Starlight on the Snow - Chapter Eight

Author's Note: I've updated quite a few chapters (Chapters 5-7) in a short span of time, so be sure to backtrack and catch up! Updates will be fairly quick because the books are completely written, they just need to be edited and I'm editing as I go. So it will be often that you check back and see multiple updates. I'll try to put an author's note here and there to let you know how many chapters were put up so you know where to go back to. I also have all the posts categorized in the Starlight on the Snow category so you can access them from the dropdown!

Another quick note: This book series was already published under my name in 2021, so do be aware of that. I'm just offering it on my blog for free. The books will be available for sale again in case you want physical copies to read and reread, but they will also be available here on my blog for free.

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Chapter Eight

September 2017

They’d been in school for two weeks and so far, they had been coexisting on ice.

It turned out that Ash was excellent at following rules: he’d kept his weed smoking to the balcony, he only drank on the weekends with his friends, and he never invited anyone over. He hardly spoke to Tayshia, but he could tell she was surprised that he was actually sticking to the agreement.

Which sort-of sucked since he hadn’t slept with anyone in over eleven months.

It wasn’t like he could just have a date over to Andre’s couch. Andre had Ji Hyun over, but it was his apartment. Ash had bought a new phone and downloaded all of the dating apps, but he hadn’t actually made any accounts besides one yet. He’d talked to one girl for a hot minute but then realized it might be awkward to have her over with Tayshia there, so he’d unmatched her before the number exchange.

Tayshia, on the other hand, was horrible at following rules.

Ash had bought a TV when he went to the furniture store, so every day, she could be found sitting on the floor between the couch and coffee table with her classwork on the glass top and food in her mouth. She left her dishes everywhere.

Every-fucking-where.

She left them on the coffee table, put them on the kitchen counters, and let them pile up in the sink. She ate constantly, cooking things and leaving a mess behind. And each time Ash cleaned the kitchen until it was spotless, she never said thank you.

She was weird, too. She would be in the bathroom for thirty or forty minutes with the fan on the entire time. He didn’t want to judge anyone’s bathroom activities, but like...did she pop laxatives like pills every day, or...?

It was annoying. Everything she did was annoying.

At school, they had two classes together: Myths & Legends and Intro to Psychology. Ji Hyun was in both of them, too, so Ash always had someone to sit next to, but it was clear by the energy from the other students that he was not someone they were fond of.

In the hallways of the school, it was the same. Whether he was walking past the high school or the pre-requisite program students, he endured silence and glares. Even the kids he’d hung out with before graduation looked at him with wariness, in spite of the fact that most of them had been at his welcome home party. It felt like he was surrounded in a thin glass case and the people around him were carrying rocks, waiting for the moment to strike. Any day, he knew someone would grow tired of waiting and the glass would shatter.

“How do you feel about that?”

Ash looked down at Elijah, blinking off the shroud of his thoughts. His cheeks grew hot as he realized he’d been staring out across the cafeteria at Tayshia. They were on their lunch break, waiting for their next class to begin. Tayshia was at a table near the wall, while Ash and Elijah were near the large glass windows opposite her.

“What did you say?” Ash set his fork down on his empty plate, the colorful tattoos on his arm coming into view as he did so. “Also, we need to go.”

“I said I’m going to kill you.” Elijah grinned. “How do you feel about that?”

“I feel that that would not be ideal.” Ash grabbed the strap of his black backpack and stood up. “I may have to kill you in return. It’s only fair.”

Elijah hopped to his feet and his grin turned wolflike. “But that would imply that you have the power to come back after death. You can’t do that—this isn’t a video game.”

“I can do whatever I want,” Ash said, gathering up his plate and the plastic fork so he could throw them away. “I have the power to do things you can’t even imagine.”

Elijah narrowed his eyes and then pointed at him. “No. Nope. You can’t do that. I’m laying you out with my fist, or a game controller. Whichever feels more satisfying.”

“Why not both?” Ash said with a smirk. “You can come over after school and game if you want. Only thing I ask is that the fist is CGI. We can play a fighting game first."

“Both. I like both.”

As they walked toward the door, Ash glanced over at Tayshia again.

She sat alone. She had categorized the different components of her chicken salad on her plate by color. As odd as he found it, it wasn’t the first time he’d seen her do strange things with her food.

