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Chapter Six: yggeP


Ashley

Nick’s fingers stayed twined with me after we got back into the car. He drove, one hand on the wheel, down the street toward the IHOP where we’d eaten that night. “What made you think of doing this?” I asked him.

He shrugged, glancing at me as the car coasted to a stop at a red light. “It was one of the most important nights of my life,” he answered, “And if it’d gone right… if things hadn’t changed at the end… it would’ve been the most wonderful night of my life, too. And I just… I guess I wanted to… to kinda free the memory from the… the bad stuff that came with it.”

Poetic. God. When Nick wanted to be, he certainly could. He smiled shakily at me with those perfectly straight veneers of his, and I felt a little bit of a love shiver crawl up my spine.

“That’s why you wanted the purple dress,” I realized.

He nodded.

“I’m sorry the dress didn’t work out.”

“You’re sexy in this one,” he replied.

When we’d done this the first time, we’d parked in a garage back by the 7-Eleven and walked to IHOP, which I was willing to bet was our next stop. It’d been in the restaurant, over a basket of pancake puppies, that Nick had first proposed… "We'll get in the car, and we'll drive all night,” he’d said. I could still feel the sweat pooling in my palms as he said it, my eyes watching his lips moving, unable to comprehend that the words he was saying were real, were meant for me…."We'll run down the street and find the first chapel with an ordained Elvis and we'll do it. By morning, you'll be Ashley Carter."

It’d been a fantasy. It’d been real. It’d been everything. And just like that - with a yes that had brought on a shower of powdered sugar over the pancake pup at the hands of a confused waitress - we’d run back to the car in the rain, my dress had fluttered through the night air, the water had burst in puddles like tears falling from the sky. Maybe God crying ‘cos he knew how all of it would end, who knows? It was the coldest, most exhilarating rain in my memory. Nick’s fingers had twined through my fingers then, too, I thought, and I squeezed him, glad to feel his skin as I stared out the window at the pavement we’d run that night, remembering the sound of our feet clapping against it, remembering the way the world had seemed to spin and saturate itself in colours more vibrant than I’d ever seen before… tinted by passion.

I’d wanted to be Ashley Carter then.

And I was thankful as all hell to be Ashley Carter now.

I turned to look at Nick as the car came to a stop in the parking lot in front of the IHOP, the warm windows glowing. “Do you remember --”

“Yes,” he said.

“The running down the street? The way the water splashed?”

“Like it’s in slow motion,” he replied. He turned off the engine and turned to look back out the rear window at the road beyond. “I remember the neon lights. They were like fireworks in the puddles when we ran… in the splashes.” He licked his lips, then looked at me. “When you were with Chris… when I didn’t think I had a chance… I used to drive down this street because it was haunted with us. I thought that being with your ghost was better than not being with you at all.”

My throat burned at the thought of Nick driving down an empty street alone, dreaming of the same night that I’d spent that time dreaming about, too. How many things I would’ve done differently if only I’d known that night.

Nick helped me out of the car again and we walked into the doors of the shady restaurant. It had been shady then, too, sure, but it seemed to have gotten worse since. I tried to ignore the grime on the windows and the eerily empty bubble gum machines by the door. A couple early morning hangovers looked up from the bar stool seating, and a waitress in a coffee-stained apron glared up from the register, where she’d been absently spinning an unlit cigarette between her nicotine-yellow fingers, like she was counting down the moments before her next smoke break by the revolutions.

I looked up at Nick.

He cleared his throat.

A couple of the hangovers looked up. The waitress finished a couple more revolutions before sighing and sliding the cigarette over her ear and pulling a notepad out of the waistband of her pants and a pencil from her apron pouch, which she licked the tip of, and then came over. “Two?” she asked, her voice scratched and robotic.

“Please,” Nick replied.

We followed her to a booth in the corner where the sunlight came in through the shades and blinded us. The leather stuck to the back of my bare legs like double-stick tape, and my pregnant belly only just fit behind the table. Nick shuffled it closer to his side to make room for me as the waitress slapped down two dingy looking menus with doodles on the plastic coatings and entire meals white-outed on the actual pages. “Anything to drink?” she asked.

“Coffee?” Nick ventured slowly.

The waitress looked at me. “Orange juice,” I answered. She just turned and walked away without another word. I looked at Nick. “Jesus,” I whispered.

