It was eight-thirty when they heard the car. Everyone stood expectantly, fearful of what they would see walking in the door. And then Ashley came into the kitchen through the back door.
She was messy; there was evidence of crying in her puffy eyes and pink cheeks. Her beautiful red hair was flat and slack and her clothes wrinkled, but otherwise she looked normal. Except for the expression on her face, which was one of pure agony.
“I had to do it, I had to go to State,” she said. “I sent him two hundred texts and voice mails that he ignored, so I went to face him. I’m sorry I lied and took your Jeep. I promise, I’ll never do it again.”
Carrie took a step toward her. “I made you some soup, honey.”
“Thanks, Gram, but I don’t want any....”
“I’ll be going. Now that you’re home safe,” Mac said.
“You don’t have to go, Mac,” Ashley said. “I’m going to bed.”
“We need to talk, Ashley,” Gina said.
“There’s nothing to say,” she said, walking through the house toward her room, her head down, dragging her backpack behind her.
“Ashley,” Gina said, following her. “Ash, I really want to talk to you. Please.”
She turned sharply to face Gina. “He doesn’t want me anymore,” she said coldly, tears gathering in her eyes. “I gave him everything he wanted and now he’s done with me. The guy I saw today? I don’t even know that guy. That was not my Downy.” Then she went into her room and closed the door.
Gina turned back to face Mac and her mother. “Oh, God,” she said. And then the only thing she could think of. “Thank God there were no cell phones when my heart was being ripped out.”
* * *
Ashley laid down on her bed in her clothes. In fact, she laid there for a while before sitting up and throwing off her jacket.
She was probably about six years old when she first noticed Crawford Downy Junior. Everyone had always called him Downy; only his mother called him Crawford. Ashley went to school with his younger brother Frank. There was a third brother two years younger than Frank—Lee.
That was back when Ashley’s mother or grandmother wrestled her naturally curly red hair into braids in the morning. Downy called her twerp or carrot top or pesky pants. She alternately crushed on him or thought he was a giant turd. She liked him when he said things like, “Good catch, CT,” instead of carrot top. She hated him when he said, “Stand back, she’s going to let down her hair!” and put out his arms as if her curly mane would be bigger than the Goodyear Blimp. Right up to junior high she had those ridiculous red ringlets and thick glasses. Frank had thick glasses, too, so Downy never teased her about the glasses. Then when she’d barely figured out how to control her wild hair, she had braces. “When you getting the tin out of your mouth, CT?” he’d ask her.
Ashley and Eve McCain met in seventh grade and spent the next two years studying teen magazines for trending clothes, makeup and hairstyles. Eve was always naturally beautiful with thick dark hair, bright blue eyes, but she also had braces. It was one of the first things that had bonded them. That and the fact that they had single parents and neither had much money to spend on clothes—so they improvised and shared.
Sometime in ninth grade, Ashley made peace with her hair. She discovered the magic of detangler, the circular brush, a blow dryer. Her thick crazy hair became soft waves. Some of the orange of her youth was replaced by a darker, copper-red. The braces came off, she got contacts and she made the junior varsity cheerleading squad. And one day in the spring of her sophomore year, when she was wearing her short, pleated cheerleader skirt, Downy said, “Hey, Ashley.” He actually used her name!
And she said, “Hey, Downy.”
He was a senior then and the toast of Thunder Point athletics. He played football, hockey and baseball. Frank was more academic and Lee was still too young to be taken seriously.
And Downy said to her, “We should go out sometime.”
“Out?” she asked.
He laughed and said, “You know. On a date.”
“Oh.”
“Oh?” he repeated. “Is that a yes or a no?”
She nearly died. But before she died she said yes. But she was fifteen and Gina would only let her go if they double-dated. He took her to a movie in Bandon along with two other couples. But the other couples went in one car and she was alone with Downy so all the way there they talked and laughed. After the movie they went to a pizza place. She was the only sophomore—the rest of them were all seniors. After pizza they went to a pretty secluded outlook facing the ocean and made out. Downy kept trying to get under her shirt and she kept slapping his hand away. At some point he said, “I knew I shouldn’t be messing with a fifteen-year-old. You’re just too young.”
She said, “Fine. We won’t go out again. But don’t think you’re all that and I’m going to just give it up because you’re good at sports and kinda cute.”
He grinned and said, “You think I’m cute?”
“Not that cute,” she said.
But he walked her to every class, held her hand, leaned into her at her locker to kiss her, asked her repeatedly if she’d be at his game. They talked on the phone every night when they weren’t together, texted all day until Downy had his phone confiscated by a teacher for two weeks. Then, at assembly, his full ride scholarship to State was announced. At the end of summer, he’d be gone to football camp and then to school, three hours away. “I suppose you’ll just break up with me now,” she said.
With a look of serious misery he said, “I’m trying to figure out how to take you with me. I think I love you.”
So she let him touch her breasts. And said, “I think I love you, too.”
