“My mom used to drink that stuff,” I said with a shiver of disgust.
“I’m sorry to hear your mother was a monster.”
I snickered. I tended to do that more and more with him around. But also, that was the first time I laughed about something connected to my mom. That was new. I thought I’d always feel sad when I thought about her, but Ash made me laugh.
Ash paused before his head tilted down toward his pocket. “Is it hard for you to talk about her sometimes?”
“All the time,” I corrected. “It’s hard all the time.”
“Yeah. Same. And then sometimes it just slips out. I hate the accidental slip-outs.”
Curiosity filled me. “Who did you lose?”
“Oh, uh, I...” His words faltered as his eyes shut. He took a breath and reopened his eyes. “My little brother, Rian. He passed away last year.”
“Oh, gosh.” I wanted to say I was sorry for Ash’s loss, but “I’m sorry” always felt so flat. So meaningless. So much likewater. Bland and uninspired. “That totally sucks,” I spat out. That wasn’t much better, but I was realizing that there weren’t great words when it came to death. Just heavy and hard ones.
“Yeah.” Ash nodded, a tiny smirk finding his face. “It totally sucks.”
“Do you like when people ask you questions about him?”
“Depends on the day and the hour, I guess.”
I picked at my fingernails. “What about this day at this hour?”
The palm of his hand rubbed the back of his neck before he raked his fingers through his messy black hair. “Maybe not this day at this hour.”
Noted.
We both were quiet again. I somehow forgot how to be a friend. Ash made me nervous. I didn’t exactly know why, but it was true. I hadn’t felt nervous around a person in a long time. I’d felt hatred around people, or like the butt of their jokes, but not nervous. I was still trying to understand why my pulse stuttered the way it did when I was around Ash.
Maybe I was afraid of saying the wrong thing and pushing him away. Maybe I was scared of him realizing I was as uncool as all the other kids at school said. Or maybe, just maybe, I was afraid of opening myself up to another person after losing all the people I thought would be my friends forever.
Either way, we were quiet, and in the quietness, I was a wrecking ball of nerves.
“Notebook,” I blurted out of nowhere.
“Notebook?”
“A wordlet. Note and book.”
Ash smiled, and I felt it in my gut. “Moonlight.”
I scrunched my nose in thought. “Sunflower.”
“Somewhere.”
Oh, he was quick with this. I wouldn’t have put it past him to have a catalog of these words in his mind already.
I stood from the hammock, since my body didn’t love being placed in it.
Please don’t start aching now, body. Give me a little more time to just be normal.
I started walking toward the house. “Firefly.”
Ash hopped out of the hammock and followed me back into the house toward the kitchen, where Ellie had put out enough snacks for an army.
Ash grabbed a handful of chips and shoved them into his mouth. “Tomorrow.”
