From Far Away

“Ashley?”

She looks up from her small desk. Her mentor’s secretary, Gina, is in front of her. “There’s a phone call for you. It sounds awfully important.”

She takes it meekly at Gina’s desk. “Hello?”

“M’ija.”

Her blood goes cold. “You cannot be serious right now.”

Marco sighs. “What if I am? Look, I know you’re angry at me, but-“

“I’m angry at you?” she snaps, a bit too loudly. Gina glances over her shoulder. “Angry is a funny way to put it.”

“You don’t know the whole story, baby. I came home and she started flipping out, she came at me with a knife- I didn’t know what the fuck to do.”

“Oh, so you beat her to a bloody pulp and decided you’d go after your own son, too?”

“I wanted to take him away from her. She didn’t deserve him.”

“And you don’t deserve her.” The pressure in her head is building, threatening to cause an aneurysm. She pinches the bridge of her nose and squeezes her eyes shut. “How dare you call me at my place of work, asking me for whatever-“

“Just for bail, m’ija, I know you have the money-“

“No, I don’t. Don’t you call here again. You’re a pretty dumb fuck to have wasted your only chance.”

“Not my only. Your grandmother won’t talk to me anymore. I’ve pissed off half the family. You’re my only hope.”

“Gee, I wonder why that is. Sad shit when you’re looking at someone you’ve never appreciated to help you now. Too late for that.”

The slam of the phone onto its receivers brings Gina’s attention around once more. “Is everything okay?” she asks Ashley.

“Fine. Why?” she replies, though her heart is pounding and she’s sure sweat is staining the front of her blouse.

“You seem bent out of shape, that’s all.” Gina leans closer, so that Ashley sees her dark blonde roots, smells her candy perfume. “Just so you know… if you need anyone to talk…”

“I’m fine. Thank you, though.”

“Okay. I just figured, you know… we’ve never had issues with you before in the office-“

“This isn’t an issue, G. Just family stuff.” Ash rises and smoothes her hair. “I’ll deal with it. Thank you.”

She spends the rest of the day getting coffee and working on the same corner of a story board for a new commercial, trying to erase from her mind the look of pity Gina was wearing the second she had hung up the phone on her father. Fuck your sympathy, she thinks. Fuck your pity. Fuck anything and everything you think will make this better.

*****************************************
“He what?”

She sighs. “Yeah, that’s what I would have said too.”

Bobby shakes his head. “That’s insane. What did he expect you to do?”

“Drop a few grand of my nonexistent money to get him out of jail, apparently. Not happening.” Ashley crosses and re-crosses her legs, trying not to look at the stark white of the walls or breathe in the omnipresent “hospital smell,” bandages and meds and formaldehyde and blood. It’s even detectable in the waiting rooms. She’s always hated hospitals, and so has he, but he’s here, and so is she, the pair of them waiting to see her mother, who’s still unconscious.

Visiting hours are just five minutes away. Four minutes.

“Ash?”

“I’m fine.”

Three and a half, three.

“You’re making my hand go numb, hon.”

She looks up and realizes he’s wincing. “Sorry.”

He rubs feeling back into his hand, then reaches for hers again, soothing her with a kiss on the knuckles. “It’s okay. She’ll be fine. Just relax.”

Two. Two minutes that will feel like a year.

“Ashley Muniz?” the nurse for Emily’s room asks. She’s short, slim and perky. Ashley wonders how she keeps her demeanor so bright. It's startling- she even forgets to correct her on the surname. Bayer, not Muniz. “Right this way, hon.”

“There’s been slight improvement, but only just,” the doctor is telling them a minute later as he leads them to Emily’s room. “We were able to stabilize the lung he punctured, but post-op she started running a fever. The good news is she’s been responding to treatment… we just don’t know for how long.”

Ashley stares at the woman lying prone on her hospital mattress, the slow beep of monitors the only thing indicating that she is actually alive. Tears are fighting to break the barriers of her eyelids; she bats them back with a few quick blinks, reaching for her mother’s hand instead.

“He’s been put away, Mom,” she whispers. “The cops are thinking of pressing charges on your behalf. They’re only waiting for me to give consent… but you have to wake up for me to do that, Mom. You need to. I can’t do it for you, and he’s going to come out again and who knows what will happen. You need to wake up, Mommy. Please.”

She can hear the monitor start beeping faster, the raised lines on the screen indicating Emily’s response. “She can hear you,” Bobby whispers. “I didn’t know that was possible.”

