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Shut up, Val.
4
THEY HAD GONE through four more condoms, and the 5:00 a.m. wake-up call hadn’t even been necessary.
Ashley was dog tired. She hadn’t been this tired in years. Thirty-two-year-old women did not stay up all night having sex with strange men in airport hotel rooms.
Or at least not every day of the year.
“We can’t do this again,” she told him, her face buried in the pillow.
He chuckled, an exhausted chuckle, but a chuckle nonetheless. “Eighteen was a long time ago. You can sleep on the plane. I can sleep on the plane. I need to sleep on the plane.”
She lifted her head from the pillow. “We shouldn’t do this again.”
Comprehension dawned. “Oh.” He waited for more of an explanation. Ashley gathered her meager, yet dog-tired courage.
“Tonight was fun. Like being somebody whose life I’ve secretly always envied. But if we go out to dinner, or meet in a hotel, I’m afraid I’ll lose this fantasy, get embroiled in the completely weary minutia of my life, and I’d rather end on the high note.”
“That’s a very defeatist attitude.”
“No, sometimes things are just too good to take a chance and possibly ruin,” she told him bluntly.
“Do you ever get to New York?” he asked, a totally unfair question, because fashion, New York? Hello? Did he honestly think she was that bad at what she did?
“Sometimes. A bit. You ever come to Chicago?”
“Not if I can help it,” he answered, a defeatist attitude if she ever heard one.
“This was fun,” she repeated, rising from the ashes of the bed. Outside, the windows started to rattle again. The airport was waking up. She walked to the shower, femme fatale of the friendly skies, and she felt muscles that she didn’t know she had.
He watched her closely, and she gave her hips an extra wiggle.
“I could help you,” he offered gallantly.
“In the shower?”
He lay there naked, on his back, head pillowed on his hands. Long, lean, and ready to go. Dog tired? Who said she was dog tired?
You did.
“Come on, Yankee-man,” she ordered in a husky voice she didn’t even know she possessed.
And she didn’t have to ask twice.
LATER ON, they didn’t talk to each other on the plane. The 6:00 a.m. flight to L.A. was crowded, but thankfully, Junior and the doting parents from hell were absent. Ashley was stuffed next to a plumbing salesman from Portland who wanted to chat. She pulled out her magazines and pretended to be interested in the latest fall forecast, but instead, her sandpaper eyes kept tracking to the front of the plane. Seat 16A to be exact, where she could see the back of his head. A perfect bed-head, neatly combed into place.
It had taken her two hours to dare to stroke his hair, smooth it the way it longed to be smoothed, and she could still feel it, the fine strands tickling her fingers, still smell the shampoo and soap. Still smell the sex.
Don’t get there, Ash. Not with you-know-who sitting next to you.
Ashley stopped gawking at Seat 16A and instead focused on the magazine spreads in front of her, but her eyelids drifted shut.
She woke up three hours later, having slept through the flight. In her lap was a small white piece of paper. A business card.
David McLean.
Brooks Capital.
Analyst.
On the back, in firm, decisive, indelible black ink was scrawled a cell number and one word.
Anytime.
It was enough to make her not-quite-jaded-enough divorcée’s heart sigh.
Carefully she put the card in her wallet, hidden right behind her driver’s license. It was her memento, a souvenir she would never forget. Some moments were best not to be repeated…except while dreaming.
CHICAGO WAS WARM, windy, and loud. Ashley took a cab back to the Larsen house in Naperville, which was equally warm, not so windy and not nearly so loud. Their street was lined with towering elm trees, hand-painted mailboxes and well-used bicycles. It wasn’t New York, certainly not Los Angeles, but it was home.
Already Ashley began to feel revived.
After the divorce, she’d moved in with Val, their mother, Joyce, and Val’s daughter, Brianna. Three generations of Larsen women sharing one roof. A scary thought, all those hormonal fluctuations duking it out with the inherent uncertainty of the family genes. Frank Larsen, the ne’er-do-well who had sired Ashley and Valerie, was now on his fourth marriage, electing to spend his golden years with his twentysomething secretary in Malibu.
