Young Writers Society

Part Four-“I can’t take another conversation about the weather with you!”

Ashlynn stalked through the hall on her way to her locker. Class had already begun but her alarm clock decided that it was going to take the day off.

“Are you mad?” Someone said as she grabbed her English book from the top shelf of her locker.

“What?” Where had he come from? Ashlynn turned to Rex, she could never understand guys. “Do I seem mad?”

“Sort of.”

“I’m not,” she said tightly. Why wasn’t he going away? She’d given him his out. What more did he want from her?

“Oh. Okay. It’s just…you never said one word to me last night and your father—who seems really nice—said you would.” Rex shoved his fists into his pants’ pockets.

“You talked to my father about me?”

“Well, I just thought—” They’d started walking down the hall by then; and she could see people watching them from their classrooms. Hookup aftermath viewing was truly her high school’s most popular sport.

She saw Rex look around, watched him realized their conversation had gone public. Very public.

“I just thought that—Ash, could you stop looking at me like you are proving some twisted theory about me in your head.”

“That’s not…”

Ashlynn couldn’t fully respond as they walked into English class together. And then, after third period, she saw him again. That time he looked like he’d combed his hair with a fork and had the wild eyed look of someone who hadn’t slept for three days. Topic of conversation? THE WEATHER. It was unbearable.

**

“Big news, really big news!” Stella had hunted Ashlynn down in the hallway on the way to the cafeteria.

“What?”

Stella’s blond hair had gone from a straight and sleek to a lovely bun on the top of her head. The heat must had gotten to her.

“They made it official. R and R has finally split.”

Ashlynn shrugged. News like that shouldn’t mean anything to Ashlynn. She shouldn’t be secretly wondering Rex’s motives for the sudden break up. Had their kiss been the cause? Could he really want to be with Ashlynn? She shook it off. It didn’t fit. There was no way he would want her, that’s just not the way things are supposed to go.

When Ashlynn saw Rex in the cafeteria, he looked like he was going to throw up and was clearly waiting for her because he said, “Ash,” when she emerged through the door and started walking toward her.

It was a terrible feeling, knowing that she was the cause for the look on his face. Next, he’d see her and go into convulsions. Ashlynn couldn’t wait to get out of school and away from Rex, and turned around, walking away.

“Hey,” he said, following her, “I need to talk to you.”

She ignored him. Or at least pretended to.

“Seriously, Ash.”

She started to walk faster, but he’d caught up with her and fell into step with her.

“Look, I’ve been trying to say something all day, and if you’d let me—”

“Fine.” She stopped in the middle of the hall, not caring if people saw. She’d had it. Screw trying to pretend her life wasn’t a big ball of suck. Screw trying to act like she could somehow stop it from getting worse. “Say whatever it is you want to say already, because I can’t take another fucking conversation about the weather with you.”

His face became really red. “I wanted to see if you wanted to go out something. With me, I mean. And without—” He gestured around them, face still red but a smile springing to his face, dimples showing. “An audience.”

Yes, her brain screamed. YES! But only part of her brain. The rest of it—the thinking part of it—remembered how people looked at them as they walked down the hall, and how the conversation with Stella had made her feel.

This was a big gesture. A big moment, and she could guess why he’d done it. And when, out of the corner of her eye, she saw Robin, she knew it had worked because she wasn’t shooting her glances of solidarity. She was watching Will like he’d done something incredible.

He’d fixed things for himself. All Ashlynn had to do was play along, and she’d get the date she’d dreamed of.

“No,” she said.

“No?” He looked startled, which confirmed what she already knew, that him asking her out wasn’t all about her at all, but it still hurt. It hurt a lot.

“That’s right,” she said. “I don’t want to go out with you. I don’t want anything to do with you. You hook up with me, then humiliate me. I’ve had more than enough of you.”

And so she did get to have a say, she got to end something before it could end on her.

It wasn’t what she wanted. But then, what was in her life that she did want?

**

When she got home, Ashlynn hadn’t gotten the escape she had wished for. Besides the ever annoying landscaping truck, there was another car in her driveway. She didn’t recognize the car and that was never a good sign.

She ran into the house, not even looking for Rex as she sprinted across the lawn. Beside the umbrella holder by the door, was the bag. It was a laptop case that she had bought her mother for her birthday three years before. Ashlynn’s heart raced as she walked into the kitchen.

Her father was sitting at the table with a cup of coffee clenched in his hand. Her mother was flittering around the kitchen, cleaning dishes and putting them away. Ashlynn mouthed to her father, “what’s going on.”