At home, he’d seen her spend an hour making one meal just to scarf it down and spend a second hour making another one. He’d also seen her organize the refrigerator by color after she bought her groceries.

Tayshia was fucking weird.

Ash didn’t mean to, need to, or want to stare at her when he was trying to put her behind him. When he was trying to forget about the fact that everything was shitty and had been shitty since the ice cream incident. Though the despondency his guilt caused had never gone away, it was bearable now. The staring just seemed to happen from time-to-time. Usually at mealtimes, and usually because she was doing something strange.

Part of his reason for staring was because she still wore the necklace.

He wondered if her dreams were as vivid as his.

Ash noticed that he was being stared at as they walked out of the cafeteria. He was used to it with how many tattoos he had now. They were random but they told a story. One that only Ash knew the plot of. A plot that he would never be able to explain.

The school didn’t seem to care that he or any of the other of-age students had tattoos. They only cared about grades. So, the teachers didn’t do much more than ask questions or ask to see the ones on his arms. But he could see it in their eyes—they were wary of him, too.

The tattoos that seemed to land him the most stares were the ones that crawled along his neck, wrapping around the front of it like a collar. When he hadn’t been able to stop thinking about how desperate Tayshia’s pleas for help for her father had been, he had Diego tattoo roses wrapped in chains across the base of his throat. They stretched above his already-tattooed collarbones, choking him. So, he wasn’t surprised that everyone was staring at him now.

He probably looked like a felon.

---

On the night of August 17th, Ash had a nightmare.

He couldn’t explain it. It was dark—just inky blackness in his mind. He didn’t know what he’d seen or what had happened because it was so dark and so confusing, but he knew that it was her that he heard screaming. He heard her voice saying the same three words that had destroyed him at the ice cream shop.

I’ll do anything.

He’d woken in a cold sweat on Andre’s couch, stumbling into the kitchen to guzzle an entire glass of water in the darkness. Feeling dazed, he’d occupied himself wondering if maybe he’d just smoked too much weed before he fell asleep, only to remember that he’d fallen asleep after taking one dab. That definitely wouldn’t cause a full-blown hallucination.

The nightmare was just that—a nightmare.

It was the only nightmare he’d had since putting the crystal back around his neck, and he didn’t think he’d ever get an explanation for it. It unsettled him.

She unsettled him.

“You’re so lucky,” Elijah whined on the present day as they climbed into Ash’s car. He looked down to buckle his seatbelt, a lock of his wavy hair falling forward into his eyes.

“Why?” Ash asked, one hand on the back of Elijah’s seat as he turned around to look out the back windshield while pulling out of his parking spot at the school.

“Because you get your own apartment—with a kitchen, Ash! Do not rob me of my envy!” Elijah held up a dramatic finger when Ash started to speak. “I’m still at home with my mom and we have a damn roommate. And you know that bitch is in the kitchen twenty-four-seven.”

Ash rolled his eyes. “No one is trying to rob you. You’re welcome to cook shit in my kitchen.”

“Didn’t you say Tayshia’s always there, though? How does she feel about guests using her appliances? Can I keep leftovers in your fridge? Any leftovers I put in mine just get eaten, and my mom always takes her side.”

“She’s around.”

They turned up Elijah’s music on the aux cord as they drove down the mountain road, passing the school shuttle bus on its way up. The band playing was one that had released a new album while Ash was in jail, so he was hyped to hear it blasting out of his car stereo. They rolled the windows down, lit a joint, and bumped the speakers as loud as they could stand.

There was something deeply freeing about being able to just drive down the road with the windows down, blasting metalcore. He’d only been in jail for eleven months, but sometimes when he was lying in his cell at night, nursing wounds from fights that day, he felt like he would never be free again.

He’d taken a lot of things for granted.

When they got back to the apartment, they were both shocked to see that the kitchen was a disaster. There were dirty pans on the stove, containers that had been used to prepare ingredients scattered all over the counters, and dishes stacked in the sink that nearly reached the faucet. The smell of multiple types of cooked food mingling together gave Ash an almost instantaneous headache.

Of all things Ash would have thought about Tayshia Cole, he would not have thought she was this messy.

His gaze swept to the right, into the living room.

There were dishes and cups all over the coffee table. If he counted, he was sure he’d discover that she’d used every single dish he’d bought.

