Page 38 of Hauling Ashe

I step forward to swipe our to-go cups from the counter and turn back toward Mae. She’s still planted by the bookcase.

“She died in a plane…” Mae’s voice falters and her head whips upward. Her eyes meet mine, confused, questioning, clicking together the puzzle pieces.

“We need to hit the road, sunshine.” I fight to keep my voice steady. There’s no flirt in my tone or hint of an answer to what she’s wondering. Without looking back at Mae, I carry both our cups and a bakery bag out to the parking lot and Mae follows, the slap of her sandaled feet quick behind me. She’s wearing another pair of jean shorts and a body-hugging T-shirt today. Her hair is down, but I expect her to tuck the pretty strands into a messy bun eventually. The air here is humid and warm.

“Tucker.” Her tone questions me as we near the car. “Was she your wife?” Exasperation—or is it astonishment—rings from her interrogative while I place the to-go cups on the roof and hit the fob to unlock the car.

After setting the cups inside in the cup holder, I start patting my pockets. Back pockets. Front pockets. I brush past Mae who remains standing near the driver side of the car and pop the trunk. I open my laptop bag, frantically searching within the multiple pockets for my phone.

“Tucker,” Mae’s voice softens, and a hand comes to my wrist. “You can tell me.”

I’m still leaning over the trunk, hands in my bag when I stop. I do not want to talk about this. “Why would you think such a thing?”

“Ash with an e?”

I could deny I was married to the famous influencer. I could pretend I’ve never heard of her, but I’m certain Mae must have known. Why wouldn’t she? Jane knew I was married to Rochelle Ashe, who had taken my stage name as her own.

Placing my hands on the edge of the trunk opening, I exhale. “It’s not like you didn’t know, right? Jane told you. That’s why you were hitting on me that first day.”

“What?” Mae’s mouth falls open. “No, I didn’t know anything.”

She’d given me the short list of what she did know about me, and widower was on it. She must have known the truth of who my wife was.

“Jane told you.”

“She didn’t.” Something begs me to believe Mae, but my steamrolling thoughts overrule.

“Yes, Rochelle Ashe was my wife. She died in a plane crash and what people don’t know is she was leaving me to run off with her boyfriend.”

What they also don’t know is that I’d caught onto her affair months earlier, and I’d asked her for a divorce weeks before that fateful plane trip. Before the plane when down with my still-wife and her lover on board.

“All those Liven Up Thursdays were bullshit. We fought constantly. I love my husband more than anything—” I throw my voice in a mocking feminine sound and toss my arms up into the air. “It was all for show. Family is everything. She was a terrible mother.” I have no idea why I’m telling Mae any of this, but I can’t seem to stop myself. “She didn’t believe in equality for women, either. She believed in her own bottom line and the adrenaline rush she got when people loved on her.”

Rochelle was an attention whore and she learned it well from her father. He was a charismatic man, but so was mine, and perhaps that’s what attracted my eventual wife to sleep with my father before I married her. She became pregnant with dear old dad’s child, who I claimed as my own. I was the father of my brother, technically, but I’d never thought of our situation that way. Jude was my son. My son.

“I’m so—”

“Don’t.” I snap, turning on her. “Don’t say you’re sorry.” I reach for the trunk lid and slam it in place.

“I lost my phone,” I bark as if that’s the issue at hand instead of the revelation of one more secret to this woman. I don’t know why I’m suddenly so angry. Maybe I just didn’t want Mae to know this piece of my past. This drowning weight suffocating me along with so many other things.

I recall the look Mae was giving that damn book. The one where psychologists wrote the details and Rochelle claimed the information as her own philosophy. What started as simple blogging led to a movement, and I bought into the appeal. I believed in the power of Rochelle and the message we spread to others, only it all backfired on me.

“We can go back to the hotel.”

“What?” I don’t understand Mae’s suggestion.

“For your phone. Maybe you left it in the room.”

In the room, where I want to rewind, and pretend I never mentioned Jude’s birth or my failure as a rock star. Then we’d never be here, where Mae learns about Rochelle. None of my thoughts make sense, and I’m not being fair, but I can’t see further than hitting this highway and getting the fuck out of here.

Doubling back feels like a waste of time but we’re only five minutes from the place. Without a word to Mae, I step to the driver’s door, and she circles the back of the car. I start the ignition before she’s even entered, and her seat belt is hardly on when I slam into reverse and turn back for the hotel.

The girl working the desk has to escort me back to the room, which hasn’t been cleaned yet, and I search the dresser, the nightstand, and finally the rumpled sheets on the bed before finding the damn device.

Taking a final glance at the bed, I pause with visions of Mae pressed to my back, her hand on my ass. Her soft kiss to my skin. She’d done it all subconsciously. Not because it was me, but because I was a warm body, filling in for someone else, as I’d always been.

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