The Ace

Chapter 11 - Feels Like Home

It's been a few days since Ace and I have exchanged words.

The only contact we have is when we cross paths in the hallways or spotting each other in the kitchen while grabbing snacks. Our communication has been strictly silent because there has been no communication at all. 

When we are eventually in the presence of one another, he tends to pretend to focus on the closest object to him as if it's the most interesting thing in the world, all to avoid my overall presence. I find it funny that for the long few months I've known him, I've learned that he has a temper that puts mine to shame and I feel confident in my assumption that most people tend to try their best to stay on his good side. With that comes the inevitability of having everything handed to him in order to make him happy and, more importantly, to keep him happy. 

Although those things may seem like a given or even perhaps common sense, those are things that are usually assumed about a person upon first impression or first few encounters; I know Ace, I know him a very small amount and I wouldn't be surprised if I had only even scratched the surface, but I know him nonetheless. I've observed him. 

Yet he knows nothing about me. I wouldn't expect him to, he is the kind of the guy that only focuses his concerns on himself, but I'd be lying if I said I wasn't a little unpleasantly surprised by the fact that he thinks I have some hidden agenda and my entire life goal is to get him to open up around me just so I can exploit him in his most vulnerable moments. 

I've been spending a lot more time with Nick which naturally means that Antonio has been around more. We never continued the conversation we were having before Ace interrupted us with his random - and quite annoying - "hell hath no fury" anger, and for that I'm grateful. As stupid as it sounds, I genuinely didn't even want to know deeper than what he had told me already. He has been around more but we have been keeping our distance; we joke around with each other and occasionally the three of us will get into a heated conversation about Game of Thrones or whatever else we feel like talking about that day, and for that I'm grateful. It takes my mind off everything going on and all the missing puzzle pieces in my current situation seem to temporarily fill. 

Nick had given me a tour around the house and by the end, I realized that the entire thing was as big as a museum. Calling it huge was an understatement. There were some rooms he told me were off-limits to almost everybody and each of those rooms were protected by their own security systems. I couldn't help but wonder what was in them, but I wasn't sure I ever really wanted to know. 

There was a private gym, fully equipped and big enough to hold about fifteen people at once. There were men in there when we passed by, each of them with enough muscle to chuck a boulder with ease. "I am not taking you in there right now," Nick had said, "as much as I love them, I'm really not trying to be responsible for anyone dropping 150 pounds on their toes or something." 

"What does dropping weights have to do with us walking in there?" I had asked. 

He had given me an incredulous look before saying, "Alex, my little pumpkin-spiced cupcake, I don't know if you know this, but you are a woman."

I got offended when he said that. "So you're saying that because I'm a woman it's unbelievable for me to lift weights?" 

He shook his head and laughed. "No! That's not what I meant. Don't do that to me," He had wrapped his arm around my shoulder and I looked at him as he looked at his friends in the gym before he continued, "What I mean is that you have the face of a goddess, a really mean one with RBF, but still, a goddess, AND...your tits are massive. You have the ability to make the devil himself lose focus and accidentally put out the flames of hell. He'd probably start gardening because seeing you would make him forget what he's supposed to be doing, and you're telling me the sausage party in there wouldn't drop a few weights? Yeah, right."