma Claire updated them on how Ash was, indeed, the boy who saved her life.
“Ashish Banks?” Ellie asked, with widened eyes and the biggest smile.Oh, Ellie... you and your sensitive heart.“That was him?”
“The boy you were inlovewith as a kid?” Lorelai asked with narrowed eyes.
I huffed. “I wasn’t in love with him,” I argued, knowing it was a lie. The dust-covered butterflies that hadn’t fluttered in years began to swirl inside of me from the simple thought of Ash.
I didn’t know those butterflies still existed.
Lorelai paused as if collecting clues. Then she slammed her hands against the table. “Wait! Ash was the super-hot paramedic with the perfectly trimmed beard who also smelled like oak wood?” Everyone turned toward my sister, stunned by her very descriptive memory of Ash. She narrowed her eyes and shrugged. “What? I’m a teenager and he was hot. I noticed.”
I laughed. “Well, yes. That’s him.”
“Ash Banks...” Dad sat back in his chair. “He was a nice boy.”
