Loving Ashe (9 page)

Ashe was leaning by her front door when Riley reached her floor, the sight of him making her catch her breath as the elevator doors opened. Still wearing his skin-tight shirt and jeans, the addition of a long dark coat made him look so…so English, just like in the movies.

“I thought Bob dropped you off,” she said as she stepped off the elevator.

“He did,” Ashe said. “But I needed to make sure that you were all right. Your sister wasn’t happy, and I don’t blame her. She must think me such a cad for making advances towards you.”

Riley shrugged. “Does it really matter what she thinks? You’re here anyway, aren’t you?”

He sighed. “Not for what you must be thinking. If anything, I’d like to talk, Riley. At least, let us talk.”

“How’d you get up here anyway?” Riley asked. There was a doorman, Frank Rogers, who was usually very hard to get past, like a bulldog, though he was nice to her and loved to talk about his teenage daughter, Marie, and whatever she was currently into. Lately it was Twitter, though Frank had no idea what the word even meant. But Riley wondered if Frank had simply been helping one of the elderly tenants up to their apartments like he often did with one of her neighbors, who was turning 98 in a few months.

Ashe bit his lower lip sheepishly. “I’m afraid I bribed Frank. Being recognizable has its perks.”

“He’s going to get into trouble when I make a complaint.”

Ashe frowned, moving away from her door as she approached. “I wouldn’t want him to get into trouble, not when all he wanted was an autograph and a photograph for his daughter. If I leave right now, will you promise not to report him?”

“You’d really leave?”

“I would,” Ashe replied, looking down at his boots and brushing some imaginary dirt off the carpet. “It’s not his fault.”

“Then I won’t report him. He’s like a father to me and I don’t want him getting in trouble on account of me being just a bitch,” Riley said. “But if you’re here to get laid, you’ve got it wrong. Maybe you should call Betty and have her arrange something for you. I’m sure she can think of more entertaining people than me. You won’t have to work so hard at trying to get someone to give you a blow job or whatever.”

His face darkened. “Is that really why you think I’m here? This is what your sister thinks, isn’t it? That all I want from you is sex, because of something Betty must have told her about whatever parties she must have set up for other…performers?”

“Does it matter what Betty told her?”

“Yes, it does, Riley. Because as much as some of what Betty says might be true, it doesn’t mean it applies to every single one of her clients. She doesn’t babysit me, nor supply me with models or drugs,” Ashe replied, taking a step closer. “I will leave right now, but not before you answer me this. Do you always let your sister run your life?”

“She’s just worried about me. She doesn’t want me to get hurt again,” Riley said, biting her lower lip as she gazed up at him. Ashe had such a magnetic presence, it was overwhelming at times. The broad chest, narrow waist and muscles along his jaw that tensed as he looked at her all made her feel weak, unable to put up defenses strong enough to hide from him. “Anyway, if you’re not here to get laid, then why are you here?”

His expression softened. “Just talk.”

“I bet you can get laid a hundred ways from here till Sunday if you wanted to, even without Betty’s help,” she said, exhaling. “Why the hell would you give that up just to know me better? To talk?”

Ashe didn’t speak right away. He watched her, observing her face go through all the emotions she was feeling — anger, confusion, regret.

“That’s Paige talking now, Riley, not you,” he said, taking a step away from her. “I want to talk to the Riley I got to know tonight. The Riley who is the perfect narrator to my
Sam-I-Am
, the one who knows how to assemble a Lionel train faster than I can, even after reading the directions. The one who can convince three boys that macaroni and cheese with corn chips mixed in tastes so much better because Vitamin F means fun.”

Riley felt her face burning with embarrassment and she lowered her eyes.

“The Riley who doesn’t believe she’s as beautiful as she really is, who is more intelligent than she lets everyone else believe,” Ashe continued. “That’s the Riley I want to talk to.”

Riley was blushing and she knew it. Ashe sure had a way with words, she thought. And God almighty, but those eyes. “Well, now that you put it that way, then I guess we can talk,” she said as she unlocked her front door. “But just talk, okay?”

“Just talk,” Ashe nodded as he followed her inside her apartment. “I meant every word I said.”

