The Morning after
912 Words
Ava’s POV
I woke up first.
The room was that particular grey that happens just before sunrise. Quiet in the way hotel rooms are. Contained and separate from the world outside.
Barry was asleep beside me.
In sleep he looked different. The controlled composure relaxed into something more human. Younger almost. Though still definitively not young. The lines of his face softened. His breathing even and slow.
I lay still for a moment.
Watching him in a way I wouldn’t have allowed myself while he was awake.
He was striking. That was the honest word. Not just handsome. Striking. The kind of face that told you things about the person if you knew how to read it. Strong jaw. Dark lashes against his cheek. A small scar near his left brow I hadn’t noticed in the low club light.
I wondered briefly where it came from.
Then I stopped wondering because wondering led to questions and questions led to conversations and conversations led to things that one night stands weren’t supposed to lead to.
I sat up carefully. And felt a dull pain in my p***y. An evidence of what happened last night. Not having the time to regret I quickly looked for my things.
I found my dress on the floor where it had landed sometime around 2am.
My shoes. My bag.
I dressed in the grey pre-dawn quiet trying not to make sounds.
At the door I paused.
Looked back.
Barry still asleep. One arm extended into the space I’d just vacated like even in sleep his body noted the absence.
Something pulled in my chest.
I told it to be quiet.
And left.
The city was just waking up when I stepped outside.
That specific early morning quality of light that makes everything look temporarily clean. A few taxis. A jogger. A coffee cart just opening its shutters with the particular clatter of metal on quiet streets.
I walked.
Not toward anything specific. Just walked.
Ben would be at his own apartment by now. Or maybe still at mine. The thought landed flat and distant like something that had happened to a different person.
Last night I had been betrayed by the two people I trusted most.
Last night I had also let a stranger take me apart and put me back together in a hotel room fourteen floors above the city.
I should feel worse about the second part than I did.
I felt surprisingly okay.
More than okay if I was being honest.
There was something clarifying about last night that had nothing to do with alcohol or grief or revenge. Something that had settled quietly in my chest like a compass finding north.
I didn’t know his last name.
I didn’t have his number.
I would never see Mr Barry again.
And somehow that made it perfect. Clean. A beginning and an end in the same night.
I bought a coffee from the cart on the corner.
Stood in the early morning light.
And decided that today was the first day of whatever came after Ben Ashford.
I had absolutely no idea.
Three Weeks Later
The email from Holmes career placement office sat in my inbox for two days before I opened it.
Congratulations. Following your application for the corporate internship programme you have been selected for placement at Ashford Industries. Please report to the main offices on Monday 9th at 9am.
I stared at it.
Ashford Industries.
I’d applied to six companies through the placement programme. Ashford Industries was the one I’d applied to without expecting anything. The kind of application you submit on ambition alone. The kind of company that didn’t usually take university interns.
Apparently they did now.
I read the email three more times.
Then I called the one person I’d been updating about my internship applications since Maddie became someone I no longer spoke to.
My course mate Priya picked up on the second ring.
“Please tell me you have good news because I just failed a mock exam and I need vicarious success.”
“I got Ashford Industries.”
Silence.
“Ava.”
“I know.”
“ASHFORD INDUSTRIES.”
“I KNOW.”
Her scream came through the phone loud enough to make me pull it from my ear laughing.
“Do you know what this means for your CV? Do you know who runs that company? Mr Ashford is like—”
My hand tightened on the phone.
“Mr Ashford is like a literal legend. Self made. Built the whole thing from nothing. And he’s not even old he’s like—”
“Priya.”
”—weirdly attractive for someone his age which is saying something because most men his age look tired but he looks—”
“PRIYA.”
“What?”
I swallowed.
“What’s his full name?”
“Barry Ashford? Why?”
The email was still open on my screen.
Ashford Industries.
Ben Ashford.
Ashford.
No.
No it was a common enough name. Ashford was a perfectly ordinary surname. There was absolutely no reason to assume—
“Are you okay?” Priya asked. “You went quiet.”
“I’m fine.” I said.
I was fine.
It was a coincidence.
It had to be a coincidence.
“I’ll see you Monday.” I said.
Hung up.
Stared at the email.
Ashford Industries.
I closed my laptop.
It was a coincidence.
It was definitely not a coincidence.
- Writer
