Of course, I hadn't ventured into telling Ashlynn every last detail, but some of what I hadn't said decided to creep their way into my memories. Stuff that I wouldn't have told anyone, stuff that regretted never doing or saying. All of those I thing messed up and hurt at my own hands - or with something that came from my own hands. I wasn't anything but a lowlife. I didn't have anyone to blame for anything, and I wasn't one to blame anyone for the things I'd done.
While Ashlynn hadn't seemed the type, she had taken a lot of what I'd said to be truth - even though I could've lied to her about any number of things. Kylie, the drugs, and every other thing I spoke of. She wasn't there, nor did she attach me to a lie detector. She wasn't a Scorpio either, so there wasn't any chance of her having a built-in bullshit detector. Ashylnn reached forward and grabbed the necklace that rested against my chest.
"She loved you because you didn't say the right stuff, the things she wanted to hear. You didn't lie to her, and meant everything you said." Ashlynn let go of the necklace, sighing. "How do I even compete with that?"
"How do you even compete against a dead girl?" I sneered, picking up another cigarette. "I mean, sure. She was my first in a lot of ways, and I probably won't ever be able to forget her, but I've moved on. Just like I did with Ava. Haven't you realized that I'm just a loser that takes way too long to get over things?"
"Are you?" Ashlynn turned, crossing her legs on the bed. "You seem like someone who dealt with something the best way he knew how, which was escaping into drugs and girls. You know, simple escapism. Either way, you can't blame yourself for that. Any of it."
"How so? I made my choices, and I lived with the results. I made my own bed, and I lied in it. Every result was made from an action I did or didn't take."
"You clearly weren't there, in your right state of mind. How is someone expected to take anything at face value when they aren't given a chance to?" Ashlynn answered quite brutally. "How are you expected to make the correct choices when you aren't in your correct state of mind? The people around you should've noticed that something was wrong with you."
How could they see that I was fucked up, when they were just as fucked up as I was?
Ashlynn was quite obviously strong on her opinion of mental toughness, and the blame of them or lack thereof, as well. It'd been a fair assessment of people, in the way that people were always blind to the things they don't want to see. I'd almost allowed the same thing myself with Maggie, who'd come to me for help, even after all that she did. If it hadn't been for Ava, I would have done just that; kicked her away like a damn puppy who wanted food.
Had she experienced that herself, or with someone she knew? Had she ignored the signs of someone who had clearly been calling out for help, and then lost them? Had this been why she was so strong on it, or was it a topic that she was just simply felt strongly towards? Ashlynn leaned forward, taking the cigarette from me and then flicking the ash into the ashtray before looking back at me.
"She loved you, they both did. Ava, too." Ashlynn stated, exhaling the cigarette smoke. "Hopefully, I'm the one that isn't used in the past tense."
"You won't be used in the past tense if you just stick to the present." I stuck my tongue out, teasing her just a touch. "Besides, I'm done investi-"
Our knack for interrupting one another decided to show up again as Ashlynn launched herself forward and had trapped my mouth within hers. As she held herself up above me, her hand clenched onto my shoulder while the cigarette smoke found it's way into my nostrils. Her hand, however, had slowly begun to move to her left and eventually found it's place on my neck as I leaned back with her.
Taking the cigarette from her, I set it into the bottle of day-old beer that'd been on the nightstand. As my fingers intertwined with her hair, I brushed it behind her ears and gave myself a better view of what I'd been doing. Ashlynn pulled her mouth away, still leaving half of it connected with mine as she took air in, breathing heavily. It was out of the corner of my eye that I'd seen her smirk.
"Not yet." she whispered, as her free hand reached for mine. Moments later her hand had caught mine, and our fingers had begun to lace - something brunettes seemed to do pretty often.
"I'm not doing anything." I smirked back. "It's all you."
Ashlynn lifted herself, her face slightly flushed. She only looked at me. What felt like several minutes was only several seconds, but it said more than enough. Bringing herself back down, her lips had partially rejoined with my own again. Several short breaths stormed from her, and then she began to attack my mouth once again. However, it didn't last long. It never did.
As Ashlynn took advantage of me being on my back, my world had begun to spin, just like that night I'd been on Dust. Except this was far worse. I was spinning like a damn Beyblade all while being thrown around in a hamster ball at the same time. I could feel the dizziness become apparent just as the sweat had begun to coat my body. If I'd been standing, I would have been on my face at that point. Faintly, I could feel Ashlynn stop and say something. Faintly.
____
.
.
.
.
"Dear lord...you may have...Do you have...ust accomplished?"
"Bra...acti..."
"lob...pons..."
"rtex...is active."
"Lef...ght are...ponses to...ain."
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.
.
.
"Almost there."
____
"..H...He..Hey." Ashlynn's voice cleared up. "Are you okay?!"
"I'm fine." I shook my head as I sat up, and then brushed my hair back only to receive a fraught stare from her. "...I'm fine. It happened a couple months ago and I'm still walking."
"I'm going to call an ambulance." Ashlynn got off of me, only for me to grab her hand. "That wasn't normal, Aiden."
"Hey, I told you I'm fine." I responded, sitting myself up as I refused to let go of her. "I promise, I'm fine."
Ashlynn looked at the phone that lied on the dresser and then looked back at me, before she'd seemingly given up on the idea. As she stepped back to me, I felt her smack the side of my head before she had put both arms around it. She sat for moments, not moving or breathing. It'd been almost as though she were praying, or hoping for something, but anyone's guess would've been about as good as mine.
"If you ever do that again while I'm around, I'm going to call." Ashlynn said. "Tell me about this kind of stuff earlier, would you?"
"Okay." I stood up. "How about that camera, then?"
"Now?" she asked, looking at the clock. "It's almost five on a weekend. Will it still be open?"
