Maybe Craig's dad would have hated the guitar, but Joey didn't look too thrilled with it, either. We stood in the doorway, crept into the edge of the kitchen. Joey sat at the table with bills in front of him and a dismayed expression on his face. I noticed this but Craig didn't seem to. He just plopped the guitar case on top of the bills and scattered envelopes that surrounded Joey.
It had to do with the price of the guitar, that's when Joey backed away from it like it was dirty. Before that he had seemed nearly as excited as Craig was about it. But Craig shrugged and it wasn't much of my concern, and we left the kitchen and Joey's scowling expression and the white mountain of bills. We went to the garage.
It brought me back, the garage. All the times we had come in here, playing music. Laying on the couch, making out. How much I had wanted to go further but wouldn't let myself, wouldn't allow that until I was sure he loved me and could say it. How naïve and demanding I had been.
He lifted the guitar from its case like taking a baby from a cradle, and it rested in his arms. I looked at the gleam on the body of the guitar, I looked at his eyelashes as they nearly touched his cheeks. He played a few quick chords and then looked up at me, the smile wide and beautiful. My breath caught. How could this work? How could we be friends?
"Uh, Craig, I think I should go," I said, but reluctantly. His smile slipped for a second and then he shrugged.
"Okay," he said easily, and I looked down.
"Hey," he said as I was nearly at the door, my hand on the doorknob. He grabbed my arm and I looked at his hand holding my arm and then I looked at him.
"Ash, uh, thanks for today. It really made me feel better," Oh God, the way he could get that naked emotion into his voice, in his eyes. It just pulled you along.
"Yeah, no problem," I said, and I so wanted to kiss him. I probably could, if I just leaned in toward him. But we, we weren't in that space anymore. We weren't anything anymore. The friendship wasn't rebuilt, not just from one day of insane guitar shopping. We were on unsteady ground, on a fault line. So I couldn't kiss him or anything like that, despite wanting to.
"See you tomorrow," I said, and he said sure and bye again and I left. Out in the cool September night air, wrapping my arms around myself. I walked briskly to my house, thinking lustful thoughts that wouldn't come to anything.
"Ashley, where have you been?" My mother, and she was looking at me with her hawk eye. My mother was nearly psychic. It was like she knew I was with Craig. How did she know?
"Just out," I said, not able to admit to her where I was, who I was with. She'd lecture me up and down, I could hear it now, 'what, Ashley, you were with Craig? After what he did to you? After the way he hurt you? What are you thinking?' So, uh, no. I couldn't admit anything to her.
She still gave me that evil eye, her arms crossed. But she didn't understand. She didn't understand that I was willing to give him another chance, at least as far as friendship was concerned. It wasn't for her to understand. I just wished she'd trust me a little more, trust me to make my own mistakes and learn from them. Sometimes parents want to put you in this safe padded box where nothing will ever hurt you. They don't realize that being in that cramped, dark, airless box hurts, too.
"Where have you been, Clarice?" Toby said in his creepy Hannibal Lecture voice. I smiled. Toby wasn't the annoying little toad he'd been. I mean, I could see the humor in him now.
"With Craig," I said, and waited for his reaction. He shook his head in mock sorrow.
"Oh, Clarice, do you think that's wise?"