Ashley's Deal

"I will."

*

Another evening, a week, later, after sex, Ashley decided she had to ask.

"Do you really think badly of me," she said. "Because of this. Because of everything at home?"

Rose shook her head.

"I kind of need to know if I'm going to keep seeing you. I don't want to be around people who think badly of me."

"I really don't."

"Be honest."

"I don't disapprove. I'm just curious."

"That's all?"

"I don't care. You told me at the very start what the situation was. I'm curious, that's all."

Ashley was surprised. "Oh."

"Isn't that what you wanted all along? Me not to care?"

"I suppose so."

"You're not going to leave him, are you?" Rose said. "So you and I, no matter what happens, we have no future."

Ashley looked at her. "Is that okay?"

"It's just sex, right now."

"And later?"

Rose shrugged. "Later happens later. I'll probably get sick of you."

It took Ashley a moment to realize she was joking. Probably.

"What?" Rose said. "You seem kind of high maintenance. I don't think I could afford you."

Ashley decided to ignore that. She leaned forward and kissed Rose instead. "Thank you."

"For what?"

"Understanding. For not making this hard."

"I think I understand."

"You sound like you do. I love him. I really do. I want to be with him. And I want to fuck you. And if you're okay with it, that's what I'll do."

Rose thought for a while. "I'm okay with it."

"So am I." Ashley rolled over and kissed Rose again. "So thank you."

They lay there a bit longer. "I suppose I should go," Ashley said. "I have some shit I need to read before tomorrow morning."

"Okay."

"I want to see you again."

"I assumed. How about Wednesday? I have a half-shift."

Ashley got out of bed, went into the hall for her bag, and got out her diary. She didn't like PDAs. She needed paper. She went back into the bedroom. "Not Wednesday," she said. "Unless it's very late. How about Friday?"

"I need to book you a week ahead?"

Ashley looked at her for a moment, then closed the diary. "No, of course not."

"But if I phone on Wednesday and ask if you're free?"

Ashley opened the diary again. "I'll be in a meeting. Probably. Unless it's between three and four."

Rose kept sitting there.

"But if you say it's urgent, and ask them to get me, they can. And then I'll move as much as I can around to see you."

"You don't need to do that."

"I want to do that."

"I won't. Take advantage. Just tell me when you can, okay?"

"Late Wednesday night?"

"What about Friday."

Ashley sat there for a moment. "I don't want to wait that long."

Rose smiled, smug. "Then come over as late as you want. I'll stay up."

Ashley got dressed and kissed her a few more times and went home.

*

In Rose's bed, after sex, watching Rose smoke, watching the muscle move in her arms, Ashley said, "You never talk about yourself."

"I know."

"Because you don't know how long I'll be around?"

Rose didn't answer.

"Could you tell me something anyway? Just so I know?"

Rose lay there for a while. Ashley stroked her side, felt the shape of her, felt the smoothness of her skin.

"What do you want to know?" Rose said.

"I don't know. Anything. Ambitions. Where do you want to end up?"

"Don't know."

Ashley looked at her.

"Which you don't get," Rose said.

"Um..."

"Come on. You're so fucking ambitious and driven you can't imagine not having a plan for ten years for now."

"I'm not that ambitious."

"Do you have a plan?"

"Everyone has a plan. They tell you to make one in career development seminars."

"You live with your boss."

"I live with one of the owners of my firm, which isn't the same. And I love him. And stop implying there's something wrong with that."

Rose grinned. "Sorry."

"I used to have a very aggressive plan. A very complicated one."

"Used to?"

"Yep. Then I met David and none of it mattered any more."

"Because he gave you what you wanted?"

"Because he gave me what I thought I wanted. Which I didn't really. And that set me free to be happy."

"You like your life?"

"I fucking love my life."

"You know what? Me too."

"I know. Even though you won't talk about yourself, I think we're a lot the same."

"You think so?"

Ashley nodded. "I think that's why I like you."

"And the sex."

"Yeah, and the sex." Ashley picked up her phone, and checked the time. "I have to go. I have to play step-mother."

Rose looked at her.

"I shit you not," Ashley said. "David's daughter's coming over for dinner. I need to go and make nice."

"Because you're closer in age or something."

"Kind of." Ashley put on her bra, then pulled on her shirt, and then just sat there, didn't start buttoning it up. "There's a thing. Something some people find a bit funny."

"Oh yeah?"

"But I hate people who laugh. Actual hate. The one thing I don't like, that pisses me off."

"Okay, what is it?"