“Whoa,” Elijah said, eyes widening as he looked at all of the nonsense Tayshia had left everywhere. “It looks like the kitchen blew up in here. It reminds me of—”

“Hell?”

“Not particularly, but...” Elijah snorted with laughter. “I mean, what sort-of Hell do you think they’re sending us to? If there’s food, sign me the fuck up.”

Ash dropped his backpack onto the dining room table, casting a distasteful glance into the living room. Among the dishes on the coffee table was an open textbook with a notebook placed haphazardly across it. The TV was on. The bathroom door in the hallway was closed.

“Well, you’re wrong about one thing,” he bit out through clenched teeth. “This already is Hell.”

Elijah looked around and crossed his arms over his chest. “I would have thought Tayshia was the type to be like, clean. This is...well, it’s kinda—”

“Out of fucking pocket.”

Ash stormed over to the coffee table and started cleaning up. He slammed Tayshia’s textbook shut with the notebook inside it, then gathered up all of her dishes and set them on the counter by the kitchen sink. His forehead ached from how hard he was frowning.

Ash had lost count of how many times he’d told her in a calm tone to clean up after herself, and he was about ready to stop using a calm tone. He was starting to want to raise his voice.

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen you look so mad," Elijah said, sounding amused.

“I’m going to lose my shit,” Ash growled from the sink, “if she doesn’t knock it off.”

Ash turned away from the messy sink, facing Elijah. He looked disturbed.

“What?”

“It’s weird,” Elijah said.

“What’s weird?”

“You.” Elijah’s eyes narrowed into slits.

“How am I weird?”

“No, you’re not weird. You’re being weird. There’s a difference.”

“No, there’s not.”

“Oh yes, there is.”

“How am I weird?” Ash was very close to yelling.

“You’re being so calm about this. You spent the past four years treating her like trash. Like, you didn’t even treat her like the trash in the can.” Elijah lifted his hands and moved them about, pantomiming the shape of a trash can. “You treated her like the can the trash goes into, and then you threw your trash into her for four years. Why aren’t you like, flipping out and screaming? Bro, it’s weird.”

Ash felt his guilt rising up.

He hadn’t bullied her or anything, but he hadn’t been nice to her. She hadn’t been very nice to him, either. In ninth grade, the first time they’d met had been because she stumbled upon him and a few of the other scholarship kids smoking weed behind the school. He’d cussed at her and called her a foul name and while it wasn’t his crowning achievement in life, it hadn’t stopped her from calling him a waste of space.

Ash had learned in jail when it was important to reign in his temper and when it was important that he let it out. Tayshia was messy—exorbitantly so—but he didn’t want the exhaustion that came after him blowing up. Especially if it wouldn’t solve anything.

The clock would have to continue to tick for now.

“It’s not weird,” he said, turning back to the sink so he could start organizing the dishes for cleaning when he had the energy. Lord knew Tayshia wasn’t going to do it.

“Yeah, it’s a little weird.”

“Just drop it,” Ash snapped, waving his hand in a dismissive motion. “The last thing I need is to start yelling and get the cops called on me.”

“Yeah,” Elijah said, walking up to the bar and leaning over it, watching Ash organizing dishes. “They’d probably arrest you for breathing at this point.”

Ash smirked and moved to retort, but the door to the bathroom opened suddenly, drawing the boys’ attention.

Tayshia stepped out of the hallway wearing a pair of leggings and a sweater, like she always wore. Her curls were pulled up into a knot at the top of her head, a few coiling pieces hanging down around her face to frame it.

She looked surprised to see Elijah standing there. It was only the second time that he’d been in the apartment, and she never had anyone over, so seeing other people inside of it was jarring.

Ash wasn’t surprised to see her, as she usually made it home before he did because her last class ended twenty minutes before his did, and she got rides home from friends. However, when Ash saw her in the halls at the school, she wasn’t quite as social as she’d been the years before.

It seemed like she was a completely different person.

She always had seemed like she had a lot of friends, so he surmised that either she was a private person now, or she’d never really been friends with any of those people. Even though most of their graduating class had gone on to universities instead of staying on for the program, he distinctly remembered her having friends in all grades. But he never saw them with her anymore.

