“That good, huh?” Ashley smiled then continued her carrot munching.

“That strange.” I handed Ashley a peanut butter cookie. As was my habit, I always brought her a cookie when we had lunch together. She always brought me mango soda.

I’d just unwrapped my egg salad on pumpernickel when Ashley stopped chewing her carrot. She blinked then squinted at a bush some distance away, near the edge of the hospital garden.

“What the. . .?” She tilted her head to the side, looked behind us, then glared at the bush again. “Elizabeth.”

My mouth was watering, and I was starving. I grunted, “What?” Then stuffed a quarter of the sandwich in my mouth.

“There’s some weirdo in the bushes over there taking pictures of us.” She pointed to the edge of the garden.

I wrinkled my nose and squinted in the direction she’d indicated. Sure enough, a weirdo was in the bushes taking pictures of us with the largest lens I’d ever seen. I stared at the lens and the weirdo as I chewed my sandwich.

Ashley set her lunch to the side and stood. “I’m going to ask him to please stop taking pictures.”

“You’re going over there?” I managed to ask through my mouthful of sandwich.

“Jeepers, yeah. I don’t want to have pictures of me eating carrots just floating around out there, for all those carrot fetish people to leer at.”

I watched her saunter over to the man with the camera and took another bite of my sandwich. She was about halfway to the weirdo before it occurred to me that the weirdo might actually be paparazzi and that I, and not Ashley’s propensity for eating carrots, was the real purpose of their photographic endeavors.

I tried to yell at Ashley to turn around, but then abandoned the plan, the un-chewed egg salad and pumpernickel a sound barrier. I was forced to swallow a painful and inadequately masticated lump of sandwich, washed it down quickly with water, then stood and shouted at her to come back.

But, I was too late. She was already talking to the man.

Chapter 11

Ashley was pointing to his camera. She was very calm. He pointed to me. She cocked her head to the side and laughed. He shook his head. She shook her head. He pointed to me again and then lifted his camera to take a picture.

Shrugging her shoulders she sauntered back to our bench, her expression was a mixture of quizzical amusement.

“That guy has his horse switched with a raccoon.” She reclaimed her seat.

“Horse?”

“He’s plain nutters.”

I cleared my throat; it still ached from the large swallow. “What did you talk about?”

“Remember last week? When I told you all about that celebrity in the hospital? Nico Moretti?”

I nodded slowly, and the queasiness that accompanies dread gripped my stomach; I tried to turn further away from the man with the camera.

“Well, that guy over there thinks that you’re Nico’s secret luvah.” Ashley wagged her eyebrows at me and grinned, emphasizing her mispronunciation of the word lover in a way that made me think of sweat, labored breathing, and  p**n o mustaches from the seventies. “I told him he was nuts.”

I wasn’t hungry any more. I wrapped up my uneaten sandwich and put it back in my lunch sack along with my untouched mango pop. “Oh my god.”

Ashley’s grin waned. Her hand holding the carrot hovered in the air, halfway to her mouth; “Hey. Elizabeth? Are you okay, hon?”

I fanned my fingers at my temple, trying to hide my expression from the camera; “Oh Ashley. I have to tell you something.”

I motioned for her to pack up her lunch then stood abruptly. She stared at me for a long moment, hesitated, but eventually complied.

I gripped her hand and pulled her back into the hospital, through the corridors, into the doctors’ lounge. It was lunchtime, but most people opted to eat in the cafeteria or offsite. We basically had the space to ourselves except a few dozing docs on the couches.

We sat at a table in the corner, and I kept my voice low. “Okay, so, here is the deal.” I squeezed my lids shut. “I know Nico Moretti.”

“You what?” Ashley shook me slightly; when I met her gaze her blue eyes nearly popped from their sockets.

“Shhh.” I covered her mouth with my hand. “I’ll tell you, but you have to be quiet about it.”