Ashley nods, smiling through the blur in her vision. They sit there, talking quietly, Ashley not letting go until the doctor tells them visiting hours have ended.

*****************************************
Bobby walks her back to her car. “I’ll see you tonight?” he asks.

“Tonight?”

“Yeah. I have nothing to do. Got my workout in for today. And you shouldn’t be alone.”

“I won’t be alone,” she reminds him. “I’ll have Alex.”

He winces, remembering. She isn’t like me; she has a sibling, someone who understands even better than me. “Right. I forgot.”

“Do you want to come over anyway?” she says quickly. “I mean, we’re just going to do a movie or something. Nothing fancy. He goes to bed pretty early anyway.”

“…Okay. Sure.” He grins, plants a sweet kiss on her lips. “See you then.”

He drives away, hands tight on the steering wheel as he fights off memories he'd thought were buried with Bobby Shane Stevenson.

*****************************************
Alex and Ashley spend the day driving around the city, stopping for ice cream, candy, bags of popcorn to microwave. They even get McDonald’s, though Ashley hates it with a burning passion. Anything, she figures, to stop him thinking about the events of two nights ago. The first 24 hours afterward had been a nightmare for him, the subject of police questioning and psych tests to make sure he wasn’t suffering; he'd cried afterward, begging Ashley to make them leave him alone, make it stop, keep them away with the needles and the questions and them trying to make Daddy a bad person.

Now, however, all of that will be in the past. Ashley will not let her father or anyone else touch Alex again. No matter what Alex's view of him is, she will never let that man even look at him again, if she can help it.

As Alex finishes his Happy Meal, the doorbell sounds. Bobby. Immediately a million worries run through her mind- Is the place clean enough? Will he think I’m being irresponsible with all of the junk? Will he stay longer than he intends to? Hurriedly she throws her wrappers in the trash and hides the candy and popcorn. Then, smoothing her blouse and checking her hair in the mirror for a split second, she opens the door.

There he is, smiling, with a bouquet and a wrapped package. “Hey.”

“Hi,” she says, her spirits lifting immediately. What is it about him? Is it his smile? The beautiful reflective blue of his eyes? The fact that he can just look at her, and immediately she feels comfortable, at ease? “Are those for me?”

“Nah, I was about to drop them off at… of course they are.” He grins wider, stepping into the doorway and pulling her close for a kiss. She melts into him, letting the moment linger before she remembers there’s a six-year-old not too far from them. She breaks the kiss and takes his hand. “Come in.”

“Nice place,” he says, handing her the flowers. They smell wonderful- a mix of sunflowers and lilies.

“Thanks… how did you know these were my favorite flowers?”

“I didn’t. But I guess I do now.” He winks, and looks at Alex, who grins with half a French fry in his mouth. “Hey, bud!”

Alex waves, his eyes wide and mouth full. He lets Bobby ruffle his hair and give him his present- a remote-control car. “Oh, man, this is so cool!” He turns to Ashley, excited. “Can I play with it?”

“I don’t… do we have batteries? I-“

“Bingo.” Bobby has a pack. “I think of everything.” He helps Alex unfasten the car and then put the batteries inside, and immediately Alex starts to zoom the truck around the apartment, his greasy little fingers thumbing the controls as if he were born to.

“Thanks, Bobby!” Alex yells over the din, his dark eyes shining with gratitude.

“Thank you,” Ashley whispers. Bobby looks at her. “I… I don’t know what to say.”

“You just said it.”

“I know, but… I just never… it’s a lot.”

“It’s not that much. Trust me.”

“It’s more than…” More than anything anyone else has ever given me. The words go unspoken, but Bobby doesn’t need to hear them to know that that’s what she means. He turns her to face him.

“Hey. Look at me.” She does. “I’m not like them. Okay? I’m not like your father. I’m not like the other guys who’ve screwed you over, and I don’t want to be like them. I want you to trust me. Okay? I know it’s early, but I feel ...” He sighs. “I don’t know what. It’s so hard to explain… we’ve only met what, two weeks ago? Less? And I feel like I’ve known you forever.”

Ashley is quiet. His words, his gaze, everything is soaking into her bloodstream, making her tremble with its potency. “I know,” she says slowly.

“Okay. So trust me. I’m not trying to buy you into my life. I just… I thought it was a good idea.”

“It was,” she assures him. “It was. He’s so happy with it. My dad gave him things here and there, but nothing like this.”

He looks at her for a moment, then smiles. “You look beautiful.”

