TAUT (11 page)

“Ashleigh?”

I knock. Nothing. I open the door and she’s sprawled out on the bed topless, the baby tucked up against her belly, their mouths open, their breath soft and even.

God, that is just sexy. She’s all sideways on the bed, not using a pillow, and her hair is spilling out on one side of her body like it was positioned that way for a photoshoot.

I watch her for a few seconds and then give myself the creeps and back away, closing the door behind me. It’s only about eight o’clock, and I just woke up a few hours ago, so I’m not even remotely tired. I wander back to the basement and glance over at the bottle of Scotch on my dad’s desk, and then, before I can stop myself, I’m sitting down in front of it.

I put the bottle away. I’m not in the mood to drink alone. But I do take a better look around the office. All the shelves are filled with books. Mostly medical books because my dad was a psychiatrist. He specialized in autistic spectrum disorders because I was diagnosed with Asperger’s syndrome when I was a kid.

My dad was a great man and the awards and certificates on his office wall in here are just the beginning of how special he was. He was my biggest champion. He made me stronger. He kept up with me in every respect. He pushed me to be better, learn more, try harder. And he never did it in a mean way like some fathers. His reprimands were always calm, his urges to do better always came with just the right level of excitement and assurance.

One of the characteristics of Asperger’s is uncoordinated motor skills, so my dad compensated by enrolling me in every sport available. I did baseball, basketball, track, football, skiing, boarding, hockey… not all at the same time of course, he was just looking for my sweet spot. The sport I might excel in.

And like the language skills that I shouldn’t have, I had physical skills as well. I excelled in skiing, baseball, and track. But it was the skiing that captivated me. If you’re a skier and you live in Vail, that’s like heaven. I was the reason we came here every weekend in the winter. And everything I did, my dad did with me. He pitched to me, he threw the football, he put on all the smelly hockey gear and got up at five AM to get rink time. He ran with me. Every day. In Denver we ran in City Park and then later we did the steps at Coors Field. But when I spent my summers here in Vail, we did the bike trail just down the hill from our house. It runs from Vail to Frisco. Twelve miles down, twelve miles back up. We did that whole run at least once a month in the summers.

He skied insane runs with me. We did more than our share of double black diamond runs all over the world.

He never said no. He always had time. No matter how crazy my plan.

I grab the bottle from the bottom drawer and I’m shuffling through the back of it, searching for the rocks glass I know is in here, when I hear the knock.

I look up and Ashleigh is standing in the doorway. “Sorry, I guess I drifted off.”

I look at the bottle, then her. She’s all disheveled, just like the bedroom. Her hair is tousled and a little bit sweaty from being asleep and her cheeks are pink against her pale skin. I picture her topless like she was up in my bed and it renders me silent for a moment.

“I’ll drink it with you, if you want,” she says to break the awkward moment. “One drink won’t hurt. Besides, I already fed her, so she’s good for a while.”

I nod and grab two glasses from the drawer. When I look back up she’s got the bottle. “Not in here, though. Let’s sit out there.”

I just stare at her, trying to figure out what that means.

“I think this room…” She looks around at the pictures of my dad and me. “Depresses you.” I can’t even move, that’s how much these words affect me. “Maybe depress is the wrong word.” She offers me a small smile. “Maybe it just… makes you think too much.”

“Yeah,” I grumble out, then clear my throat and try again. “Yeah, it does. My dad died a couple years ago.” I look up at the closest picture and the memories flood in. “We did everything together.”

“I can tell. Lots of good times on these walls. Let’s drink out there.”

She doesn’t wait for me, just turns and walks over to the couch, sits down and sets the bottle on the coffee table. I walk over and sit down next to her, but not close enough to touch. I pour us each a drink and she clinks her glass to mine. “To dads.”

“To dads,” I repeat. “Drink it slow,” I say softly. “It’s very special. It should be enjoyed, not consumed in a rush the way I did it last night.” She nods and takes a small sip, makes a face, and takes another one. She holds in a cough and that makes me happy for some reason. It satisfies me in a way I can’t explain.