Ashley threw her carry-on in the general direction of the couch, and walked into the kitchen. Val was talking on the phone, stirring dinner over the stove and watching the news. Multitasking, thy name is Valerie.
Val punched a button on the phone, and waved a wet spoon as a way of greeting. “How was the trip?”
“Productive. Very productive,” Ashley answered, focusing on the business aspects of the trip rather than the pleasure aspects, because Val might be her sister, but there were secrets that would never be divulged. Doing David McLean in the O’Hare airport hotel was one.
“Can you watch the monster while I go to a meeting?”
“Mom not home from work yet?”
“No. Inventory.”
“I can watch her. You don’t need to ask.” Val was thirty, a single mom with a fondness for things that weren’t good for her and a hard line in her eyes that Ashley didn’t think would ever disappear. Ashley liked to blame it on Marcus, the drummer who’d dropped into Val’s life, left her pregnant and alone, and then moved on to a bigger gig in St. Paul, never to be heard from again.
Sensing her guilt, Val gave her a long, searching look. “Why are you so jumpy?”
“I’m always jumpy. Flying. Slays me every time.” To further illustrate her point, she held up a suitably unsteady hand.
“Ash, you are one weird sis, but you’re the only one I’ve got.”
A small tornado ran into the room before skidding to a halt. “Ashley, Washly, Bo Bashley, Me Mi Mo Mashly. Ashley.” At eight, Brianna Larsen possessed the trademark Larsen nose, which all plastic surgeons yearned to compress, and more energy than Val and Ash combined.
Brianna shook back her hair in a completely eight-year-old diva manner. “I learned a new word from South Park. Douche bag. As in, Kenny is a world-class douche bag.”
Ashley looked at Val, fascinated yet delighted by the sparkle of humanity in her sister’s too-hard, too-black eyes. “And did your mommy tell you what douche bag meant?”
Brianna nodded. “It’s a soap bottle filled with water and it gets you springtime fresh.”
Ashley knocked fists with her sis. “Creative and honest. Excellent, my friend. Her vocabulary is improving by leaps and bounds. Her teacher will love you.”
At that simple yet comforting discourse, Val’s eyes narrowed, and Ashley realized her mistake. Ashley was acting too relaxed, too confident, too pleased for a woman with a deathly fear of flying and a business that wasn’t getting off the ground. Immediately she wiped the satisfied smile off her face.
“You sure you’re okay?” Val asked, because she was the blustering bull. Ashley was the worrier. After living together for four years, everyone had their assigned roles. Ashley knew hers, Val knew hers, their mother knew hers, and even Brianna was very aware.
“I’m fine,” replied Ashley, giving her voice an extra quiver. “Go on. I’ll take over the supper. What’s on the menu tonight?”
All doubts appeased, the world back in order, Val continued to stir, her eyes focused on the stove, rather than her sister. “My specialty.”
“Mac and cheese it is.”
Val glared. “With spinach, darling child, because we all love green food.”
Brianna, being one-hundred-percent Larsen and knowing a con job when she heard it, promptly rolled her eyes. “Douche bag.”
Val ruffled her daughter’s hair. “Brat. Listen to Aunt Ash. I’ll be back in a couple of hours, and Ash, do not forget the green food.”
Brianna fought with every inch of her small being, but in the end, responsible parenting prevailed, and Ashley shamed her niece into eating an extra helping of green food. Val came home from her meeting, Mom came home from work and four Larsen women sat on the couch watching Pride and Prejudice—the Colin Firth version.
Truly, there was no place like home.
Every time there was a crisis, home was always there. Every time she felt alone, home was always there. No, they weren’t the typical American family, but in a lot of ways, the typical American family had nothing on the Larsen women of Chicago.
Ashley had never imagined herself divorced. She thought her marriage to Jacob would be forever. He was comfortable. They were comfortable. Why would anyone want to leave that? But Jacob had, and Ashley had no place to go but home. Home was good.
