Page 27 of Don't Hate Me
Marc
It had been a stupid impulse. I was in town because I’d worked at the office today, and Ash had said she had an event in the city. Trevor had known Arthur’s schedule, so I thought…
I’d stop by. She wanted to see me. We were in the same city for once. How hard could it be?
I hadn’t seen her in person since Florida. As much as we texted, as much as we talked, Google chats weren’t seeing her in person. She was right to want that. I wanted it, too.
Obviously, I knew I couldn’t walk up to her and say hello. Instead, I’d hung out across the street on the edges of Central Park where I could see the action. I was going to send her a text. Let her know I was outside.
She could have made an excuse to go the bathroom and we would have had some time.
Minutes. Enough time for me to kiss her. Touch her. Hold her. Enough time to watch her face light up because I’d done something remotely romantic and made this happen.
I was supposed to be heading to Princeton tonight. I had a shit ton of schoolwork that had to be completed in advance of this week. Instead, I’d taken the subway uptown. Hung around for what was now more than an hour, only to watch as some slick dude approached their car as it pulled up. I saw her back as she exited the car, then he took Ash’s arm.
Bent down and kissed her cheek.
She smiled. She didn’t pull away. They knew each other.
That was my cheek. Her arm was my arm. I should have been the one escorting my fucking girlfriend to the damn event, but instead, I was standing across the street like the little fucking drug addict’s boy I was.
Rage filled me. I thought of going over there, breaking into the event, lifting Ash over my shoulder and stealing her away. What a scene that would cause.
Except it would out us as a couple and that wasn’t the plan.
The plan was for me to graduate first, which now I could officially do this year.
Then what?I wondered. We continued to hide in the shadows while she appeased her father? We confronted Arthur and suddenly hoped for his blessing?
It wasn’t like the money was going to come instantly. I would need to work for a while to save up enough cash to eventually get a place of my own. What was Ash going to do? Work? She’d never held a job in her life.
No college education, no practical experience. A semester of fucking finishing school. The best she might hope for was a waitressing gig.
A waitress.
I lifted my gaze to the five-star hotel across the street. Ash and her father had long since disappeared inside, but the flow of elegant people continued to roll in. She was going to walk away from all of this?
To be a waitress?
The anger that had fueled me, that nearly prompted me to walk inside and claim what was mine, drained out of me. All I was left with was reality.
Ashleigh thought she loved me. She thought love was strong enough to see us through anything. She thought I desperately needed her love in order to function.
All very romantic, very impractical thoughts.
She was a princess and she was supposed to marry a prince. Or, at the very least, someone who was as rich as she was.
I was the chauffer’s charity case nephew and I was supposed to know my place.
Tucking my hands into my jeans pockets, I hunched my shoulders into a coat not quite heavy enough to ward off the winter chill, and left.
* * *
Princeton
Marc
Early the next morning I woke up in my dorm room to a bunch of texts. Sent early enough she wouldn’t have expected a response.