“I’m not a whiskey girl,” she says after taking one more sip and setting the glass down. “But it does seem special.” I smile big at that. She catches it and scowls. “You’re a weird guy, Ford.”

I take a bigger sip this time. “Tell me something new, Ashleigh.”

“New, as in you want to know something about me? Or new as in you already know you’re weird?”

“Both,” I say, leaning back and slumping down a little, my drink perched on my thigh, my bare feet kicked up on the coffee table. I pick at the strings from a hole in my jeans and she leans back too, but then the largeness of the couch clashes with the smallness of her body and she has to tuck her feet underneath her to get comfortable. I take another drink of my Scotch as she begins to talk.

“Hmmm. Something new about me… I’m in Colorado with a very attractive jerk. I’ve thought about him almost constantly since he appeared at my car window, and I’m not sure why he’s doing all this, so I’ve spent the entire day imagining him as a serial killer trying to lower my keen defenses so I’ll fall for his unorthodox charm and then beg him to kill me during kinky sex.”

I spit out my fucking whiskey, that’s how funny that is. “Oh, shit.” I just shake my head. “You’re the strange one, Ashleigh, not me.”

“Sorry,” she says as she takes another sip, grimacing as she forces it down. “Sometimes I say things I should bury deep inside.”

“So, you think I’m a hot serial killer? And you’re still here because… it’s OK to be a serial killer as long as I’m eye-candy?”

She smiles, but looks down like she’s embarrassed.

“Or you know I’m not a serial killer and you trust me?”

“That,” she says, swallowing more alcohol. “I know you’re not a serial killer because you called your mom last night to let her know you were OK. You’re drinking because you miss your dad. You have friends who are worried about you because you ran away from some bizarre love triangle. And you’re not a guy who likes to talk about his feelings, so you were very mean to them when they wanted answers.” She lets out a long breath. “Serial killers are loners. And Dexter doesn’t count, he’s fake. So you’re not a serial killer, just a very attractive jerk who wants to be left alone so you can deal with your relationship issues in private.”

“Hmmm. Well, I guess you nailed it. Now it’s my turn.” She gives me a sideways glance that says bring it, so I don’t hold back. “You’re running from something, too. Maybe someone, but not the guy who gave you that ring. You love him, even if it is over, because you have it stamped on a dog tag. And maybe some people think a dog tag is just a cool piece of industrialized jewelry, but a woman who calls herself a Marine wife doesn’t. She takes that shit to heart. So you’re still in love with him, you might even want to see him again.” She looks up at this and I smile. “That right there just confirmed it. But you can use some attention right now, so you’re into the one-night stand while I’m around.”

She stares at her feet.

“How’d I do?”

“Close.”

“Which part did I get wrong?”

“You got enough right that I don’t want to talk about it anymore.” And then she gets up and smiles a very polite and very fake smile. “Thanks for the drink. I’m super tired, so I’ll see you tomorrow.” Then she walks away.

“Ashleigh.” I laugh out her name a little. “Come back here.” She shakes her head and treks up the stairs. “Ashleigh!”

But she’s serious. She never looks back or slows her retreat.

I hit her button and she is done.

Nice going, Ford. You’re a real fucking people person.

Chapter Fourteen

When I was a kid I knew I was a genius. No one had to tell me, and maybe that sounds… what? Egotistical? Conceited? Boastful? Arrogant? Prideful? And if I extrapolate out a little bit, it probably borders on selfish and indifferent as well. But it is what it is. I’m fucking smart. I’m way beyond fucking smart. I’m an intellectual anomaly.

And this did make me a little bit of a brat as a child. For one, I figured since I was so smart, I was a superhero and my superpower was mind-reading. Because that’s kinda what I thought my dad did. Before he knew the full extent of my intellect, he talked to me like any other kid. So when I asked him what he did for a living, he said he figured out what people are thinking. And to me that translated into mind-reading.

From that second on, because I was just as smart as my dad and I wanted to be like him, I decided my superpower was mind-reading.

