The ride back was mostly a blur of awkward silence. The vampires took the lead, smoothly getting everyone in the cars without a spoken word. Kestrel put up more of a fight than was needed, but reluctantly got in the car, waving her cupped hand at her adoring male crowd. She would rather leave with style than stay past her welcome. She would remain a gossip to those boys, a college memory that they would relay back to when they were in their thirties. A girl that no one else could measure up to.
The girls gracefully took their places in the car we had originally came in. Ash marched to the expensive looking car he must have brought with him, glancing sideways at me. When I squeezed myself in the back, he twisted his jaw and slid easily into the driver's seat. Mark followed, nuzzling into the passenger's seat.
This is something I figured I would never see. My brother and Ash sitting beside each other like it was just a great day for a drive. I had never envisioned how exactly my choice of companion would change my path with my family. If I had chosen a road in the future with a boy I met in class or a co-worker, what then? Mark would want something good for me, something normal. Someone who could possibly be a friend to him, a brother. It's a shame for him that there will never be someone normal like that for me.
Ash's driving was dreadful. He refused to stay in any single lane and wove through traffic like it was a video game. I tried not to breath too heavy or flinch at the windows when he drove too close to the other cars. I couldn't take the silence.
"What's going on?" The question was repetitive, but I had yet to receive a consistent answer.
No answer. The engine revved to increase his speed beyond one hundred. I was impressed to see that Rowan's classy petite sedan was managing to keep up. Mark looked uncomfortable as he looked back and forth between the two of us. I probed Ash from the back seat as he stayed silent. It was as if my words just reverberated off of him, though I knew he had to have heard me.
I turned to Mark, looking for any sort of verbal interaction. "What are you doing here?"
"I had to tell him where you were, Mare. He was going to snap my neck off."
I couldn't help notice the smirk on Ash's profile. My heart fluttered, but my hand had a mind of it's own. I reached forward and tapped Ash's head with the palm of my hand.
"Ow." Ash responded with a flinch though he remained steady on the road. "I was never going to snap his neck off!"
Mark shrugged. "Could have fooled me." I almost went in for another slap.
"If anything I would have dragged you by your collar. But your head would still be firmly on." Ash spoke firmly, feeling the need to be literally justified. He sounded terse, annoyed by Mark's assumptions about his old self. There was a playfulness he was holding back, ready to surface. His personality was on a scale and he was struggling to balance.
"And you just brought him here? Did you print out MapQuest directions too?" If I was in imminent danger, I would have understood, but it wasn't looking that way. I saw no fire-breathing dragon, no bursting volcano, no zombie apocalypse. I just was not prepared for such an arrival from the last person I would ever expect.
"It didn't take that much convincing." Ash muttered. Mark looked at him with a look of betrayal. As if the previous car ride granted them some sort of bro code.
"Way to throw me under the bus." Mark pitched his voice high.
Ash shrugged. "Are you shocked?"
"You're lucky I didn't take a swing at you when you showed up at my doorstep, you know." Mark showed off his pathetic attempt at threatening pride.
"Very lucky." And, in return, Ash gave his attempt at sarcasm.
"You could have been in danger, Mare. He wasn't exactly sharing all the details." Mark returned to the former question, glancing back at me with his hands in the air. I locked eyes with him for a minute, considering what must have been going through his head when Ash showed up. Was he supposed to invite him in for a cup of coffee until I returned? I had trouble picturing Mark and Ash, curling up with warm drinks, chatting over the latest draft picks.
"Can you both stop talking about me as if I'm not here?" Ash muttered through clenched teeth.
"I will when you explain to me what you're doing here." I tried to keep my voice firm while my hands shook. My whole system was still in a slight form of comatose since his arrival. I was unsure why I was bothering with easing my need for answers. Ash had the look of a lip-locked murderer, at the stand with red hands, claiming he had no comment. I doubt he lost his quirky stubbornness.
"I should discuss this with my sisters first." I looked at him dumbfounded. Oh I just love being second choice with the in-the-know, I thought sarcastically.
"Or maybe we should wait until everyone is calm." Mark slipped in a comment, hoping to separate the thick awkwardness between us.
"Or until we're suitably dressed." Ash made an under the breath comment meant to be heard. I looked down at the ensemble I was wearing because I had forgotten that I wasn't in my usual T-shirt and jeans.
How dare he. So is that what he came back here for? To cover me up, yank me out of a college party and scold me about the consequences of not following the finger-tip length rule? I imagined him holed up in some lavish hotel, sipping on aged scotch, noticing a blinking red light from somewhere unknown, alerting him that – the worst has happened – Mary-Lynnette decided to go out and have fun for once. And Ash can't have that.
Should I be mad? Or happy that he noticed what I was wearing? I sat and contemplated my feelings for the rest of the ride in silence. Ash and Mark mumbled a few directions here and there, but nothing more was said about Ash's arrival.
Once we pulled into the gravel driveway of the sisters' abode, I came to the conclusion that I am mad. If I don't get an answer by tonight, I will peak to furious.
The three of us jumped out of the car to seek sanctuary from the jail cell of awkward silence. I stumbled slightly, balancing on the peaks of my shoes. Ash looked at me for the first time since we left the party. His face was void of emotion, of empathy. His eyes were surprisingly dull, colorless. His gaze touched my thighs, exposed and shaking.
I was reminded of his comment. From the look in his eyes, I could see no determination to protect, no fear for my well-being like back at the party. I saw an actual, physical need. A sadness that he couldn't fulfill.
"I can ask Jade for some jeans, she's sure to have something." I spoke abruptly, feeling strange about addressing fashion. He looked away, clearing his throat.
"Fine." he strode away toward the stairs, whipping his face away from my timid stance. He was avoiding any chance that we might indulge in each other. That he might just push me up against the tree and kiss me. Once he slammed the door behind him I released a whoosh of air. Relax. Relax. Relax. I had to breath before my body came to grips with the real gravity of the situation.
He's here. He's here.
After months and months of creating a delusion in my head of his arrival, I wasn't prepared for it to actually happen. I imagined a world ending apocalypse, lava meshing out of cracks in the cement and people running around in rampage. I would look up into the darkened sky, knowing the end was upon me. At the final moment where I decide to give up, Ash would come swooping down in a helicopter, his hair battling the wind caused by the swirling wings of the loud, battling machine. We would proclaim our love over the sound of the whooshing engine as he lifts me up to safety.
I frowned at my past imaginations of perfection. Is that what I really wanted? False romanticism?
There was a fine line between what I believed would happened and what I wished. This current predicament was nestled right on that fine line, something I was not prepared for. What I wished for was simply an impossible fantasy and what I figured would actually happen was that he would forget about me. I hated thinking about it, because my heart felt on the brink of shattering completely, but it was the most likely outcome. Out of his entire existence, we had been physically together for mere weeks. Soulmate or not, how does a human like me make such an impression? He had no real, plausible reason to come back for me. He was clad, handsome, invincible and immortal. There is more to the world than what exists in Oregon and I was a poor fraction of the population that actually matter. Not to mention that I was detrimental to his existence in the Night World. Once kiss and he could be sentenced to death. His return had become a representation similar to the Holy Grail. It was a beautiful dream I had, but it wasn't something I counted on. Each night when I had to admit that to myself, I felt like my insides were bursting. Like the fact of not seeing him again was too big for my brain to even contemplate. And now I'm caught on the fine line of his arrival. Something I never expected. I was drowning. But I was happy.