He stopped tickling me and his voice softened, “I’m sorry if I said something that upset you.” I was still lying flat on my back and he still had both of my hands pinned above my head with one of his. His face hovered over mine and he looked into my eyes for answers. “Did your parents used to hit you?” His voice was soft and his eyes were filled with genuine concern.
“What?” I looked at him as if he had grown a second head. Where in the world did that come from? “Uh, no. They’ve actually never hit me in my life, spanking or otherwise. Why did you ask me that?”
“Well, when I said something about you being punished you froze like you were scared or something… I don’t know, I just thought since your parents are all controlling and shit…”
Now it was my turn to be mortified. I wasn’t quite sure how to explain why I reacted that way, or if I even should. There he was concerned that I had been abused as a child while I was fantasizing about a hidden red room of pain.
“Why are you blushing?” Ash asked, his face turned curious. “What is it?”
“It’s nothing. Can we just drop it?” I pleaded. But of course he wouldn’t let it go. After continuous badgering, I finally admitted, “Look, when you said you would punish me, the image of you spanking me ran through my head and I…” I stopped talking when he released my hands and rolled away from me on the bed.
Ash faced the opposite direction so that I was staring at his bare back as his legs swung down to the floor. “You can’t say things like that Scarlett,” he whispered in a raspy voice. “It’s hard enough as it is to be around you and not touch you.”
“I know. I’m sorry. But the next time I don’t want to tell you something, don’t force me to. I don’t want to lie to you.” I replied. He just continued to sit there facing away from me so I moved to get off the bed. “I just need to get laid soon,” I mumbled to myself under my breath. Ash shot off the bed and around the room to where he was standing directly in front of me.
“What did you just say?” He growled in a low voice. He leaned in towards me so that his face was close to mine. His eyes were an angry dark ocean blue. Why in the world was he so mad?
Pissed off by his angry tone, I repeated what I said in my best bitchy voice. “I said that I need to get laid. Not that it’s any of your business.” Ash closed his eyes and pressed his lips together as if he was keeping himself from saying something we would regret.
“Scarlett,” he began. “You’re right, this isn’t any of my business. But as your friend, I would like to give you some advice. You can take it or leave it, either way we are still friends, okay?” I nodded at him.
“Please don’t just sleep with any guy that you meet. At least make it special, you know, at least have feelings for him…” Ash put his finger under my chin and lifted my face to his. “Can you do that for me, butterfly?” Even though his touch and his words made me feel like putty inside, I knew that I could not fall under his spell again. I wasn’t going to set myself up to feel hurt every Sunday morning.
“I’m not making any promises in the event of any crazy drunken nights, but I’ll try real hard not to while sober,” I said half-joking and in an attempt to lighten the mood. “And can we please change the subject?”
“Actually, its 4:30 in the morning and we need to get some sleep.” He grinned down at me obviously wanting to move past the awkward moment as well. However, instead of sleeping in his bed and risking another lecture by Evie, I told him that I was going to sneak back into Jess’ bed and hope neither of them missed me being gone. He appeared to be a bit disappointed at first, which of course made me silently happy, but we both knew that it was best that we didn’t lie down together.
He pulled me into a big hug and held me close for quite some time. I tried so hard not to think about ripping his clothes off and exploring each and every inch of his body. Being pressed against his hard chest, engulfed in his heavenly man scent, and having his arms wrapped around my waist was nearly my undoing. He kissed the top of my head tenderly and whispered ever so softly, “Good night sweet Psyche, my beautiful butterfly.”
“Good night, Ash.”
Chapter 12
As soon as we got in Evie’s car the following morning, I knew something was off. I could feel her anxiety, but I had no idea what had her so worked up. She had seemed fine inside the house.
“So are you going to tell me what’s wrong or are you just going to huff and puff in misery alone over there?” I asked her. “Is it something with Anthony?”
“Anthony? Uh no… there’s nothing with him one way or another. He was for the contest purposes only, so not my type.” Evie scrunched her nose like something smelled bad.
“You’re so bad, you had that poor boy following you around like a puppy last night.”
Evie shrugged her shoulders, “Which is exactly why he didn’t do it for me… Anyways, that’s not it.
“Look Sam, I’m only going to say this one time because I wouldn’t be a good friend if I didn’t.” She turned and looked at me. I guess my sneaking back in bed wasn’t as stealth as I had thought. “I don’t think that Ash is the right guy for you, at least not right now. I wish you would reconsider getting involved with him because I’m afraid you’re going to get hurt. I know that you are going to do whatever you want to do, whatever feels right for you… and that’s important too. You now get to make these decisions for yourself, but just remember, you’ll have to deal with the consequences too.”
“But earlier you said if it was meant to be…” I whined.
“I know what I said,” she snapped at me. I drew back from her, stunned at the angry tone directed at me. “But damn it Scarlett, this is going to end bad, I just know it! You’ve got to stay away from him, even if that means we stop going over there on Saturdays.”
I couldn’t believe she had yelled at me, she had never raised her voice at me before. It felt awful. “We don’t have to stop going over there,” I said quietly looking down at my hands. “Look… nothing happened. We are just going to try being friends.”
“Friends?!?” she barked. “Last Sunday, y’all were going to have no relationship whatsoever. This Sunday, you are going to be friends. Next Sunday, what? You’ll be friends that make out? How many Sundays until he’s fucking you, Scarlett?” she glared at me, but obviously wasn’t finished with her rant. “That’s all he’s interested in Scarlett, you know that right?”
“That’s not true,” I tried to argue. “It’s different.” Tears welled up in my eyes threatening to spill over in a waterfall.
“It’s different because he wants you to think it’s different. He’s a self-absorbed asshole that sleeps with anything that walks, and you are just more appealing to him because you’re an innocent little virgin that he wants to corrupt. Once he gets what he wants, he won’t have any use for you and he’ll move on to this next challenge.”
“Shut up!” I yelled back at her. “You don’t know what you’re talking about. It is different. Why can’t you just be supportive of me? You of all people should know that’s what I need.”
Evie didn’t respond. We pulled into the parking lot and we both got out of the car silently. Once inside the apartment, we each went in to our own rooms, doors closed behind us. After a shower, I felt better physically but my mind kept replaying the argument between Evie and I like a broken record. We had never been mad at each other before and I just couldn’t take another minute of it. I marched out of my room and across the living area to hers. Without knocking, I barged in to find her hidden in her pillows. She looked up at me, her cheeks stained with tears.
“Look… I’m sorry and I love you,” I began my apology. “There isn’t a person or a thing on this earth that’s worth you being mad at me.”
Suddenly Evie erupted from her pillow volcano like hot lava and lunged towards me. We held each other in a tight embrace. “I love you too” was the only thing she said and I sighed in relief. We didn’t need to talk about it anymore, our mutual forgiveness was understood.
She climbed back in her bed and grabbed her book. “I’m not sure what the deal is but it’s like every other book I’ve read since we’ve been here reminds me of you. First the whole Taking Chances thing, and now I’m reading Ruining Me and I can’t help but notice the similarities between your situation and this chick’s. Have you read it?” I shook my head no, still just thankful that we had moved past our first disagreement. I hated thinking that Evie was upset with me; I could not even fathom what my life would be like without her.
“So this girl in the book, Jay, she’s got these three guys she’s involved with… the good boy that she knows is best for her, the mysterious guy that she feels a weird connection with, and then a bad boy rocker that she uses as an escape,” Evie paused. “We both know which roles Dylan and Ash fill…”