As for Kieran, Ash had seen him around, but they didn’t have any classes together. According to Tayshia’s audible phone conversations at night, she and Kieran were still together.

“You just gonna stand there staring, or you gonna be polite?” Ash arched one eyebrow and gestured to Elijah with mock-theatrics.

“Dude, it’s fine,” Elijah said. “We’re cool.”

“Cool?”

“Yeah. We’re friends.”

“Then why is she just standing there?” Ash asked, frowning.

“Because I can stand wherever the fuck I want.” Tayshia raised her eyebrows. “And I was just surprised to see you still had friends.”

Her words smashed into him like rocks and he fought the urge to flinch. Something about her insults hit harder than they should have. Like she could burn him with her voice.

Ash supposed he deserved that, after everything he’d done. He and Tayshia didn’t speak, so it wasn’t like he’d ever had the chance to sit her down and talk about the past. He knew he’d done bad things. He’d made mistakes, and he’d served time to pay for them. He was still paying for them in installments for restitution.

But he wasn’t a monster.

“Yes,” he snapped, glaring at her, “I know it’s hard to believe. But yeah. I have friends.”

Tayshia merely gave him a once-over with her gaze, then walked into the living room. She walked over to the coffee table, bending over to grab her textbook. In the awkwardness of the silence, Ash could sense that she was disgruntled by the fact that he’d cleaned.

He looked over at Elijah, seeing that he was grimacing.

“Yes, Elijah, it’s always this awkward.”

“Uhh...no, I...that’s not...” Elijah’s eyes widened as he looked back and forth between Tayshia and Ash.

She stood there, hugging her textbook and notebook against her chest as she stared directly into Elijah’s eyes. She was shorter than both boys, coming only to about Ash’s shoulders, but with the way she carried herself, she seemed taller than both of them.

“It is awkward,” she said.

Elijah winced. “Yeah. A little.”

It wouldn’t be so awkward if Tayshia wasn’t such a bitch half the time. She said things so bluntly. Ash had always been the bluntest of his group of friends. He always felt the urge to say what he really thought, lest anyone form preconceived notions about him and use them against him.

He wasn’t used to someone else being just like him.

Tayshia gave Elijah a bit of a smile, then headed for the hallway.

“I’m sure you’ve noticed the mess,” Ash said, tone icy as he spoke to her. His words stopped her dead in her tracks. “Gonna leave it for me to clean up, as usual?”

“Gonna smoke weed on the balcony like I can’t smell it whenever you do?” she retorted. “As usual?”

“In the bathroom for forty-five minutes?” Ash’s voice held a note of challenge as he viewed her. “As usual?”

“Interested in my bathroom activities, Ash?” She raised the gentle arch of one eyebrow. “I didn’t think you were one of those guys.”

Ash ran a hand through his hair in agitation as he once again considered raising his voice. “How would you know what sort of guys there are? I highly doubt you’ve interacted with any guy other than Kieran. And that’s not a compliment.”

Her eyes flashed. “I don’t need interactions to know what different types of guys there are.”

“Where’d you learn about them?” Ash smirked. “The Bible?”

“Just because we go to a Christian school doesn’t mean we’re all religious,” she shot back. “And even if I was, I wouldn’t need the Bible to tell me that you’re a bad guy.”

Elijah ran his hands through his hair, appearing anxious. “Guys...”

Ash walked out of the kitchen. He towered over Tayshia, causing her to have to crane her neck. Her glare faltered, but she kept her back straight.

“What are you gonna do?” she challenged. “Hit me?”

Okay, now he was mad.

Gabriel had beaten his ass for years. The fact that Tayshia thought that low of him made him sick to his stomach. Did she really hate him that much? He wasn’t sure which bothered him more. Her insinuation that he would hit her or being considered anything like his father.

Both fucking sucked.

“Why don’t you keep leaving your shit all over the apartment?” he said, his voice starting to rise. “Then you can find out how bad a guy I can be.”

Her eyes were alight with indignation. “No matter how many interactions I may or may not have had, they’re not your fucking business, Ash.”

“Oh. She says fuck now.” He sneered. “Not so much of a good girl anymore, are you?”

“She bites, too,” she snarled. “And if you don’t stop running your mouth, you gone find out.”

Ash crossed his arms, breathing a laugh as he took the final step toward her. He dragged his gaze up her body in a scrutinizing way and then locked eyes with her.

