Unintended

“Oh, yeah. I think Natalie mentioned that. I’m not going that far. I’ll be off at the next stop.”

Thank God.

I wasn’t sure I’d ever been on such a tension-charged journey. I knew my anxiety got high sometimes, but Ash’s energy when I sat down opposite him had almost knocked me out. He was buzzing with nerves, and when one of his girlfriend’s friends got on the train at the same station as me, I thought he was going to crumble. Luckily, she wasn’t going far, but it took the entire train ride to Birmingham to talk Ash down.

To be honest, it had shaken me too. I’d taken time off work for a trip with someone I didn’t know that well, knowing his girlfriend was, at the very least, a mild psychopath. Sure, she wouldn’t find out—the whole time Natalie’s friend had been on the train, I’d curled myself up and read from my Kindle app so she would never have known Ash and I were going to the same place—but even knowing that, I was uneasy. Whatever he wanted to talk about was not going to be good, and I was already at a loss for how to help. Maybe he wasn’t seeking advice though. Maybe he just wanted to get away, and to have a chance for someone to hear him.

That I could do.

It was too early to check in to the hotel, so we decided to have a long lunch in Birmingham New Street Station. As confusing as the platforms were, the upstairs shopping/food area was decent, so we headed to one of the restaurants. The cafe was decorated with Christmas garlands and trees. Festive music blared through the speakers. Once we’d ordered coffee and food, Ash’s posture was still pretty rigid. His eyes darted about the place, as if expecting to see someone he knew. It wasn’t impossible, of course, and after what happened on the train I understood why he was on edge, but we were far away enough from home that he should have at least been able to let go of some of his tension.

“Hey,” I said softly, and his gaze moved to my face. “It’s okay. Nobody knows you. Nobody knows me. We’re okay here.”

He nodded slowly. “I’m sorry. I didn’t sleep much last night. I thought for sure something would go wrong. Natalie would freak out about me leaving, or she’d find some reason to make me stay, or you wouldn’t be on the train, and…”

It had never occurred to me to let him down. I too had been nervous, but there was no way I wouldn’t have got on that train. I didn’t fully understand it, probably because I wasn’t ready to delve that far into my thought processes, but I felt as though I needed this time away too, with someone who didn’t have any expectations of me. Someone who didn’t know my past, and didn’t have any pre-conceived judgements about who I was. I wouldn’t have changed my best friends for the world, but sometimes, they were too close. Whatever happened over the next twenty-four hours, I was certain we would either cement our friendship, or we’d end it going our separate ways forever.

My stomach turned over, but I tried to ignore it and put my focus back on Ash. “But none of those things happened,” I interrupted gently. “Aside from the early… incident, we’re okay. We made it. Now all we have to do is relax.”

He shifted slightly. “About that.” He closed his eyes for a few moments, as if composing himself. It wasn’t working as his cheeks began to colour. “Natalie… when I go out… She has trust issues. If I go somewhere, she always asks me to take a photo to, you know, prove I’m where I said I was going.”

I felt my eyebrows rising towards my hairline. “Have you ever given her a reason not to trust you?” Aside from sitting in a different town, waiting to check into a hotel with a woman you barely know? The thought and his words brought on a fresh onslaught of panic. What if he was just a really good actor and he’d got me there to…

To what? No. The things he had told me, and the things I’d seen, were real. He was in a fucked up situation, and him meeting me wasn’t an act of disloyalty. It was an act of desperation.

“Never,” he said. “I’ve never cheated on her, and up until today, I’ve never lied about going to a gig.” He paused and scratched at the back of his neck for a second. “It wasn’t anything I did that made her not trust me. She just… doesn’t.”

“And she wants you to do this all the time? Wherever you go?”

He nodded. “Even when I go to work sometimes. She doesn’t always expect it when I’m at work now because, after a while, she ended up with a load of pictures of the bar on her phone. I had to try and make them different because one time it was really busy and I sent her a photo I’d sent her before. That didn’t go down well.” His eyes misted over, as if remembering something, but they quickly cleared. “But when I go to a gig, or anywhere that isn’t work, she likes me to prove where I am. And if she’s not home when I get back…” he trailed off, shaking his head.

“What?” I asked curiously. I didn’t mean to pry, but the amount of control she had over him was blowing my mind.

“When I got home from Exeter, she wasn’t in. She knew what time I would get back though, so I sent her a photo of the clock in the kitchen to show I was back at the right time.”

I blinked a few times, trying not to let my mouth drop open. “Jesus, Ash.”

Did he not see how wrong this was, or was he just ignoring it?

“So, tonight, I need to go to the club,” he said. “I know we’re not going in, but I just need to take a photo of the outside to prove I was there.”

“Will that be enough?” I asked, trying to prevent my eyes bugging out of my head. “You don’t have to go in?”

“No. The outside is usually enough. I never t

ake photos when I go to shows because I want to actually watch them, and not through my phone screen, so she doesn’t expect it.”

I nodded slowly.

“You don’t need to come with me,” he said quickly, and his expression told me this confession was humiliating enough without dragging me along to be a part of it. “I’ll just go there quickly in a cab or something, and then come straight back.”

“It’s okay,” I told him. “I don’t mind coming with you.”

He shrugged. “It’s up to you.”

“The other option is that we actually go. Maybe we can still get tickets on the door?” I wasn’t against it. Since we were there anyway, there was no reason not to. We had the rest of the day and night to talk; why not have a bit of fun while we were in town?

“They sold out yesterday. I’m sorry. If I’d known you wanted to go, I would have bought tickets.”