By the time the grandfather clock struck eleven, Mom was sacked out in the recliner and Brianna was curled up with her head in Ashley’s lap, fast asleep.
Val picked up her daughter in her arms, sagging a little from the weight. “I think you’re overdoing the mac and cheese.”
“She’s only eight once. It’s too early for her to start dieting,” Ashley replied, as would any overindulgent aunt who thought her niece was perfect.
“You’re not her mother, only the auntie.” Val looked down at her daughter and shook her head. “How did I get this kid?”
“The old-fashioned way.”
Val’s laugh was harsh and self-directed. “What if you screw her up with all your spoilage and worrying?”
“I won’t,” assured Ashley automatically, not insulted at all. It was a conversation they’d had many times, and usually late at night, when doubts were prone to wander in on creeping shadows. They weren’t talking about Ashley. Deep down, Val had the same paranoid Larsen heart they all did, certain that when anything good happened in her life, it was going to disappear, just like the mac and cheese. Golden and gooey and warm, and then poof, you look down and the pot is empty, and your stomach curdles with an angry hunger.
“Swear you won’t screw her up?” Val asked.
“Swear.”
Val looked at Ashley, still doubting, but hopefully not quite so much. “Okay, but I only believe you because secretly we know you’re the smart one. And because you’re here.”
“You’re smarter than you think, Val,” said Ash softly.
Accustomed to performing feats of unimaginable flexibility, Val used one knee to power off the television remote. “A ‘searching and fearless moral inventory’ Ash. That means you don’t lie to yourself. You don’t tell yourself you’re smart when you’re on your third job in five months. You don’t tell yourself you’re smart when your bank account is DOA.”
As it always did when the doubts grew larger, Val’s voice also got louder, a little bit brassier. Brianna stirred in her mother’s arms. “Hey, loud people, I’m trying to sleep here.”
Val swore, completely unacceptable to eight-year-old ears. Nobody minded. “Wake Mom, will you?” she asked Ashley.
Ashley fought back a yawn, uncurled from the couch and rubbed her mother on her shoulder. “Mom. You need to get to bed. You have to work in the morning.”
Joyce Larsen blinked her eyes and came awake abruptly. “Did I miss the news?”
“Yes, Mom, you slept through the news.”
“Darn. I wanted to hear the weather. I bet it rains tomorrow. You should have woke me up.”
“I’m waking you up now. Go to bed, Mom.”
“I’m glad you’re back, Ashley. I always worry about you flying. You’re going to crash someday and die.”
“I know, Mom. Get some sleep.”
And people wondered where she got it from.
Thirty minutes later, Val dragged herself into the kitchen, obviously knowing where Ashley would be. When faced with the complications of life, some people turned to the church, others turned to sports. Ashley turned to the kitchen. To be more precise—cheese. “What should I do?” she asked, slicing up a wedge of swiss into small bite-sized nibbles.
“About what?” Val asked. “Your pathetic excuse for a love life?”
At that, Ashley almost told her. The words nearly slipped from her lips, but even with Val, she couldn’t share. How could she talk about something she didn’t even understand, and still didn’t quite believe? “I’m talking about the stores.”
“You’re going to figure out what’s wrong and fix it.”
Fix it. Yeah, just fix it, Ash.
It sounded so easy, so completely staring-her-in-the-face easy. So why couldn’t she figure it out? Forcefully Ashley hacked off another square before handing the cheese to her sister. “Why don’t the women of Chicago realize that not only am I providing non-cookie-cutter clothes at a decent price, but by shopping at Ashley’s Closet, they are contributing to the livelihood of struggling fashion designers everywhere?”
Val shrugged. “You could have a sale. A big sample sale thing.”
“Sales, schmales,” mocked Ashley, sawing furiously again.
“Tell me how you really feel.”
“I need something pizzazzy, jazzy.”
“You’ll find it. You’ve got jazz.”
I need jazz.
Ashley watched as Val popped a cube of swiss into her mouth, glad to see her sister’s confidence level back to normal.