“I was afraid of that,” Riley said, remembering the way he had kissed her earlier that evening, the butterflies in her belly fluttering again. Talking was starting to seem overrated.

“Would you like coffee?” she asked as they entered her apartment.

“Coffee would be perfect,” Ashe said, slipping off his coat and hanging it behind her door. He followed her into her small kitchen, which was really just a little space behind a counter, before stepping back when he realized just how small it really was.

“I hope you’re not allergic to cats,” she said as Ashe walked towards the living room, shaking his head. “Miss Bailey is here somewhere, but she’s a little nervous of people she doesn’t recognize, so she might be under the bed or the couch. Just don’t be alarmed if you notice something moving, maybe rubbing against your leg or whatever.”

“I won’t,” Ashe said. “I grew up with animals, and it will be a pleasure to meet Miss Bailey when she comes out of hiding.”

While she prepared coffee for them, Ashe browsed through her books, pulling one out here and there to open it and flip through the pages, and always taking care of how he opened them. Sometimes she thought he actually smelled the books, especially the vintage ones that had belonged to her mother.  
Wuthering Heights
was one that he pulled out and flip through the pages, and Riley caught him smile to himself when he pulled out her mother’s copy of
Madame Bovary
.

“Do you like to read?” she asked.

“I do, yes,” Ashe replied as he returned a book to the shelf. “Unfortunately, I don’t have enough time to read these days, unless it’s to research a role. If I have some time, I read on my phone, though I still miss the feel of a real book in my hands.”

“I know what you mean,” Riley said. “That’s why I have these books here in my apartment. Some of them belonged to my mother. She was such a voracious reader, and she loved collecting old books.”

“Are these hers?” he asked, pointing to a row of old books on one of the shelves.

Riley nodded as the moka pot bubbled and she turned away from him, taking the pot from the stove and dividing the contents equally between two cups. While she brewed espressos with a commercial machine at the Library Cafe, at home Riley chose to use a moka pot, preferring to do it the old-fashioned way. Besides, her little kitchen had no room for an espresso machine.  She extracted a carton of half-and-half from the refrigerator and a bowl of sugar from the cupboard.

“Having them around make me happy. She died when I was ten,” Reilly said, taking both cups to the living room where she set them on the coffee table and sat on the couch.

“I’m sorry to hear that,” Ashe said softly.

“Thanks. She had MS and she was in a wheelchair, and -” she paused, not wanting the conversation to go down a path she hated to go, but as she gazed at Ashe’s face, she marveled at how honest he looked, like he really was saddened by news that her mother was dead.

“Anyway, I was too young to really remember what happened but she died in a fire — not from the fire itself, but from the smoke that got into her lungs,” she continued, though that was a flat-out lie. Of course she remembered what happened. Riley had been with her mother when the next door neighbor’s apartment caught on fire from an unattended cigarette. The broad scar on her arm was her reminder everyday of how useless she was because she’d been too small, too weak, to help her mother down the stairs where they would have been safer from all that smoke.

The scar also reminded her of her father’s hatred for her. He still called her weak and useless whenever he saw her, and that if it weren’t for her being too weak to help her mother down the stairs before the smoke finally got to her, Millie Eames would still be alive. Riley sighed and forced herself to smile as Ashe sat down on the couch next to her.

“This is from that fire,” she said, straightening her arm out so he could see the wide scar along the inside of her forearm. What a crybaby she’d been then, she thought, crying at pain of debridement and whatever else they did to graft new skin where the old skin had burned away. But that was before she saw other children that had been burned worse than she’d been, and Riley learned to stop complaining.

She took a deep breath and forced a smile.  “They’re all healed after all the skin grafts. Good as new.”

For a few minutes neither of them spoke. They simply drank their coffee though Riley could feel Ashe’s eyes watching her.   As she looked at him, she was relieved to find no pity staring back at her, or anger though he would have no reason to be angry at what she had just shared. Still, it was time to change the subject or send him home.

“So, the Englishman who is not posh, what about you? Why don’t you tell me a little bit about yourself?” She nudged him playfully with her foot, trying to lighten the mood. “How come it’s always me talking about myself? It’s your turn to open up, or are you hiding something?”

