Chapter 4

Rain hammered the windshield so hard John could barely see. Lighting bolted down and thunder roared its way through the dark countryside as he tried to stay between the lines of the road. Not looking down, he pressed the AM radio button and cranked the volume; mixed static filled the airwaves with a faint, robotic voice cracking through at random intervals.

“-REPEAT. THERE IS A SEVERE THUNDERSTORM WARNING FOR THE COUNT-SSSSSSSSSSSS-” John turned it off.

“Don’t worry, I’m going to get you there, Ashley, I’ve driven in worse,” John reassured her, “I may have to pull over at some point though, between the downpours.” To John, his voice sounded like an echo at the end of a long tunnel. His mind was too preoccupied, wheeling thoughts around about what he had just heard and spoke to this little girl. He noticed the more he talked, the more he got attached to her, slowly soaking in the layers of her story as they came to light, revealing the tragedy behind the epic beauty riding beside him in this car.

He had to refrain from looking at her; the light from the headlights alternated as the wiper blades and rain glided across the windshield. It made her look like a sparkling angel, light resonating off her at various degrees. He knew it would be a bad idea to provide himself more reasons to emotionally attach; his relationship with her in an hour already felt deeper than his current relationship with his daughter. Linda had kept Megan away from him, even early on when Megan was still young, leaving John effectively outside the loop as to Megan’s daily activities. John was never good at connecting their lives; he knew he should’ve found a way, and he tried, but nothing substantial ever came of it. Hell, Ashley seemed to connect more with him than he ever did with Linda, even. Maybe it was his mind justifying the situation (Let’s be honest, John ... it is, he thought), but what got him the most about her was the flame he so clearly saw emerging between them. The sparks with Ashley were sporadic, but when they hit, they burned. They burned bad. If it happened again, John wasn’t sure he would be able to put them out.

Ashley’s hand touched John’s arm. His entire body flushed.

“Where do you live?” Ashley asked, softly. John’s heart sank and his penis immediately started to rise. He wasn’t totally sure where this would lead him, but he really wanted what he shouldn’t. As the responsible adult, he was the one who needed to cater to her, tend to her emotional difficulties, and not allow her to believe he was this savior he desperately wanted to be.

“I can make it, really ... there’s nothing to worry about,” John tried to say without sounding disappointed. The rain, however, continued to spray in waves against the glass, like an automatic carwash that had gone dangerously haywire.

“John, look at me,” Ashley coolly said. John never imagined, at 43, he would be in a situation where a fourteen-year-old girl would make him feel like he was talking to the biggest crush of his life. He felt like a schoolboy again; perhaps her age reminded him of girls he would hold hands with during recess and the intimidation he felt then. But, this girl was smarter than he was today and she was literally a quarter of his age.

Reluctantly, he looked at her ... and immediately regretted it. Light poured through the rain even more brilliantly than before, making her appear beyond radiant, beyond real. What made it every bit as worse, and what commanded John’s every action at that moment, was the face she wore. It was a face of complete insistence.

“My father doesn’t even know I exist ... he’ll assume anything as long as it means he has the house to himself for a night,” Ashley explained. Her voice returned to that woman cadence again, but still with her sweet, heavenly voice. John had to make himself look away. He drove in silence as the rain danced in step across the window. After a few moments, he spoke.

“My house isn’t far,” John said, giving in.

“Let’s go there then ... we need to get out of this storm,” Ashley calmly suggested. Silently, the Subaru made a careful U-turn, changing course.

John really didn’t have to go far; he wondered why Ashley gave him the route she did to her house, but that didn’t matter now. John pulled down a gravel driveway and he could barely see his house through the downpour and lack of street lights. It was one of those old two-story houses with white panels and a small, uncovered porch by the front door. He kept the house after the divorce, thankfully, but much of what was inside had to be bought after Linda cleaned everything else out. The front door was a decent way from the driveway; a nice sidewalk looped around from the driveway to the front porch. The yard was big and the door looked like a good fifty feet from where they were parked.

“I don’t have an umbrella,” John confessed, “we’re going to have to make a run for it-” Ashley interrupted John by getting out of the car and bolting down the sidewalk. John hurriedly unbuckled his seatbelt and opened the door, rain slamming down on him as he shut it.

John chased her, trying to catch up. His tie fluttered like a propeller as he ran and his dress shoes became heavy, making it difficult for him to sprint. Both of their feet sloshed across the sidewalk as they shielded their eyes from the incoming rain. Then, Ashley slipped. She fell over, hard, into the grass, rolling a few times until she stopped, face-down in the lawn. John panicked and forced his feet to sprint, despite the chance he would suffer a similar fate. But he didn’t, and arriving at her side within moments, he quickly kneeled and assessed the situation.