"Um. Rebecca is older than me."

"Rebecca being his kid?"

"Yep. Two years older."

"So you're boyfriend's daughter is older than you."

"Don't fucking laugh."

"I'm not." Rose lay there, and didn't look at Ashley. After a moment she reached over and got her cigarettes.

"You just had one," Ashley said.

"I know."

"You need another already?"

Rose nodded. Her hand was shaking a little as she lit it.

"Hey Rose, could you look at me."

"Nope." Rose's voice sounded strained.

"Look at me."

Rose shook her head, was shaking even more. Then she burst out laughing, said, "Oh fuck, I'm sorry. I can't help it."

She lay there laughing for a while.

"You're horrible."

"I'm sorry. This is awful, but it's fucking funny."

"It isn't."

"It fucking is."

Ashley did up her shirt, and her skirt, and sat back down to pull on her boots. She had little socks because she didn't want to deal with getting tights off and then back on in front of someone she was sleeping with.

"I'm pissed off with you," she said.

"I'm really sorry."

"Stop. Please."

"I've stopped."

Rose lay there for a moment then started laughing again.

"I hate it," Ashley said. "She's a wonderful person and she doesn't dislike me at all, and she's actually a really good friend."

"Why would she hate you?"

"Because it's fucking weird. Having a stepmother younger than you."

"You're not really her stepmother. If you're not married."

"And that's partly why." Ashley zipped up her boot. "But same shit. It's just, her mother is a psychotic bitch who really fucking has it in for me."

"The ex-wife?"

Ashley nodded.

"Shit, I can't think why she'd hate you."

"Yeah, me either."

"You and the boyfriend didn't..."

Ashley shook her head. "She left him years before I turned up. She just hates me. I don't know why."

"Other than the obvious."

"Yeah," Ashley said. "But Rebecca is lovely, and she's like David's best friend. She cheers him up when she's around. So I desperately want to be close to her. And she's never come between us, but it's weird with her, because every so often we go somewhere and one of us sees someone we know, and then we have to explain. And I hate that. I really fucking hate that." Ashley looked at her phone. "But I'm talking too much and I really have to go. Sorry."

She zipped up her other boot, and found her jacket out in the hall, and went back into the bedroom to kiss Rose and say goodbye.

Rose didn't get out of bed as she left.

*

Ashley kept seeing Rose once or twice a week, enough it was becoming a habit. A bad habit. A cause of distractions, and of odd little insecurities, and a disruption to the comfortable life Ashley had for herself. Almost a risk to it, she sometimes thought, if she ended up feeling too much.

She kept asking David if he minded, and he kept saying no. She pushed, she wanted to be absolutely sure, and he said over and over that he didn't. That she was having her affair, that everyone had one, and that he was glad he knew about it and she was coming back home.

Practicing law made everyone unbearably cynical, but other than that, David seemed sincere.

"I love you," she said. "A lot."

"I know."

"I'll stop if you want me to."

"I know that too."

"How can you not care?" she said. What she'd been thinking for weeks. "How does it not bother you if I'm having sex with someone else?"

"Honestly?" he said. "It's not sex."

Ashley looked at him for a while.

"I know," he said. "But it just isn't. I don't care."

"Do you think about it?" she said.

"Not really."

"What about the time I spend with her?"

"You have a friend. I'm glad. We're busy and don't spend that much time with each other anyway."

Ashley nodded, and decided she'd done all she could.

She still felt bad about the deal, as if she'd made him go along with it, in the first place, against his will, but now it was happening, he didn't seem to care. He said once they felt closer, because she was doing this, finally, and getting it out her system, and in an odd way she understood. Being with Rose was almost like a commitment to David. It meant Ashley actually needed their deal, that she was going to stay.

That made no sense to her, except it did.

She also couldn't decide what she felt for Rose. She liked Rose a lot, and wanted to be her friend, and none of that was necessarily what she had wanted when this started.

*

Rose rang, and asked if Ashley wanted to have lunch. Ashley went.

Rose rang at odd times, and Ashley did her utmost to move things around to see her. As far as Ashley could work out, Rose worked nights for a while, then days for a while, but also got half-days off sometimes to make up for overtime.

Ashley undid two shirt buttons in the lift. She wore a suit to work. She wore a suit and kept her hair up because she wanted to do everything she could to stop people remembering she was sleeping with a senior partner. When she saw Rose she wanted to look sexy, so she took her hair out and undid the top buttons of her shirt. She was getting used to organizing herself in lifts.