Before summer was very old, Ashley was on the pill. Surprisingly, college had not seemed to be the barrier Ashley had feared. They talked and texted constantly, Downy came home to Thunder Point as often as possible if he didn’t have a football game or practice and since he was a freshman, he wasn’t first string, so he had a little freedom, though he practiced hard all week. “And by the time I’m playing a lot, you’ll be at State and we’ll be together,” he told her.
And then in one week in March, almost exactly a year since they started dating, it all fell apart without warning. The calls dwindled to nothing; the texts weren’t answered. He didn’t come home on the weekend and knowing—knowing—something was terribly wrong, she drove to Corvallis. She went to his frat house. He was sitting on the porch with a girl, his arm around her shoulders, leaning close to her like he was finished kissing her or just about to start.
“Downy!” she shouted.
“Ash!” he shouted back, backing off the girl like she was on fire.
“Who is that?” the girl with him asked.
He stumbled and blubbered for a moment before he said, “The girl I dated back home.”
“Well, take care of the child and call me later,” she said, getting up and walking away. Gliding away, full of confidence, not the least bit intimidated by Ashley.
To Ashley, the girl looked like a sophisticated runway model, full of poise and beauty and maturity, all the things she didn’t feel she had.
The next two hours were a blur. He wouldn’t talk to her at his frat house within hearing of his fraternity brothers. They went to Gina’s Jeep, sat in it and Ashley sobbed and fought and yelled while Downy just shrugged and shook his head. He said he worried they’d been getting too serious, needed a little space, a little freedom, a little dating experience. “Have you slept with her?” Ashley demanded. “Are you doing her, Downy?”
“It’s different in college, Ash. People don’t make such a big deal about sex in college.”
So of course he had.
He finally insisted she go home. She wasn’t done with him but he was clearly done with her. “I care about you, Ash,” he said. “But we need to cool things down a little right now. I can’t get home every weekend during baseball—I’m playing every game. It’s not like football where I’m the junior player and mostly warm the bench. I’m starting. In fact, the baseball coach will probably make me quit football—we can’t start the season with injuries. We should use this time to...you know...branch out. Date around, maybe.”
“And summer? What about summer?” she asked. “You just plan to get back together again in summer?”
“I don’t know. I’m thinking about staying up here. Taking some classes, getting a job...I’ll play ball all summer if we make finals and it’s too far to commute. Then football camp is in August. If I’m still playing football then.”
She sobbed so hard all the way back to Thunder Point she could hardly breathe. She had to pull over once because her chest started hurting. She knew her mother was going to be furious that she’d taken the Jeep but she didn’t care. There were moments on the drive home that she wondered if life wouldn’t be easier if she just went off the road at one of the high-cliff curves, but something kept her going.
When she was alone in her room, she called Eve’s cell phone. She could barely tell her story, the sobs came so hard. And Eve was outraged. “Want me to call him, Ash? Give him a piece of my mind?”
“It won’t matter—it wouldn’t help. He dumped me for a college girl. And she’s beautiful, Eve. She owns him. You could tell in one second!”
“He’s slime. He’s scum. I will never forgive him for this!”
“But...what do I do without him?” Ashley had cried.
After they hung up, Ashley just cried for another hour. There was a light knocking on her door and she knew it was her mother. She didn’t answer or say “come in.” She laid there, her head on her pillow, leaking tears, gripping her cell phone in case Downy called her to say he’d made a terrible mistake.
Gina came into the room and sat on the edge of the bed. “I brought you some tea,” she said, her hand on Ashley’s back.
“No, thank you,” Ashley said thickly.
“Ash, I’m sorry this happened.”
“Really, I can’t talk about it anymore.”
“Just a little, please? So I can understand where you are right now? Emotionally.”
Ash rolled onto her back, her wet eyes red and swollen. “He has another girl. A beautiful, snotty college girl who he’s screwing because he says it’s not that big a deal. And right now I just don’t want to even live.”
“Ashley, please, don’t say that. Don’t ever say that.”
“I’m not going to school tomorrow. Maybe not the next day, either. Maybe never.”
Three
Cooper noticed Sarah had been preoccupied over the past couple of days. Quiet and maybe a bit sullen. She said the inspection was going to be hell and while she might not be worried about her team, a strong leader always worried about the inspectors. They had to be ready for anything.
All Cooper could do was be available, support her in any way he could. He found himself fighting the worry that Sarah had changed her mind, that something had caused her to reconsider those three little words. I love you. Yet when he possessed her, when she was joined to him, her passion for him drove worry from his mind. During those times she was one hundred percent his and he was completely hers.
In the meantime, he had a business to learn. This beach bar was unlike anything he had ever done before. Ben’s old helper, Rawley Goode, old being the operative word, might be a little on the strange side, but he had turned out to be a damned good assistant. Rawley was somewhere in his sixties and he’d been ridden hard. Rawley told Cooper that Ben used to only be open in the mornings and evenings. Ben had put in his longest days during summer, and he bumped up the schedule with the help of part-time teenage help. Rawley said, “I clean and get supplies. I can work in the kitchen or behind the bar, but I ain’t social. You give me a list and cash. I go to Costco and other stores. But in summer, you have to stay open late. The sunset over the bay is better ’n football on HD.”