Rooming With Ash

Rooming With Ash: Chapter 11

The next morning – the morning of the eighth day – I was standing by the shoreline of the beach trying to clear my mind of the mess it had been writhing around in all night. Attempting to wrap my head around the past week's events was hard. Almost impossible. I couldn't bring myself to believe that we had just been worried sick for a whole week while Ash was busy lounging wherever the hell he had gone. As the hours since the call passed by and my fury had time to subside, I began to think about the situation more rationally, and as much as I tried to make myself believe it, that just didn't seem like something Ash would ever do. Even on his most selfish of days, I couldn't imagine him willing allowing all of us to suffer for no reason. He may not have cared about or been particularly close to any of us, but he was smart enough to know the effect his disappearance would have on everyone. There must've been a reason for it – and it had better be a fucking good one.

I guess if he ever returned then I would find out what it was.

I stood along the shoreline, watching the waves get smoother and smoother the farther out I looked until they all blended into one big expanse of blue. Today, the morning was colder than they usually were. The sky was cloudy and the air was windy, but it was good. Being out here was helping me clear my head out and with the sound of the wind whipping past my ears, everything else faded into the background.

I closed my eyes and let my body sway as I thought about Ash and when he might return. This past week without him had been a lot longer than I expected it to be, and I didn't know if I was ready for another month and a half of Hawaii without him. And I was so focused on my thoughts, so in tune with the wind, that I didn't hear the footsteps approaching me from the right. I didn't hear them until they were right next to me, and the voice spoke.

"Hey."

And I fell apart.

My heart skipped a beat in my chest and began to race as my mouth became dry. I kept my eyes closed, not wanting to show him just how much his presence affected me, but still, I couldn't stop my brows from trembling as they drew together.

I knew this wasn't my imagination, because in my daydreams Ash was always too perfect. But now, I could hear the scratchiness in his hoarse voice. No matter how much I wanted to I couldn't have created that myself. And along with his voice's scratchiness was something else – a certain confidence, a asuredness. One that hadn't been there the day he'd left. He sounded stable, peaceful, and hearing that put a smile on my lips.

His leaving had accomplished at least one good thing that shone bright through all the bad.

I opened my eyes, keeping them on the ocean in front of me as I spoke. "You're back," I said.

He chuckled and then sighed, his gaze still hot on me despite me not looking at him. "I'm back," he replied. "And I won't be leaving again."

"Why should I believe that?" I asked.

I saw him shrug from the corner of my eye and I took in a sharp breath. "I don't really expect you to," he said. "But still, that doesn't make it any less true."

"Fuck you, Ash," I snapped, turning to face him and immediately stopping short once I laid eyes on his body.

It was like I was looking at a Jackson Pollock painting, except rather than paint scattered around over a cotton canvas, the paint spots were bruises, and the canvas was Ash's body.

Before, he had only had scars on his eye, lip, and knuckles, but now, he was way past that. Both of his hands (that were holding tightly onto some plastic bags) were battered and bloodied. It made my insides crawl to watch the plastic tug at his raw and fleshy fingers. He was wearing a jacket that was zipped almost all the way up and so I couldn't see much of his body, but I didn't need to see his body to guess the kind of marks that adorned it. The zipper of his jacket caught right below his collarbone, and where it opened up, there was a large gash running down into the part of his chest that I couldn't see. It had already begun to scab over, but I knew that it must have still been painful. It was too fresh.