you for the iris bulbs,” I tell Buck. Then to Jessica, I add, “You’ll need to show me where to plant these.”
“You bet I will. I bought myself some just like them. I figure you and I can have gardening parties.”
“I hope that’s more fun than it sounds,” I tell her.
“It’s code for drinking wine and digging a couple of holes. We’ll have a blast.”
Jessica walks out the door first allowing me to kick Buck in the back of the legs when he leaves. He turns around and smiles at me. “Love you, Ash. Sleep tight.”
“Love you, too, loser.”
They walk away hand in hand. I’m happy for both of them, even if their happiness does make me feel a bit sorry for myself.
Between work and house stuff, the week flies by. Davis leaves four more messages for me. In his last one, he says, “I’m not going to call anymore. It’s obvious you don’t want to hear my explanation. I’m sorry things turned out this way.” Whatever. You get what you pay for. I’m not exactly sure what that means but it feels good to let my crabby out.
I start to get nervous when Sunday rolls around. Davis is due to pick me up at three to get his grandmother for family dinner. I spend the day trying to convince myself that I can be cordial and professional without getting all worked up.
For some inexplicable reason, I take extra pains to look nice. I decide it’s because I want to rub his face in what he’s losing out on. At two fifty-nine I walk out my front door expecting him to be waiting for me, but he’s not. Did I miss a memo? Has Sunday dinner been canceled?”
At 3:05, I decide I’d better call Lee and see what’s up. While I’m digging my phone out of my purse, I hear the beep of a horn and look up to find Emmie Frothingham waving to me from her car. What is she doing here?
As soon as I get in, she says, “Sorry I’m late. Faye didn’t want to go down for her nap.”
“I wasn’t expecting you,” I tell her.
She shoots me the side-eye while pulling out onto the road. “Didn’t Davis tell you I was picking you up this week?”
I think back to his messages and realize I didn’t listen to them all. When I saw they were from his number, I just skipped ahead to the last one. “I must have forgotten,” I tell her feebly.
“Ashley, what’s going on with you and my cousin?”
“What do you mean?” Playing dumb seems like my best option.
“I mean, what’s going on? Before you brought Gran home the first time, Davis warned me that I was supposed to pretend I didn’t remember you from high school.”
“What? Why? Why would you remember me?”
“Why wouldn’t I? We weren’t friends then, but that doesn’t mean I didn’t know who was who.”
“Davis never mentioned remembering me.” My heart is hammering so hard I can actually feel it beating.
“He said something about you acting like you didn’t know him, so he assumed that meant you didn’t want to be remembered.”
Of course I didn’t want to be remembered as FelAshleyO MoanRow, but who wants to feel so insignificant that they’re forgotten entirely? “So, you pretended not to know me because Davis asked you to?”
“Do you remember that day at the market when Jessica called you mentally challenged?”
“Unfortunately.”
“Well, I knew who you were then. I’m not so dim I’d forget.”
I shake my head. “I’m sorry, I’m totally confused. Why would Davis act like he didn’t know me?”
“I just told you,” she says. “He thought you didn’t want to be remembered. He said that every time he saw you after graduation, you used to hang your head or look away like you didn’t want him to see you. He took that to mean you wanted a fresh start. I think he was just trying to honor your feelings.”
“Do you know what Chad used to call me in high school?” I ask.
“Davis told me. I’m really sorry about that. Chad could be a real dick head during those years.”
Chad is still a dick head, but I don’t get into that. Instead, I can’t seem to stop thinking about the fact that Davis has known who I am all along. Did I really send out signals that made him think I didn’t want him to remember me? Did I really hang my head?
I try to think back to different times that I ran into