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“There she is. That’s my mom.”
Leaning around his shoulder, I saw an older picture of a young woman, blonde and pretty and smiling. She looked like an angel sitting on a sandy beach.
“I see where you got the looks from.”
Ashton let out an amused huff.
“She was beautiful. Even when she was sick, she was the prettiest lady I ever knew.”
Part of me wanted to get all indignant that I should be the prettiest woman he ever knew, but how petty was that? He was talking about his freaking dead mother.
“She really is,” I agreed, shoving down my odd jealousy.
He sighed and kept going forward, that picture still gripped in his fist.
Three more pictures came off the wall, looking like they hadn’t been dusted in decades. In all honesty, they probably hadn’t.
We finally went toward the bedrooms, and he paused in front of one door.
“This was my old room.”
Being here was wearing on him. It was obvious. His skin had dulled and eyes tightened with stress. Not to mention the frown pulling at his lips.
The door opened and…it was like a time capsule. A thick layer of dust coated everything from the carpet to the dresser, and the blue comforter on the twin bed pushed into the corner.
“Holy shit,” he breathed, looking around.
It didn’t look like they’d changed anything, if the angsty band and half naked women posters scattered over the wall meant much.
“Really?” I asked, “You were one of those teenage boys with naked ladies everywhere?”
Suddenly he grinned and moved quickly, popping the sliding closet door off the tracks before turning it around to…
“Oh, God!” I yelped at the very graphic picture of a nude woman, knees spread and boobs hanging out of a bikini top. “Where did you even find that?”
Ashton was laughing.
“Cost me a fortune,” he admitted, pressing his fingers over the face of the woman. “I had such a crush on her when I was a teen. It was the only picture I’d jack off to.”
My upper lip peeled off my teeth, grossed out.
“I had to hide it here because if my mom found it, she’d have skinned me alive.”
Thinking of my big, strong Ashton as a hormonal, horny teen made me grin.
“Bet you never told your girlfriends,” I joked.
He just shrugged.
“Didn’t have girlfriends. My mom needed me too much, and I worked after school most of the time. There wasn’t time for a girlfriend.”
That made me sad.
It didn’t seem to bother him, because he went to his dresser and started digging into the drawers. Little knick knacks laid inside, notes and crap he’d kept for sentimental reasons, probably. There were sweats and a few articles of clothes in the drawers beneath, which meant that Ashton’s dad likely never even touched anything inside the room.
“I thought for sure he’d have junked everything, just out of spite,” he admitted. “I never thought I’d see this stuff again.”
He picked out a birthday card from the bottom drawer and opened it, read it, then pressed it to his chest.