“Oh, now you’re trying to be a flatterer.” She slaps him on the arm lightly, letting him kiss her forehead, the side of her face, her jawline down to her neck. Something inside her is tingling, spreading from the center of her body out toward her fingertips. “Bobby… don’t,” she whispers, and he stops at her shoulder.

“I’m sorry,” he murmurs into her ear, holding her close. “I forget when I’m around you.”

“Well, don’t,” she teases. “Let’s watch the movie.”

*****************************************
It turns out Bobby’s not averse to sweet stuff himself, and the three of them spend a great evening eating candy from movie theater-sized boxes, popping popcorn, and watching silly movies. Alex can quote lines from most of them, and Bobby shocks Ash by helping him finish the lines he doesn’t know. She watches them become fast friends, play-acting scenes in-between changing DVDs and trying to make the biggest Twizzler Pull-n-Peel chain. Gosh, she thinks. He’s a natural.

At eleven, Alex’s head begins to droop. “Another movie, bud?” Bobby asks him, trying not to laugh.

“Yeah, another movie,” he murmurs.

“You’re sleepy, Alex,” Ashley tells him.

“Not that sleepy.” He yawns for a full seven seconds.

“Oh?”

“Mmm… No. Hey, Ashley?”

“Hmm?” She ruffles his mop-top.

“Is Bobby your boyfriend?”

Bobby laughs quietly, hoping she can’t see his blush in the near-dark. Biting her lip, Ashley asks him, “Why do you ask?”

“I… just wanted to know.” He rests his head on her shoulder. “I like him. He’s fun. He’s like Uncle Louie.”

“I see… do you want Bobby to be my boyfriend?” She looks at Bobby over Alex’s head and smiles when she feels her brother nod against her. “I see.”

“We’ll think about it, Al. In the meantime… I think it’s time we get you to bed.”

They tuck him into bed in the guest room. Closing the door, Ashley shakes her head, smiling. “I’m sorry about that.”

“What’s there to be sorry about?”

She looks at him, serious, not embarrassed in the slightest. “I don’t know, actually.”

“I thought it was funny,” he tells her. “And pretty accurate.”

“How so?”

He pulls her close again, his fingers tracing the edge of her cheek. “Because I am pretty fun. And I like you. A lot.”

“I like you too,” she says, before his lips close over hers. They’re the sweetest things she’s ever tasted, made even sweeter by the candy they’ve eaten all night. He kisses her again and again, tracing the outside of her lips with his tongue. She opens them tentatively, and suddenly he slips it inside her mouth, stirring her own tongue to action. “Mmm… wait,” she says, pulling back for a moment. It takes her a while to get her breath back to normal. “If we… If we’re going to do this, we should go back out there.”

He listens for Alex’s sleeping breaths. “He’s out, Ashley. He won’t hear us. Just come on.”

She pauses, then realizes he’s right. She can’t worry about her brother sleeping next door any more than she can worry about her mother in a hospital bed right now. They’re there. They’re fine… for now. At least, her mother will be, soon.

The brush of his lips along her neck pushes her mother out of her mind. She pulls him in closer, shutting her eyes as he kisses, licks, nibbles at the sensitive skin there. “Where’s your bedroom?” he whispers in her ear.

“Down the hall,” she says, realizing her breath has left her again. They make their way there slowly, kissing each other as if they’ll never be able to let go. He gets them inside the room, shuts the door. His hands roam over her shoulders, her back, her ass, squeezing tightly. She gasps into his mouth, then responds by skimming her teeth over his plump bottom lip, biting gently. That movement sets off explosions throughout his body, makes something stir deep within him. It makes him want to make love to her until she can’t stand up anymore.

She falls back onto the bed, watches him crawl over her, find her lips again. He starts to brush his hands over her breasts, the flat of her stomach, soft against his palms as he reaches under her shirt. She doesn’t protest, not even as he pulls it over her head, then ditches his own. Her eyes are hungry for him; he doesn’t realize it until he looks at the rest of her that he’s been staring straight into her eyes for a good ten minutes. Now, he breaks his gaze, looking at her underneath him. “God,” he breathes.

“Don’t lie,” she whispers, eyes to the side. “You can tell me.”

“I’m not. You’re amazing.” His lips find her scar, planting angel kisses along its length. “You’re beautiful.” He kisses the tops of her breasts, the space between, every inch of her stomach. He reaches her waistband, fingers trying to tease their way inside. “Do you want me to?” he whispers.

His hair is soft under her hand, his eyes wide as he waits for her to answer. This may be way too fast, but she wants it- she wants him. “Yes,” she whispers, nodding. “Yes.”