She nodded, her face serious and eager. I removed my hand. She traced a cross over her heart then brought her fingers to her lips for the universal sign of my lips are sealed.

I left most of the personal, sentimental, touchy feely emotion stuff out; but, even so, halfway through my story about the reunion and Nico and our shared past, Ashley pulled out her cell phone and searched YouTube for the video. She gasped, covered her mouth, and stared at me with wide, shocked eyes.

She loud-whispered, “You had a love child with Nico Moretti?”

“Shhh.” I glanced over my shoulder. No one was paying attention to us. “No. I did not have his love child.”

“But you still know him? You’re involved with him?”

“No. Yes. I mean—” I twisted my fingers. “Yes, I know him. We went to school together. He was best friends with my boyfriend, Garrett. He helped me after Garrett died. We—” I gritted my teeth. “We slept together once. But there was no baby.”

“This is inconceivable.” She shook her head, glanced at her phone. “I can’t believe this.”

“It’s over. He never wants to see me again.”

“He said that?”

“No. Not precisely. But I’m pretty sure it’s true.”

“After you rescued him from those dance floor hoochies? You’d think he’d be grateful you stepped in, even if you did tell the whole world that you and he made a baby.”

“I didn’t tell the whole world, it was never meant to be recorded. I couldn’t think of anything else to distract them.”

Ashley pursed her lips. “Why didn’t you yell fire?”

“Because it’s illegal, and dangerous, to yell fire in a crowded room. Besides, he wasn’t angry about that.” My scalp was suddenly itchy.

“What was he mad about?”

“He told me that he loved me and I—”

“He said he loves you?” Ashley covered her mouth with her hand after shouting the sentence. We both glanced at the couches, but found the inhabitants still slumbering.

“Sorry.” She whispered. “When—how—okay, tell me what happened. When did Nico Moretti tell you he loved you?”

“It doesn’t matter. I told him about me, I told him what I’m like, about how I indiscriminately sleep with men then stop returning their phone calls.”

Ashley placed her hand on my knee. “Hon, you don’t indiscriminately sleep with men. I have known you for going on two years and I’ve never seen you whore it up.”

“I do. I have.”

“So you go up to random men on the street and request sex?”

“No. It’s not like that.”

“What’s it like? How many guys have you slept with?” Ashley crossed her arms under her chest. Her eyebrows were disbelieving umbrellas over skeptical blue eyes.

“Four.”

“Four?”

“Yes. Four.”

“Including Nico Moretti?”

“Yes. Four including Nico.”

She chuckled and shook her head. “Four a whore does not you make.”

I blinked. “What?”

“Sorry, sometimes when I try to rhyme I end up sounding like Yoda.” She cleared her throat. “Sleeping with four guys is hardly loose goose territory.”

“But it’s how I do it, my intentions are selfish. I’m a user. I use them, I have sex with them, then I stop taking their calls.”

“And how long have these relationships—”

“They weren’t relationships.”

Ashley held up her hands, “Fine, how long do these meaningless orgies last? How long have you been with each of your four sexual partners?”

“With Nico it was just the once but with the others. . .” I shrugged, sighed, “I don’t know. A couple months each.”

“And have you been with more than one guy at the same time?”

“You mean like a three way or do you mean two guys, different days?”

“Either.”

“Well, actually it’s neither. I’ve only been with one guy at a time.”

“Oh dear.” She shook her head and clasped my hands in hers. “Elizabeth, I don’t know how to break this to you, but you’ve been having relationships with men.”

“No, no I haven’t. I’ve been using them.”

“Yes. Yes you have. You have been in exclusive relationships with these men.”

“I haven’t.”

“You have. You’ve been dating them.”

“I paid for all my own meals.”

Ashley’s eyes danced as she laughed again. “It doesn’t matter who pays for dinner, dear. A date is a date. You’ve dated four guys, engaged in relations, then ended the relationship when you no longer wanted to pursue it.” She tightened her grip on my hand when I tried to pull away. “It’s called breaking up.”