Her father only shrugged, not helping at all. Her mother was a very petite woman. Her hair looked stiff and dead like it always had. She was wearing a dark brown dress and her heels clicked the linoleum as she moved about.

“Mom?” Ashlynn said, catching her attention. “What’s going on?”

Her mother twirled around to look at her daughter. The skirt of her dress lifted as she moved. “Ashlynn, my darling. How are you?”

Her mother moved around the island to hug Ashlynn in a bone crushing embrace. Her mother let go of Ashlynn to look her up and down. “My, how you’ve grown.”

“What are you doing here?” Ashlynn asked in a hard tone.

The thing about Ashlynn’s mom was that she had never really been around, not since the divorce at least. Having her mother in the same room as her father was something abnormal. Before they had split, Ashlynn knew something was up. Her mother and father had a hard time putting up with each other. She could jump to conclusions. Had her grandmother become ill? Did her pet goldfish die that her mother had taken with her?

They split up and things around Ashlynn’s home definitely got better.

“A mother can’t visit her own daughter?” Her mother said, trying to hide a hurt expression.

“Seriously?” Ashlynn said. “This is retarded.” Ashlynn shook her head and started for the stairs. “I’ve got homework.”

“Ash?” her mother said, but that didn’t stop Ashlynn. She couldn’t handle her mother and Rex and everything else.

After a few hours there was a small knock on Ashlynn’s door. She had busied herself by organizing her book shelf and folding some laundry.

It was her mother. Ashlynn left the door open and went to sit on her bed.

“Well, let’s have it,” Ashlynn said, beckoning for her mother to sit beside her. Ashlynn

“I would have thought you’d be excited to see me, Ash. It’s been so long. I am your mother after all.”

Ashlynn shrugged. “It’s just been a long day.”

Her mother smiled and sat beside Ashlynn on her bed. “Your father and I got the chance to have a good talk today. My boss transferred me to an office down town.”

“What does that have to do with us?”

“Well,” she started, “I need a place to stay. I just need a roof over my head for a few weeks until I can find a place of my own. Your father said I could. Things are looking up, Ash.”

Ashlynn stood from the bed and paced her room. “Things are looking up?” She repeated. “Mom, you have no idea.” Ashlynn stopped to look out the window to see Rex working hard in the garden.

**

Ashlynn couldn’t wait until Friday to talk to Stella. By then, Stella already knew Rex had asked her out and how she turned him down immediately. Stella congratulated her sarcastically.

“How could you do such a stupid thing? Dating Rex would give you power over Robin. She might actually stop bugging the hell out of you. You could have been free but noooo you had to protect your God damned pride. Sometimes, I just don’t know about you.”

“Stella, shut up. I have more important things to tell you.”

“More important than the most popular guy in school asking you out?”

“Yes.”

Stella sighed. “Well, what is it?”

“My mom’s back.”

The phone was silent for a moment. Then an ear piercing scream emerged from the ear piece. “How could you not tell me? This is huge! This is major!”

“Well, I just found out like two minutes ago. And she’s only back for a few weeks before she finds her own place.”

Stella scoffed. “We both know that is never going to happen. You and your father are just going to get stuck with her.”

“She isn’t a freaking ugly sweater I got from Grandma for Christmas, Stella. She’s still my mother.”

“Yeah I know. I also know how hurt you were when she had to leave. I’m sorry, Ash. I probably sound like a real bitch today.”

“A little.”

Both the girls laughed and chatted away about mindless things. Ashlynn got the chance to forget that she had just refused Rex. She forgot her mother was back. She forgot about the fury behind Robin’s eyes. She just, forgot.

Too bad those things never last.

As the sun began to set, she looked out her window again. There was Rex, still working extremely hard. Part of her wanted to throw open her window and throw eggs at him, another part of her wanted to go down stairs and talk to him.

One part of her mind was slightly louder than the other that night.

She quietly went down the stairs and out the door. Rex didn’t notice her as she walked up beside him. He was kneeling on the ground and she laid belly up next to him. She propped up on her elbows to look at him.

“Excuse me,” she said to him. “Mind if I sit here?” She silently laughed at herself.

“Not at all.” They were silent for a moment before he said, “What are you doing, Ash? Telling me off at school wasn’t enough? You want to do it again in private?”

“I probably should,” she said, and he sighed, looking hurt.

“Don’t do that,” she said, because she’d expected him to look angry, not upset. “Don’t act like any of this bothers you. You’re the one who came after me in the hallway, then acted so strange at school that you had to ‘ask me out’ so people wouldn’t think you’re a total jackass.”