She met Rose in a café near her work. She wasn't thinking, because she was happy. They'd been getting careless, because they didn't actually need to worry anyway.

She was holding Rose's hand, just. Two fingertips twisted into Rose's underneath the table, both their hands on Ashley's leg.

They were sitting there, and Ashley might have been smiling a bit too much, and they were caught by the worst possible person.

Rebecca, David's daughter.

"Hey wicked stepmother," Rebecca said, and was suddenly beside their table.

Ashley didn't jump, which she was proud of. For a second Rose looked guilty, then put on a blank cop face.

Ashley let go of Rose's hand, stood up, and hugged Rebecca. "My friend Rose, David's daughter Rebecca."

"Your stepdaughter?"

"She isn't, because..." Ashley looked at Rose. "Yeah, my stepdaughter."

Rose held out her hand, and shook Rebecca's. Rebecca seemed to looking at Rose a little too closely.

"We just ate," Ashley said. "But sit down if you want, have coffee?"

"I was just going past." Rebecca said. She was looking from Rose to Ashley, and seemed to be thinking.

As far as Ashley knew, Rebecca didn't know about the deal with David. Because there was no reason she'd know, and telling her would be about as awkward as just pretending to be having an affair. Rebecca was protective, and liked Ashley, and would probably be furious if she fond out Ashley was cheating.

"Okay," Ashley said. "We were about to go anyway."

Rebecca nodded, and said it was nice to meet Rose, and left.

"Shit," Ashley said. "Fuck. I didn't want that to happen."

"She didn't see," Rose said.

"You don't know that," Ashley said, sharply, then made herself stop. Rose wasn't someone she wanted to fight with, ever. "Sorry."

"Wicked?" Rose said after a while.

"A stepmother? You pretty much have to be."

*

A few days later Rebecca came over to borrow clothes for a job interview. She and Ashley were the same size, pretty much exactly the same size including shoes, so when Rebecca needed a suit for something she borrowed Ashley's.

David was in the spare room, running on his treadmill. He had the TV on and music through headphones and would be lost to the world for an hour.

Ashley was sleeping with two people who were both fitter than her, and that was an odd thought.

Rebecca opened the spare room door and said hi, but David didn't notice. Almost like Rebecca was making sure she wasn't overheard.

Ashley wondered what was about to happen.

She followed Rebecca to the bedroom, and stood there while Rebecca looked in her wardrobe. Ashley pointed to a charcoal pinstripe.

"It'll make me look like a lawyer," Rebecca said.

"This?" Ashley said, and pointed to a lighter grey without a stripe.

"Your friend seemed nice," Rebecca said. "The other day."

"Yeah," Ashley said. "She is."

"Seemed odd how you were when I walked up. How she looked guilty."

Ashley didn't answer.

"And you don't have many friends," Rebecca said. "You're like dad, all work."

"People keep telling me that."

"Anything you want to talk about?"

Ashley looked at her. Held out the grey suit. "Wear that."

"Ashley..."

"I think she has a crush on me," Ashley said. "I think she has for ages. But I don't really want to deal with it, okay?"

Don't play with the big kids, Ashley thought. Don't try and out-bullshit a lawyer.

Rebecca was looking at her. Ashley held Rebecca's stare, looked back calmly, couldn't believe after a lifetime of being David's daughter Rebecca still thought looking at someone would tell her if they were lying.

After a moment Rebecca nodded. "Yeah," she said. "I had that once. It's kind of flattering, but kind of weird too."

"Yeah," Ashley said. "So I just ignore it. But sometimes she touches me a bit more than she should."

"You'll get a rep as a lesbo."

"Which is probably better than a rep for sleeping my way to the top, so who gives a shit."

Rebecca grinned and tried on the suit, and seemed to forget about Ashley and Rose.

Ashley was glad. She didn't want David embarrassed, and she didn't want anything to happen that might force a crisis, that might make her have to decide what she was actually doing with Rose.

*

After sex, Ashley liked it lie with her hand just touching Rose. Her fingertips just pressing onto Rose's skin. She lay and watched Rose smoke and thought about what they were becoming.

She thought about narrow misses with Rebecca.

"I like you," Ashley said. "And I'm getting used to you being around."

"Okay."

"I know the situation is tricky, so if there's anything you want me to do, tell me."

"Like what?"

"Like anything."

"Okay."

They lay there for a while.

"I don't mind how things are," Rose said. "Just so you know. I'm busy a lot. I have shit to do. I don't necessarily want someone who's around all the time, and I definitely don't if its another woman."