My mind-reading
faux pas
with Ashleigh and her internal motivations for being where she is right now is something I do often. Most of the time I get the same result from my efforts, so I tend to ignore my superpower. But she started it. She dug into my mind, and she was cheating as far as I’m concerned. She heard my phone calls. Anyone could figure that stuff out from those telling phone calls. So she got what she asked for.

But let’s face it. I’m not your average guy. I’ve been to dozens of doctors over the years. More when I was small than when I got older, since I didn’t yet realize that admitting to what I could do and the issues I faced would lead to more doctors. But none of the doctors who examined me were very interested in
helping
me. No, they were only interested in
understanding
me. And they always asked the same question first. How did I learn Russian?

I have always said I didn’t know, it just came out. And that’s true, because I didn’t understand my photographic memory until I was a teen and I wanted to pass tests without studying. That’s when I realized that everything I’ve ever read and heard was imprinted on my brain. Almost catalogued in there like a library with a reference number that could bring it back to me if I ever needed it.

It’s like my brain is a museum and my consciousness is the curator of everything I’ve ever experienced. So if I were asked the Russian question again today, and I felt like telling the truth, I’d say,
I heard Mikhail Gorbachev giving a speech on TV. I watched it for about ten minutes and that was it. I decided I’d like to speak Russian.

How?
That would be their next question. They never got this far with me because I never admitted to learning Russian from the TV. If I had, I could tell them
why
it happened—that was the speech. But I wouldn’t be able to tell them
how
it happened. I don’t understand what I am, I just deal with it. And I do that by turning it off ninety-nine percent of the time. So most of my life is spent trying to be something I’m not.

The real me is filled with curiosity. I want to know everything. I want to understand everything. It pisses me off that there are things in this physical world that are unknowable. Just plain pisses me off.

So I have to turn me off. I have to be something else. I am forced to exist in a state of half-truths.

I try to not over-analyze things. I try to accept the things people say and not question them. I try not to assign motivations to actions and then make predictions.

But I’m not very good at being normal. For one, I typically just say what’s on my mind. Like all that stuff I said to Rook.

I wish I could go back. I’d like to take it back. I planned for that night for months. Ever since we got Ronin out of jail, I was planning my getaway. Because I knew the moment she said she wanted to save him that it was over for me. She belongs to him.

And I miss her. I miss our friendship. I miss our runs. I miss it all so,
so
much.

Those morning runs with Rook made life bearable for me. And I let myself be deluded up in Fort Collins. I wanted to believe so badly that Rook and I could just be friends, that I’d be OK with it.

But I’m not OK with it. I’m… crushed. Devastated. Hurt. Sad. Maybe even depressed. And I realize looking back that my window of opportunity with Rook was very narrow. Those first few days of the Shrike Bikes pilot, back when Ronin was busy with Clare and Rook was still deciding on what she wanted. That was the only chance I ever had and I blew it. I was a dick to her. She had no reason to trust me, let alone like me.

Why am I always surprised when the same fucking actions give me the same fucking results?

I want to change. I want to allow people to get close. But it’s difficult to just accept things. I’m not Zen. I have trouble simply existing and yet that’s the only way I know to survive. To assign motivations and insight to every possible movement, conversation, and change is to invite madness. But to ignore all those parts of me is to invite delusion. I am in a constant state of dynamic dichotomy. So I cope with the stress of who and what I am with physical activity.

The way I used to deal with things was through skiing, but I don’t ski anymore. Now it’s just running. I like solitary sports even though I’m pretty good at the team sports too. I only ever played baseball after I figured all this shit out. Because baseball is about as solitary a team sport as you can get.

But running. Running is the ultimate solitary sport. And for most people it’s them against their mind when they run marathons and stuff. Can they talk themselves out of the pain? Can they fool their tired muscles? Can they turn around their negative thoughts that tell them they will fail? Will they suffer to achieve the reward of completion? That’s the runner’s battle.

But for me, I
am
my mind. So I don’t compete with anyone. There’s no voice in my head saying I can’t do it. It’s the opposite in fact. If there is a voice in my head, then it’s my dad, and he only ever gave me encouragement. He only ever told me,
You can
.