He laughed, “Was it this bad before?” His voice lilted with the laughter, but also with a note of disappointment.

“I was wondering that, too,” I said in a hushed whisper, “How rose-coloured were the glasses we were wearing that night?”

“Blush,” he whispered back, leaning closer over the table, “Like the champagne we drank at the party before we left.” His eyes sparkled.

I laughed, “Possibly.”

Nick leaned back and looked around. One of the hangovers were glancing our way. I could tell he was looking at the scar on Nick’s face - a feature of him that I barely even noticed anymore, something ugly turned beautiful in my eyes - trying to decide if Nick was really who he thought he was. If either of us were who he thought we were.

“Pancake puppies?” he asked, grinning.

“Of course,” I answered. “What else?”




Nick

So pancake puppies? No longer on the menu. At least not according to Waitress Ratchet and the Whiteout Marks of Death. Ashley looked profoundly disappointed, but Waitress Ratchet, who returned smelling of smoke twenty minutes after seating us, her name tag pinned on upside down, reading POHI OT EMOCLEW, SI EMAN YM, yggeP, ?ECIVRES FO EB I NAC WOH

We got a short stack with two sides of bacon to share... and a bowl of commemorative oatmeal for the table because she'd ordered oatmeal that night.

I looked over at her. "You know how scared I was?"

"As scared as I was?" she guessed.

I shook my head, "I doubt it. There's no way you felt anything even remotely close to the gut wrenching fear I felt that night. I'd waited a year to tell you that I loved you, waited in agony, watching you kiss Chris and love him and..." I shook my head, "Knowing this was my one shot, my one opportunity, and that blowing it meant losing you forever...?"

Ashley stared at me a long moment. "I was gonna wait and give you this later," she said. Then she reached into her dress, right into her bra, and pulled something out. Not her breast or anything - although, aside from the drunk zombie guy at the bar looking over that would've been cool with me - just a paper. She stared down at it for a long moment. "You wanna talk about being in love with someone a long time without being able to say it? To watch them love someone else? To know that blowing it meant losing them forever?" She held out her hand.

In her palm lay a crumpled, old Valentine. I remembered it. I remebered writing the little note, remembered picking it out of the box my mom had bought me for class, and choosing that one - that particular one - just for Ashley. I reached over and lifted it from her palm, an artifact of a hundred thousand years ago, a time when I loved her simply, without the complications of sex and boobs and testosterone and fame.

And I realized maybe I had been in love with Ashley the whole time... maybe, I'd never know, it was too far repressed... but Ashley definitely had. Enough to keep the first Valentine I'd ever given her. Where as I'd been calling this our first Valentine's Day all month.

"I win, Carter," she said thickly.

I nodded.

"You do," I agreed.

Ashley stared at the Valentine as I held it gently. "That night... when we were last here... I remember being so freaked out because every dream I'd had since I was a little girl - since you gave me this card - was about to come true."

I looked up at her. "Thank you for waiting for me. Kinda. Minus the whole Chris thing."

Ashley laughed. "Thank you for coming around."

"Thank aerodynamics and mechanical failures," I joked.

"Beautiful physics," she said, eyes twinkling.

"Gravity's a bitch, but she knows what she's doing."

And then yggeP was back with our order, sliding dishes on the table with foggy, spotty flatware and my mug of coffee had a little bit of a lipstick stain residue on the side and I stared down at the food as she walked away.

I looked up at Ashley, "Well, it wouldn't be the same as last time if we actually stayed to eat the food," I said.

Ashley laughed, "I was really hoping you weren't going to make me eat this."

We leaped up from the booth - well, no, Ashley kind of truffle shuffled out of the seat she was firmly lodged into thanks to Mystery Baby - and I guided her to the door. We didn't pay. Fuck it if it got in the news or whatever. Nick Carter stiffs $12 bill at IHOP. If they'd ever been to this location, they'd understand. I had the heebie jeebies.

"Next time we try to recreate a moment," Ashley shouted as we drove away, me making the brakes squealch for dramatic effect, "Let's visit a different IHOP."

"As you wish," I said, smirking.

"The good news," she said, "is that was the third thing to go wrong today. The rest should be smooth sailing."

I grinned, "Thank God. The best is yet to come."