Ashley looked at her.

"Don't look like that," Rose said. "You know exactly what I mean."

"I'm not saying anything," Ashley said.

"Because you're the same. Basically."

Ashley kissed her.

"You are," Rose said.

"I'm not saying anything."

"It's not just you who's using someone for sex."

"Okay," Ashley said. "That's good."

*

Ashley was at a party with David's people. All the big firm partners, judges, people from government. Very high-powered, very important people. She wasn't the youngest person there, not even the youngest lawyer there. She was the youngest who'd been around for a while, though. Trophies came and went, but Ashley stayed. She listened a lot, said hello to people she knew. She was there as David's partner, not for herself. These people were too far up above her to make networking worthwhile.

Rose rang and said, "Are you busy?"

Ashley found a corner, said, "A party. Kind of."

"Wearing a party dress?"

"Yep."

"I want you."

"I have to stay here for a while."

"Afterwards?"

"Yeah, okay."

"I'm at a bar. With some friends. Can you come?"

There was noise in the background. Shouting, maybe sports on a TV. "Um, maybe. Tell me where, I'll phone if I can't."

Rose did.

"Hey, Rose, who was the last judge who pissed you off. Let someone go you wanted convicted or whatever?"

"Not how it works Ashley."

"All the same. Was there one?"

"Why?"

"I'm probably looking at him, that's all."

"I don't dislike lawyers, Ash. We're all just doing our jobs."

Ashley grinned. "I'll see you later on."

"Okay."

She went back to David and listened to other people talk for a while. When he was alone, she leaned close and said quietly, "A friend phoned. Asked me to see her. I'll get away when I can, if that's okay?"

"Of course. That friend?"

She nodded.

He kissed her and said, "Have fun."

She looked at him. She was aware of people nearby, of needing to be cautious. "You really are a very good man, you know that?"

He grinned, kissed her again, and went to talk to someone else.

*

Rose's bar was seedy and loud and filled with noisy people Ashley assumed were other cops. She looked around, then went back outside and phoned Rose. "Do I kiss you?" she said.

"What?"

"I'm here. I just suddenly realized. Around your friends, do I kiss you?"

Silence for a moment.

"Shit. Are you outside?"

"Yep."

"I'll come out."

Rose hung up, then appeared after a minute, holding her cigarettes, looking around. She kissed Ashley, then kissed her again, and said, "Sorry."

"I know. That's why I asked."

"Yeah, sorry. I hadn't thought."

"Am I okay like this? It isn't too weird that you know me?"

"It's all right," Rose said. "You don't need to be that sneaky. I'd just rather not make anything too obvious."

"Yeah, that's okay."

Rose kissed her again and they went inside. The pub seemed a bit rough, but Rose was relaxed. She looked back at Ashley and grinned, and wove her way through people to a table down the back. Ashley crowded up to a table and watched Rose talk and laugh and be herself.

They were nice people. Ashley had been ready to be polite and smile and get out as soon as she could, but they seemed to want to meet her, seemed to welcome her because Rose had brought her there. Ashley listened to them talk and after a while, under the table, Rose held her hand.

After a while Ashley said, "Is everyone here a cop?" and they all said yes.

"Everyone in the whole bar?"

"Pretty much. Or an ex cop. Or a cop's partner."

"Shit."

"Feel out of place?" Rose whispered, and Ashley said, "Shut up."

Rose grinned and poured more beer from a jug.

Later, Rose went to the bathroom, and one of the other women leaned over and said, "Don't hurt her."

Ashley looked up. "I don't know what you mean."

"Just don't. Be careful, don't hurt her."

Ashley nodded. "I won't."

"Good. Or you'll have half the police in town after you."

Ashley didn't know what to say, so she didn't say anything, just sat there.

Rose came back, and everyone kept talking. They all seemed to be talking about people Ashley didn't know and things she didn't know about. It had been a long time since she'd been in that situation. After a while, she went to the bathroom and stood in front the mirror, pretending to fiddle with her hair. Just to be on her own.

Rose came in. "Hey, are you okay?"

Ashley nodded.

"You'd been gone a while. I just wanted to check." There wasn't much room in front the sink, so Rose stayed over by the door, watching Ashley. "You sure?"

"Yeah, I was just thinking about doing something with my hair."

"I like it how it is."

"Yeah," Ashley said. "So do I, that's the problem."

"Are you sure you're all right?"

"I'm fine."

Rose watched her for a while, "You haven't got that many friends, have you?"