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“It was. She did her best, and she ended up in rehab and I was sent to a foster home. After that she’s been in and out of recovery, she moved away for a while and then dropped Alex on me and walked herself back into a rehab centre a few months ago. She’s beautiful, you know? Smart and kind and good and she gave up everything for me so I’m going to take care of Alex in return.”
“You’re a good sister,” Ashley says, squeezing me in a tighter hug. “So you kept up with the writing?”
“Yeah, I’m working on a book about a girl with a sister going through addiction problems. There’s a lot of drama and romance in it but agents don’t like it so they keep sending it back to me.” To my horror my voice starts trembling and I have to swallow down a huge lump in my throat.
“Hey, you’ll get there,” Ashley says, rubbing my back. “You’re smart and strong and I know you’re going to be a smash on the writing world. Everything’s going to come out okay.”
My friends have told me this but there’s something about Ashley, her strength and confidence and the way her eyes sparkle when she gets excited that makes me almost believe her.
“Oh my god,” she says, pulling away from me so quickly that I just about get whiplash. “Alex is going to be back soon, we need to get dressed!”
I yelp in mirrored panic and there’s a scramble of limps and bedclothes as we rummage around and fight over pyjama pants and try to make the room look like we were definitely not having sex in here.
Just in time.
There’s a knock on the door and Sandy delivers Alex to my waiting arms. I scoop him up against my chest, loving the way he wraps his arms around my neck. He’s chattering about all the great things that he saw in the engine room and I feel a deep tug in my chest like I’m longing for something I’ve never had.
Ashley is pulling out the sofa bed so we can all cuddle up and watch cartoons until bedtime and as I glance from her to Alex’s happy face I realise we look like we’re a family. It’s not something I’ve had much of and I want the feeling to continue.
I don’t want to lose her when the cruise ends. I can’t help it, I want this to be something real and instead I’m stuck playing pretend with something I really want.
Nineteen
Ashley
It’s stupid o clock when I wake up and there’s a part of me that wants to roll over and go back to sleep but I feel so fucking good that it feels dumb to waste it. I don’t know if I’ve ever slept this good and I was sleeping on a sofa bed of all things.
There’s a crack of light spilling across my face and onto the floor. Usually when I wake up after a night of eating, drinking and fucking I feel like shit and also like escaping to my apartment to hole up and pretend that I’m a turtle. Not today.
For one thing I’m discovering that waking without a hangover is pretty good. I’d even go so far as to say it’s something I’d recommend, I can’t believe this is me saying this, I may need to shower.
Scratch that, I definitely need to shower.
After taking a long and luxurious visit to the really excellent bathroom, I sneak through the bedroom to where Alex is snuggled up to his Aunt’s side.
“Hey little buddy,” I whisper. “Time to get up!”
He wriggles a few times and makes some of the cutest, most adorable noises before he’s blinking those cute eyes up at me and making the face of a child who can’t remember who you are and are deciding whether or not you’re a danger.
“It’s me, Ashley,” I say hel
pfully. “How about we get you up and dressed and then you can escort your aunt down to breakfast like a real gentleman?”
It’s gender coding but mostly harmless gender coding and Alex is immediately excited by the prospect of ‘escorting’ which he pronounces ‘ethcortin’.
He tells me what he should be doing, so we get his face and hands washed and pick out a really cool costume of pink shirt (to make up for the gender coding), black overalls, black little shoes and the captains hat that he loves so much. He gets changed in the bathroom and when he comes out he’s beaming all over his cute little face.
“I like you, Ashley,” he says with the bluntness of very small children (and me), and I feel my face heat up.
“I like you too, buddy. Let’s wake up your aunt, yeah?”
He nods and pats at Jess’s nose like a little cat until she opens her eyes and scrunches up her face and says, “Oh my gosh, Alex, what time is it?”
“Breakfast time,” he says happily. “And I get to exscute you to breakfast!”
“Escort,” I put in before she can look too alarmed. There’s something adorable about the way these two look at each other. They obviously love each other a lot but there’s a hint of uncertainty to it and I wish they could see what I can see. They’re family.
“Scort!” Alex repeats happily. “Scort to breakfast!”