“Wait, did you just air quote me?”

“I guess I should have spoken slower,” she muttered. “Figures that gestures would distract you.”

“No, hold on,” he said. “What exactly does ‘ask me out’ mean?”

“You know what it means,” she said. “And I want to know why you couldn’t just leave me alone.”

“Look, I’m sorry that my humiliation was hard on you, but message received! You don’t want to go out. I get it.”

“Your humiliation? You’re the one who pretended to ask me out!”

“Who said I was pretending?”

“Oh, please. It was obvious.”

“I’m sorry I didn’t ask you out in a more Ash-approved manner, but I did mean it.”

“Sure you did.”

“I mean it, Ash,” he said and looked at her like he did right before he kissed her, a look she’d thought meant something. A look she’d thought meant that maybe he really did like her.

“Fine,” she said, furious all over again. Why did he have to do this to her? Why did he have to make her think he cared? “How’s this? ‘I, like, totally want to go out with you!’ Is that a proper response, or should I start screaming like I’ve won the lottery too?”

“Don’t bother,” he said through clenched teeth, the look he’d been wearing before replaced by one of extreme frustration. “I don’t want to go out with you when it’s obvious you don’t want to go out with me.”

“I knew it,” she said and to her horror, felt a sharp stinging in her throat and behind her eyes. “I just…never mind. This was stupid.”

Something flashed across his face when he realized why Ashlynn had sat with him. He looked hurt and almost as if he was in physical pain.

They sat in silence for a while. Rex had busied himself with his work and Ashlynn kept her eyes closed and her face inclined to the dimming sky. Rex isn’t for her, this was a mistake. Rex dates girls like Robin. Happy girls. Skinny girls. Sexy girls. It was a mistake.

“Want to know what I don’t get?”

Rex let out a small sigh but his voice was cheerful as he said, “What don’t you get?”

“Why is it that you even started talking to me in the first place? I mean, before we got detention, before you started planting flowers in my front yard, we’ve never spoken? And to top it all off,” she continued, “you ask me out in front of over half the student body. Me! The complete opposite of who Robin is.”

Rex started laughing. That’s right, laughing. Ashlynn’s eyes snapped open to look at him. He was clutching at his stomach.

“Is that seriously what is bothering you?” He asked once he had sobered.

She nodded.

“Ashlynn,” he said, kneeling next to her. “I had been dating Robin for so long, I had forgotten that there was a choice in dating her. There was a time, maybe when we first met, that I did in fact like being with her. But, she is just so…what’s the word I’m looking for?”

“Brainless?”

He chuckled. “Sure, that works as best as anything else. Well, it got to a point where being around her was literally nauseating. We’d do the same things each weekend and it just wasn’t working out. I should have figured that out a long time ago, but I didn’t. I didn’t really want to.”

“And what does any of this have to do with me.”

Rex smirked and looked down at Ashlynn’s hand. He reached for it and lightly ran his finger down her exposed palm. As much as she’d hate to admit it, it felt nice.

“You helped me realize all of this. It came to me on Monday I believe. The day you came home and I was talking to your father. The look on your face was priceless. It all came firing at me like a cannon ball. It was a bit overwhelming.” He paused, deep in thought. “Ever since then, I wanted nothing but to spend time with you. To see you, talk to you. I didn’t really know how at first. But it got easier when you started getting mad at me.”

It was Ashlynn’s turn to smirk. “Please, you couldn’t have possibly liked fighting with me.”

“Of course I did. It was the only way I could get you to notice me.”

She stood quickly and he rose to his feet as well. She stared at him with the slight suspicion that he must have some perverted motives. Maybe he was going to embarrass her the next day in school in front of all of his friends. Pointing and laughing at her because pathetically, she believed him.

He put a hand under her chin and lifted her face to hiss. Then he kissed her.

Instinctively, she stretched on her toes to get closer to him. Ash wanted to close any gap that was between them. She could feel the same intense emotions coming from Rex

He lifted her in his arms and she wrapped her legs around his waist. Her hands were in his hair, pulling him closer.

It was the most perfect kiss she’d ever had until she realized, Rex. This is Rex.

She pulled away.

“Definitely opposite.” He whispered, his arms still around her.

She unlinked her ankles that were crossed behind him and let her legs fall to the ground. She rested her forehead on his chest. Neither of them said anything, and she listened to the sounds of their breathing.

She lifted her head to look at him. “I’m guessing that’s a good thing.”

She smiled and kissed her nose. “It’s a very good thing.”