"If it's not then we just go tomorrow." I shrugged my shoulders. "Whether it's today or tomorrow isn't that big of a deal."
**
As we entered the most well-known electronics area in this shithole, Ashlynn's eyes ever so slightly brightened. While I hadn't known anything beyond a smartphone and decent computer skills, it hadn't taken a genius to understand that she'd been ardent about what she wanted to do with her life. Stopping to her left, Ashlynn stopped and picked one up that had been pretty cheap looking - comparatively speaking, that is.
"Isn't that pretty cheap?" I pointed at the Canon next to it with a thirty-five hundred dollar price tag.
"How do I put this...I know you said price doesn't matter, but I can't just pick the most expensive thing. I'm not like tha-"
I sighed, looking at the time on the wall. "If I said it doesn't matter, then it doesn't matter. Pick whatever you want, and anything else you need."
"You're making me feel, like, two feet tall." she dropped her head. "How do I just accept something like this?"
Once again, I sighed as I brushed my hair over the back of my head. Putting my hands on her shoulders, I looked at her and hadn't been entirely sure what to say. Had she never been in a situation where she had a choice, or free will to get what she wanted within a certain paradigm? What I hadn't understood was why she had such a hard time accepting what I'd been offering. Was I missing something, or was it her?
"I'm doing this because I want to, and because I want to see you happy and enjoying yourself. That's all there is to it." I turned her around. "So, either you get everything you need, or I'll have one of these nerds get me everything you'll need."
"...Fine." I felt her squeeze my hand without turning. "All I've ever had was a cheap video camera my cousin gave me, and my family would never be able to afford any of these. This is just kind of hard to take in."
Maybe I'd been wrong, or maybe I was right, but something told me that Ashlynn's parents were the same as my own. In the sense that they only looked out for themselves and rarely for their own child, and when they did, it was to benefit themselves. My mother was the same way, I never existed until I became important enough to bring up. Maybe Ashlynn and I were more similar than I thought, or maybe we weren't. It wasn't much more than just a vague hunch.
Sure, I said the same thing about Ava and I. At the end of the day, however, how similar had we been in the way we'd grown up? Nothing much was similar. Granted, she carried her share of problems, and I wasn't disregarding those in any manner, but I wasn't able to say that I understood them. I knew what they were, but I couldn't have said that I knew how she felt, nor could she say she knew how I felt.
How about that? Still stuck in the past. All I had knew and understood in the present, I near automatically compared to the past. While this was something typical of human nature, it wasn't a good thing for me. My past, as a whole, was a mess. Everything that could've gone wrong usually did go wrong. This left bad tastes, and if something in the present had related to it, I was turned off from it. My mess of a past permanently fucked everything up. Everything.
"Are you sure?" Ashlynn asked again, picking up the camera I'd just pointed at.
"Yeah. Get everything you need." I took the display camera from her, looking at it as I spoke. "What's holding you up?"
"You say everything, but that could end up being a few thousand dollars." she shook her head. "You don't seem to understand that I can't just take that."
"Look, Ashlynn, I have more money than I even know what to do with." I handed it back, tapping my heel against the shelf. "So, if you need a computer along with the camera, then get that too. The point here is that I'm doing this because I want to. Think of it as a late birthday present or something, if that helps."
I had been kind of taken aback at her unwillingness to run rampant in store filled with what she had needed. Even if I had told her to do so, she hadn't wanted to. Had it been right for me to force her into doing it, or should I have just let her done what she wanted? What had been the right choice in this situation? Was she reacting the way most people would have, or had she been acting differently from most?
"...Asshole."
**
What had likely been a hour or so later, we had reached her hotel room. As I had carried several bags into her room, I set them down underneath the table that had sat next to the second dresser and television. Ashlynn walked over to me, and had stood still for a moment before looking up at me. What had been the point of doing all this if it was just going to make her awkward around me?
"If you really don't want any of this, then we can just take it back." I muttered, lighting the half-cigarette I found on the table.
"It's not like that." Ashlynn stepped forward. "I feel like I just have a tendency to ruin everything I'm around...like Ava and you. I just don't want to hurt you."
"You don't want to hurt a lost cause?" I grabbed the end her hair as it fell over her shoulder, admittedly somewhat shocked from the words that sounded as though they would come from my mouth. "I've hurt myself over and over, it's going to take lot more than just you to ruin me."
While we had both seemed to realize how bad that sounded, she had just as quickly realized that hadn't been the way I meant it. I had simply been so fucked up already that having her try to wasn't going to do much. Sure, I had been a lost cause, but it hadn't meant that I didn't care about anything or anyone. I had flaws and tendencies to feel cold towards people, but that still hadn't meant that I didn't care about anything or anyone.
After having spent my early teenage years partying daily with drugs and women, I hadn't ever thought of all the girls I might have messed up - either because of me or because of the drugs. As I had looked back on it, Boyfriend had faded from relevancy and Girlfriend had been caught with a silly amount of Horse. Had she gotten into being a mule, or selling herself? What had happened to those one-time girls? Had they moved on from partying, or were they buried under a mountain of drugs?
Ashlynn took both of my hands, pulling me towards her bed. How many teenagers could have said they were living on their own in a hotel room? While I had been one of them, I had easily been able to say that weren't many - yet I had been in a relationship with the one. It had been weird, yet not impossible. Why had things turned out this way for her? Why had she been here and not with Ava, or with her family?
As she continued to pull me along with her like I was on a leash, I had once again caught the view of her shoulder strap falling - giving me an master-class view of the scar that had rested just over her shoulder. Stopped in my tracks, I had come to realize that whenever I had gained any momentum with anyone, something had always gotten in my way, and this had been no different.
"Where did that scar come from?"
ns 15.158.61.46da2