“If you don’t start cleaning up your shit...” he said, his voice a slow hiss. “...I’ll show you what I learned in jail.”

The flames died out within her eyes. She took a couple of steps back and for the first time, she looked genuinely nervous. Uncomfortable.

Afraid.

“Ohhh, dear.” Elijah scrubbed his face with his hands and pulled the largest grimace Ash had ever seen him pull. “Why don’t we all just chill, all right?”

Tayshia lowered her eyes for a moment, a strange expression that looked like a mix between puzzlement and languor crossing her face, and then she blinked.

Ash let out his breath and then cleared his throat. He opened his mouth to speak, but it felt like the walls of the room were closing in on him.

He wasn’t like his father. He didn’t want to be, but she was driving him fucking spare. With the books on the floor and the dishes and the bathroom trips and the attitude, it was just...

Frustrating.

“You cleaned,” Tayshia finally said in a tight voice, just when Ash thought he was going to pass out from how thick the air was in the room. She scanned the area, glare roving the floors and the couch as if seeing them for the first time. “So I’m not sure why if you’re so upset by me leaving messes, you keep cleaning them up. If you’d just left today’s mess there, I would’ve gotten around to it.”

“It was a mess.”

“Everything was exactly where I left it.”

“It was a mess,” Ash repeated in a slow, incredulous tone.

Elijah held up his forefingers. “An organized mess.”

Tayshia and Ash both stared at him. Ash wanted to shave all of the hair off of Elijah’s head, but Tayshia laughed. She actually laughed and Ash couldn’t help it.

He stared.

She had a ridiculously nice set of teeth. Had they always been that white?

Tayshia moved past him, into the kitchen. “Even took my dishes, too, didn’t you?”

“Right.” Ash scowled. “That.”

“Yes. That.” She pursed her lips and furrowed her brow, twisting her mouth as though she were lost in thought.

“‘That?’ What is ‘that?’” Elijah looked confused.

“The princess doesn’t like her dishes being touched, moved, cleaned, or otherwise acknowledged,” Ash said in a saccharine-sweet voice, his upper lip curling.

“Queen,” Tayshia corrected, lips still pursed. There was so much attitude in her face that it grated on Ash’s nerves. “Don’t do me like that.”

“Why?” Elijah asked, scratching the back of his head. “The dishes, I mean.”

Ash turned to Tayshia. “Yes, Your Majesty. Why?”

As usual, he saw her gaze dip down to the tattoos on his neck and collarbones, and the ones on the part of his chest that disappeared into the neckline of his shirt. He wondered if she knew what guilt the ones on his neck represented.

She glared at him for a moment before she turned her nose up into the air. Holding her textbook and notebook against her body with one arm, she gestured to the sink with a flourishing wave of her hand.

“I just don’t like my dishes being touched when I haven’t finished my food.”

“The dishes were empty,” Ash spluttered.

Tayshia whirled on him. “They were still mine!”

“Yours? You wanna get technical?! Fine, let’s get technical. Everything in this place is mine. The couches, TV, dishes, the shit in the bathroom...I’m the one who bought all of it!”

“Yeah, and where’d you get the money? You ain’t even got a job, bro! Did you steal it?”

He breathed another mirthless laugh. “Oh, you fucking bi—”

“In all fairness... !” Elijah clapped his hands once and rubbed them together. “They were empty. They looked empty.”

“Unless you like licking the bowls? Because you can pull them right back out of the sink and do that if you want,” Ash said in a sarcastic tone. “And for the record, I’m not a fucking creep. It’s one thing to have been to jail, but it’s a completely different thing to literally listen to someone while they’re in the bathroom. Which is what you were insinuating.”

She scoffed. “I was just—”

“Running your mouth,” he snapped. “So, if you’re finished standing around and causing drama, can you go? I have to clean the kitchen.”

Tayshia scowled. Without another word, she stalked off. Her bedroom door slammed shut.

Elijah let out an audible sigh.

“Jesus fucking Christ, that was...that was a thing.”

Ash went back to the sink to start cleaning, not replying. This wasn’t the first time he’d had a negative interaction with Tayshia, and he was sure it wouldn’t be the last.

In fact, if she kept leaving her mess all over the apartment, he was sure of it.