Page 5 of Hauling Ashe

Playlist: “You Don’t Own Me” – Leslie Gore

[Mae]

My sister and I had been having the same conversation we’d already had yesterday, and the day before, and a month ago, when we were so rudely interrupted by this man.

“I can’t believe you’re really doing this,” my older sister said.

“I know, right? It’s one of the craziest ideas I’ve ever had.” Marry my college sweetheart. Not unheard of. Open my own business under his family’s corporate umbrella. Risky but worth it. Finally find the nerve to dump Adam’s ass. Long overdue. But this stunt—traveling the iconic Route 66 on my own—is simply…insane.

However, I’d been living under the auspice of sanity for too long. I’d done what was expected of me. I married young and had children immediately. Owning my own business wasn’t something I ever planned to do, but I did it well. I also needed a break. Adam said I was self-centered for taking this trip during the summer when our eldest was home from college and our second was ready to leave the nest in the fall. Both our boys were self-sufficient, though, and worked for me at Mae’s Flowers, a play on the Mayflower ship. My thriving garden center and flower shop was co-owned with my business partner, Pam Vincentia, and I trusted her to keep my boys busy during their summer employment. They wouldn’t be in the way of Adam’s newest conquest. Perhaps my trip was selfish, but it was also time. I’d given up two decades for everyone else. And I was ready to take back me. Whoever that might be.

I was in need of a long overdue life assessment. A restart to my engine. Like the travelers on that iconic seagoing vessel, I considered myself a voyager, setting sail across the country on a maiden trip even if I wasn’t a fair, young maiden.

“I don’t like you doing this alone, though.” The eldest Fox sister is a worrier by nature. Fear has kept her single for all her forty-five years. Fear and drive. She’s been determined to work in an industry that’s fast paced, everchanging, and productive. Her job has been the entirety of her life. My work and family have been the extent of mine.

“I’m only going alone because I couldn’t convince you to go with me.”

“You know I can’t leave.”

Actually, I don’t really know if that is true. Jane wants to be a partner at Impact one day, and she likes to think she’s indispensable. Perhaps she is, but my sister could use a major life-break herself. She works long hours and buries herself in projects. Sometimes I wonder if her dedication to work has to do with her potentially unhealthy obsession with Mach, the other owner of Impact. She needs to get out of this office and seriously get laid. However, I can’t concern myself with her. See? Selfish. I only want to think about me and this trip.

Then, boom, a deep masculine interruption happens, and Jane militantly stands as if the mayor or someone important had entered her office. A ripple of confusion rushes over my spine at the sharp attack of his voice until I hear the words lunatic and spilled coffee in the same sentence.

I’m still wearing my coffee-stained shirt but placed a cardigan I had in my bag over it. I didn’t have time to return to Jane’s condo for a clothing change. A paper napkin in the public restroom at the coffee shop was the best I could do to clean off the sticky liquid that coated my bare legs and covered my sandals. I smell of day-old coffee and melted chocolate.

Spinning in the chair I sit in before Jane’s desk, I immediately note three things about the Mr. Ashford Jane has mentioned over the years.

One, I don’t know why she’s speaking so formally to him like he’s some eighty-year-old fogy instead

of a man with fine lines of fifty around his eyes.

Two, he’s no longer wearing the coffee-stained shirt or the soiled jacket, returning me briefly to those wayward thoughts of him sexily striping out of the aforementioned ruined suit.

Which leads to number three, where I recognize him instantly and he notices me—the lunatic.

“No,” he groans.

“Yes,” I mock, straightening my back before peering at my sister who introduces us, sort of.

Oh, and number four, I do not appreciate his demeaning tone with Jane. Where is her gumption? What has happened to my feisty, take-no-shit older sister? She’s the bossy one. The mother hen one. The I’m-in-charge one. What is this?

If I didn’t know better, I’d say Mr. Ashford holds Jane’s heart. Her eyes reflect admiration, perhaps respect for him, but his business partner is the man Jane pines for. Her love-hate relationship with Mr. Wright—Machlan Wright—is a dynamic I don’t understand. Underneath all her complaints about long hours and working on days off, she has a serious crush and desperate desire to get laid by someone she’s deemed Volde-Mach.

Then I notice Jane leering at me. A tight grin forms on her thin lips. The animated Grinch in How the Grinch Stole Christmas has nothing on the face my sister wears and I recognize that look. I fear that look. That look suggests a plan has just formed in her small, caged heart and that plan somehow involves me.

No, Jane. Don’t you do it. I shake my head before she speaks. Then, she announces my travel plans for California and suggests I give Mr. Assford a ride. I nearly fall out of the office chair.

He’s headed to California, too? Why isn’t he flying? This is Chicago, a hub for air travel.

However, I already have a hint of his haughty airs. Not on a plane. Not on a train. He won’t drive a car. I want to tell him where to shove his soiled suit and just how far.

When he rejects Jane’s offer of my services, I bite my tongue. Yeah, right back at ya’. I am not driving this ass—despite the firmness of it in his one-thousand-dollar suit pants—across the country. He can find his own car and drive it off a cliff for all I care. I hope the gear stick gets shoved up his— Thank goodness our timing doesn’t match up.

But then Jane opens her mouth again. “I’m sure Mae could speed up her trip to accommodate you. You said you weren’t on a timetable. You can always drive Mr. Ashford to California and do your trip in reverse.”

Jane and I glare at one another. How is his problem suddenly mine? Even more so, this is the exact thing I’m avoiding in this trip. I do not want, nor need, nor desire a traveling companion, especially one as arrogant as this guy. I’m doing things my way on the highway.

Not to mention, Jane has had a difficult time understanding the purpose of this trip. Despite the blessed divorce. Despite happy motherhood. Despite my business success. I’m in search of myself. Who am I? Where am I going in the future? Going in reverse defeats the purpose. I’m moving forward in life. My carefully constructed, otherwise known as creatively unplanned, trip is from Chicago to L.A., not L.A. and back.