I felt my throat tighten with the realization that Garrett was getting married in two months. I wasn’t going. I was leaving masochism in the rearview, but the reality was still a little gut punch. Our ending wasn’t wiped clean from my heart, but it wasn’t screaming in my ear, either.
Raini smiled.
“Honestly, I’ve met a lot of creepy dudes who are older and…Asher is just…he’s the nicest person in this business—the kindest I’ve ever met.”
“He’s been through a lot, and I think he actually does treat people the way he wants to be treated, which is rare,” I mused.
“What do you mean?” she asked, taking a sip of her tea.
“I mean…his life hasn’t always been easy.”
Raini shrugged, setting down her tea bag.
“I guess I don’t know much about him, like, personally? He’s super quiet.”
I grinned.
“What?”
“Around me he’s not quiet. Not at all,” I said.
“Like all I know about him personally is what I read before the audition—that Rolling Stone interview from a couple years ago. But it’s sort of sexy that he’s an enigma. I wish Josh didn’t have Instagram—God that would be so hot,” Raini said, referring to her current crush who was keeping her up at night—a young heartthrob not worthy of her heart.
“Okay, you little sneak, stop trying to deflect from the fact that you hate my bridge,” I said, picking up my guitar.
“I don’t hate it, it hates me.”
“Neither is true, but what if we do a key change?”
“Then you’d be my hero, because I can’t do that low-register shit the way you can,” she said, with a big smile.
A little while later after Raini left, I sat on the Barcelona chair in Asher’s living room, poring over the Rolling Stone article Raini had been referring to. It was surface at best, or at least I thought it was, because I knew most of the corners of Asher’s brain. I pulled my neck back, shocked as I read the end of the article. When asked about what his family thought of his fame, Asher joked about how his parents wished their only child was doing something they could brag about to their friends—like becoming an attorney. The phrase “only child” twisted my heart. I checked Asher’s Wikipedia page, seeing in plain black type that there wasn’t a sibling listed.
Asher walked into the kitchen as I set down my phone, and I hesitated before standing up and leaning against the kitchen island. I watched him open the cupboard above the stove and grab a bottle of tiny lime-green pills. He put the pill on his tongue and swallowed it down with running sink water. I looked away, not wanting to be intrusive. We had been doing this for a few weeks, occupying our own corners of our creative universes under one roof—keeping our relationship secret. And then at night we would collide—bodies discovering ways to light each other up that our teenage selves were too modest to try. Every morning I looked at him, at the stillness of the room and the calmness of his body, at the new life outstretched before me, and I thought, I could get used to this. But I couldn’t escape that we both had pasts that were treacherous, pasts that made us who were today.
“Can I ask you something?” I said.
He leaned forward across the marble, smiling warmly at me.
“Anything.”
I searched for the words, and he tilted his head, waiting.
“You don’t talk about your brother. Not to me…not to anyone…”
He froze. “What’s your question?” he asked, eyes unblinking.
“Asher, are you okay?” I asked quietly, my throat quivering under the possibility that he wasn’t.
Asher exhaled with his entire body. He looked back down at his hands as they twirled the orange pill bottle against the counter. They were likely the same pills he took when we were teenagers. I was relieved he was still taking them—I was relieved he was getting help for the pain that life put on his shoulders—pain that he shouldn’t have to fight by himself.
“It’s easier this way, Mags,” he whispered.
“That didn’t really answer my question,” I said. “Ash—if I’ve learned anything over the last few years, it’s that hiding all your pain…well that just causes more pain.”
I swallowed a past punching at my throat, and he met my eyes, seeing it.
“I don’t keep him a secret for me,” Asher said.
His eyes seemed to swallow a new kind of sadness. I walked over to him, gripping my hand in his until his brown eyes met mine.
“My parents didn’t want to relive it. They didn’t want every interview I gave to be about their greatest loss. You know my mom, she’s…” He drifted off. “When my career took off, they asked me not to offer it up.”
Asher’s parents were cold people. I couldn’t judge them. They had lost a child in the worst way. But Asher needed warm arms that would hold him tight. At camp, Asher told me that I came along at just the right time. That feeling was mutual. He said I taught him how to let someone love him, which broke my heart. I knew how to love before I met him, he just became the first thing in my life worthy of loving.
“Do you want to talk about him?” I asked.
“To pretend he never existed—to pretend that the person who made the biggest impact on my life never lived—it fucking kills me, Mags,” he said, letting tears envelop his eyes. “But…sometimes I don’t know where to start.”
I gripped his hand harder.
“If you want to, you should tell his story, Asher. You loved him—I don’t want you to be afraid to tell people how much you loved your brother.”
“It would—it would kill my mom.”
I studied the pain written all over his face.
“I think it’s killing you.”
He swallowed hard and rested his hand against my cheek. He took my other hand up to his mouth and kissed it.
“Thank you.”
“What for?” I asked.
“I—I haven’t dealt with my own stuff in a while. And being around you, it reminds me of the first time I cared enough to try. So, thank you.”
“Thank you,” I said, my eyes locked on his.
“For what?” he asked with a grin.
“Everything.”
He hesitated for a moment, then scanned my eyes.
“Mags, do you want to talk about it?”
“About what?” I asked brightly.
“I feel like…maybe something happened the last few years. You’ve hinted at it, but…”
My throat grew hot and tight, and I felt my chest swirl. His eyes widened upon my expression, and he bent down, his warm face right in front of mine.
“Not yet,” was all I could manage.
He pulled me tight to his body, kissing my forehead hard, as if shielding me from a bullet. I hugged him back, trying to hold all his pain.
He had the kind of pain I couldn’t hold.
And the bullet was already inside me, sitting in my gut.
41
THIRTY-FIVE
A HANDFUL OF WEEKS LATER, I rolled over at the sound of my phone ringing, edging my arm delicately past the gorgeous man quietly snoring in my bed—well, his bed.
“Who is it?” Asher grumbled, a pillow covering his face, half asleep.