Page 92 of All Right No
Ash dropped the stick, at the same time Rock Giant lowered the carving knife, and reinserted it back into the knife block.
“What the hell are you doing here?”
His friend gave him a sheepish grin. “Didn’t much care for the plans for the Pagan piss-up my folks are hosting, so I thought I’d hang here and enjoy some long overdue solitude instead.” Curiously, he didn’t seem overly surprised by Ash’s presence now the initial alarm over him being a potential intruder was dissipated. “Ginny’s not with you?”
Ash shook his head, while sucking hard on his tongue.
“Yeah, gawd, I’m really sorry man.”
Ash reared on to his heels, somewhat taken aback. “You know?”
Rock Giant grabbed a swatch of paper off the sofa, and waved it at him. “It got left behind in the car. I took a look as it seemed important given the formal address on the envelope.”
Ash looked over the papers. It was documentation for a divorce filing, to end the marriage between Miles James Winters, esquire, and Geneva Christina Winters, on the grounds of adultery, naming him as the scummy bastard responsible.
Pain rammed through Ash’s head and threatened to make him hurl as he read that part. Paul caught him and shoved him onto the sofa.
“Do you want to clue me in on what happened?”
“Don’t wanna talk,” Ash muttered, and he didn’t. He’d left the bag of booze he’d purchased by the door. When he waved vaguely for it, Paul supplied him with his poison of choice. The weird thing was, though he claimed he didn’t want to talk, a great deal of words started slipping from his mouth: how she’d lied; how they’d broken up; his parent’s problems with the water pipes, and how his jeans had come to be soaking wet and chafing his calves. “No, I don’t know where she is now.” Was he supposed to care about that? He barely knew where he was.
The booze more or less went untouched, except when he needed to lubricate his vocal chords. The best part though, was that Paul let him ramble without once interrupting to tell him what to think, or to make a single judgemental or lame arse remark. In fact, he barely said a thing until Ash was thoroughly talked out, and had lapsed into a lethargic stupor.
“Can’t tell you how to fix it, or even say whether you should. It’s a lot to chew on, that’s for certain.”
“Yeah,” he said, sagging deeper into the sofa. “’tis.”
He lifted his head off the cushions a few minutes later. “I can’t believe you’re not going to offer me advice, or sympathetic words about how I’m better off without her.”
Rock Giant leaned over and rubbed the back of Ash’s neck, easing the strain Ash hadn’t even realised existed there. “I don’t make a habit of lying to my mates, not even when that’s what they’d like to here. Fact is, the last six months you’ve spent with her, you’ve been the happiest I’ve ever seen you and that’s despite all the crap you’ve endured. On some fundamental level she makes you whole, so while I can’t defend what she’s done, I’m not going to sit here and tell you that you’re better off without her as that’s blatantly not true.”
“You think I should forgive her.”
“I didn’t say that either. It’s a pretty hefty slice of her life real-estate that she’s withheld from you.”
“I thought I knew her.”
Paul ceased his rubbing, and rested his elbow on the sofa back. “I’m sure she had a reason for keeping it quiet, even if it’s one that only makes sense to her and not to the rest of us. People do dumb things for crazy reasons sometimes, even when they know they’re being stupid. I doubt the primary intention was to deceive you. Maybe she just didn’t know how to tell you, or she thought it would be instant game over if she did.”
“No,” he began, but then clamped his lips together. He couldn’t claim that wouldn’t have been his reaction. Fuck, in the end it had been his reaction.
“I thought we were set.”
Paul nodded. “I’m not sure any of us are ever as secure as we think we are.”
“Maybe Spook has the right idea in that relationships are best avoided.”
“I’m not sure Spook’s adhering to his own guidelines right now. And no, I don’t have concrete proof of that, only circumstantial evidence and suspicions. Also, look at Elspeth. She got what she wanted and still ended up screwed.”
She had a screw or two loose more like, but he had no intention of getting into a spat over Elspeth right now. Fact was, the band was far more cohesive since her exit than it had been since their very early days. He knew Paul saw that too, but he and Elspeth had been besties since before puberty. The big guy clearly still struggled with the decision to let her go. Although, really in the end it had been Elspeth’s decision as much as the rest of Black Halo’s.
Ash rubbed at his tired eyes. Somehow, all the talking had damped the anger that had been raging inside him when Ginny had first dropped her bombshell. He no longer felt as if he were going to turn green and burst his pants. Instead, his outrage had simmered down, leaving lethargy and nausea behind. If he wanted anything right now, it was to be able to close his eyes and drift into oblivion. Only when his eyelids slumped, he saw Ginny on the insides of them.
How had everything gone down the pan so rapidly?
Married.
All this time she’d been bound to some other guy and had never let slip even a whisper of it.