“No, I have nothing to hide, at least not at the moment,” Ashe said, nudging her with his leg in return. “But you can always ask me whatever it is you want to know.”

“You said you aren’t from London, and that you’re not posh. So where are you from?”

“Are you familiar with Yorkshire?”

As he said the word ‘Yorkshire’ Riley noticed a change in the way he spoke, an accent she had never noticed before. Riley shook her head. “Does that mean you naturally speak differently from the way you talk for the movies and all?”

“What you hear on many British TV shows and movies is what we call RP, or Received Pronunciation. It used to be that actors who wanted to make it in the business needed to master that mode of speech, but you don’t have to lose your native accent, if you have one.”

“Like a dialect?”

“Exactly, just as there are dialects here,” Ashe laughed.

“Can you say something in your dialect?”

He cleared his throat. “It takes me a while to get back to the way I really talk, but here goes. Are you ready? ‘Tis a poem my gran used to say all the time.” He said, and already the way he said gran sounded different.

“Ready,” she said, grinning.

“Hast tha seen our Mary’s bonnet, it’s a stunner and no mystak, yella ribbons yella roses n a great big feather hung downt back. Our Mary went to church one Sunday morn, alt folk did gawp n stare, ‘nt preacher said,” Mary this is a house of God, not a flower show.” Ar Mary stood up, fit to swallow church n all’t folk in and said, “Fatha, thy head’s bald, nowt in it, nowt on it, wouldst tha like a feather owta my bonnet.”

When he was finished, Riley stared at him. “I have no idea what you just said, but it’s the coolest thing I’ve ever heard.”

“Thank you,” Ashe grinned. “Anyway, that’s how I speak when I’m with family and friends back home. It’s just a regional dialect, like here, where Louisiana folks have their own accent and those in Minnesota have theirs as well.”

“And we New Yorkers have ours,” she said. “Though we hate to admit it, as far as everyone else is concerned, we don’t have an accent.”

“Right, and that’s exactly how we feel in Yorkshire,” he chuckled. “I hope you’re not disappointed to learn that I’m really not from London, nor am I posh.”

“Why would I be disappointed? I think there’s more to you than meets the eye, Ashe Hunter.”

“Well, there’s more to all of us than meets the eye, so it’s not like I hold a monopoly on it,” he said sheepishly. Pointing to the TV set in front of them, he said, “You’re the only person I know who still has one of those — well, the only
young
person I know.”

“Next thing you’ll tell me that I’m an old lady inside,” Riley said. “That’s what Paige keeps telling me.”

Ashe chuckled. He had finished his coffee and was leaning against the back of the couch, his right index and middle fingers rubbing absentmindedly along the top of his right thigh. “You’re far from an old lady, Riley,” he said. “If I remember correctly, someone did say that I was an old fart.”

“Well, I have been known to be wrong about so many things,” Riley said.

“Not entirely wrong,” Ashe said. “I may not have an old TV set, but I do collect old records. Vinyl records.”

“You mean for a turntable?”

He nodded. “I had to scour the Village for one when I bought my place. Fortunately, I found one, and it’s heavenly.”

“Are you serious?” Riley asked, though she didn’t have to wait for an answer. He was still pink-cheeked and smiling shyly.

“I might go all-out nerd on you so I hope you don’t mind,” he began. “Original sound is basically analog by definition, and a vinyl record is able to capture the whole sound wave, which then feeds it into your amplifier, which then produces the sound you hear. The grooves on a vinyl record basically mirror the original sound wave, while in a digital recording, as in CD’s these days, they mainly just approximate the original sound with a series of fixed steps. Your CD player, let’s say, merely converts the digital signal into analog and sends it to the amplifier — your speakers.” He peered at her. “Have I lost you yet?”

“No, not yet,” she said. He could read the phone book for all she cared. Still, what he said did make sense for her mother always insisted on playing her old records even when her father bought her the latest music on cassettes.

“So while a record can pick up fast transitions of a trumpet, let’s say, Dizzy Gillespie, a lot of those transitions may be too fast to be converted into digital. The downside, of course, is that any dust or damage to the record will often produce static. Otherwise, there’d be silence,” he continued, though this time he looked sheepish.