STEPHANIE:

      As I sit down, two bundles of fluff immediately come at me from opposite directions and practically hurl themselves into my lap. "Nice to see you too, guys," I chuckle, as each cat works to find its "comfy spot".

      "Well, hon, it looks like they've made a new friend," Jinxx tells Alice, as Mao curls into a ball in my lap, while Orange Cat decides that I need a new neckwarmer and climbs up to my shoulder.

      "Yes, animals always seem to gravitate to Stephanie," Alice replies. "That's why I closed them in the bedroom until we finished lunch. I figured that it might be a bit easier to eat without having cats in our plates."

      I've spent the morning with these two, working on getting things set up for Ashley's party tonight, along with the rest of the guys, Blasko, Jon, and Andy's cousin, Joe. After we finished with the decorations, everybody else took off to go about their own plans, and the three of us came back here to their house for lunch. Now we're in the living room unwinding a bit, and now that there's not a crowd around, I decide to finally bring up something I've been curious about for the last couple of days. "Hey, are you guys cool with me asking what might sound like a nosy question?"

      They glace at each other, looking a bit confused, and Alice says, "You know you can ask me anything you want, love. If I can answer, I will, and if not, I'll tell you so honestly."

      "Sure, give it a shot, Steph," Jinxx chimes in. "I doubt it could be any worse than some of the things we get from the press, or on social media."

      "Well, I was having a conversation with Ash the other night, and he said something about both of us having a failed engagement in common. Was that Kina?"

      Alice gives me sort of a blank stare, then turns to Jinxx, raising an eyebrow. "No, Ash and Kina actually never even lived together," he explains. "She'd come and stay with him for a week or so, or maybe tag along for a few days on the road sometimes, and he'd spend a few days a month with her at her place in Vegas, but that was pretty much the extent of it. But the engagement was before Kina, about, oh, five and a half, six years ago. Her name was Laura, and she was... different. Definitely not the type we'd all come to expect him to go for."

      "Why was that, love?" Alice inquires.

      "Well, first of all, she was something like seven or eight years younger than him," he explains. "She was a college student who lived in Dallas, and he actually met her when she won tickets and a pass at our show there. We were all circulating through the crowd during the meet and greet, and for some reason she just entranced him. He fell for her like a ton of bricks, and it actually weirded the rest of us out a bit, because up until then, his usual post-show goal was to bang at least two chicks and get shit-faced, not necessarily in that order."

      "Wow, she must have been some sort of a knockout!" I observe. "Was she better-looking than Kina? Or Miss Thing?"  

      Giving us a rather amused glance, he says, "You might think that, but no. She was pretty enough, I suppose, but not his usual type. Hang on a sec, maybe I can show you." He pulls out his phone, and when Alice and I move to look over his shoulder, we see that he's scrolling his Instagram, and mumbling to himself. "Here it is!" he finally announces. "This is one of Ash's old accounts that he went inactive on, and I knew he used to have some pics of her on here. Looks like he deleted most of them, but here's one he missed."

      He enlarges the pic, and we see a slim girl with blonde-streaked dark hair and rather exaggerated eyeliner, wearing a plaid schoolgirl-style skirt and a white button-down left open to show a lacy black bra underneath. "Yes, I see what you mean now," Alice murmurs. "Definitely not his usual type."

      I see his point as well, because, while she isn't unattractive, she's basically just a "regular" girl with an average figure. There are no implants or lip injections in sight, and from what Jinxx is saying, she wasn't a "show-biz" chick like the others he's dated.

      "No, definitely not the Playboy centerfold or 'adult entertainment' type," Jinxx agrees. "Like I said, she was a student, although I can't recall what she was studying. And they got along great, at first, always making googly eyes and disappearing for hours at a time when they were together, and texting or talking on the phone when they weren't."

      "Kinda like you two, then," I snicker, causing Alice to stick her tongue out at me.

     Jinxx grins at me, and says, "Yeah, something like that, I suppose. They were totally sickening, up until he actually proposed, and then it all started sliding down the slope. Kinda like an avalanche."

      "Why, what happened?" I ask.

      "Well, at that time, we'd just put out the second album, and we had some buzz going, of course, but we were still trying to build on that. Which basically meant record, tour ourselves into the ground, and repeat. We didn't really have the luxury of downtime until after 'Wretched and Divine', and that became an issue real fuckin' quick. First off, she seemed to think that the fact they were engaged meant that he should be willing to drop everything he had going whenever she wanted him to. She actually refused to take his calls for three days once because he wouldn't bail out on one of our biggest gigs to be there with her while her dog had surgery."

      "Oh, dear," Alice says. "Even as much as I love our fur-babies, I have to agree that was definitely a bit over the top."

      "Yeah, you might say that," I concur. "Now if it was one of her parents, or a sibling, that might have been a reasonable expectation, but..."

      "Oh, that wasn't even the final straw," he tells us. "It became blatantly obvious even to him that they were on some pretty shaky footing, but he was hell-bent on making things work, so when she got out of school for the summer, he invited her to come out and spend a few days with him while we were on Warped Tour, so she could see what it was really like. That was when everything basically just imploded."

      He pauses to take a drink, then continues, saying, "Well, at that time I was still with my ex-wife, and she was there with me for a few days, too. Also, Juliet was playing on that tour, and even though she had her own bus, she spent quite a bit of time with Andy on ours, and Laura made it pretty obvious that she didn't like the idea of other women being on the bus with Ash, even if they were with someone else. She was barely civil to either Jules or Sammi, and practically had a full-blown tantrum when he was talking to some of the female fans after the set, and accused him of flirting with them."

      Alice rolls her eyes, and queries, "How could anyone spend more than five minutes with Ash and not know that's just his nature? I think asking him not to flirt would be rather akin to expecting him not to breathe. Sometimes I'm not even sure if he's aware that he does it."

      "I have to agree with her on that one," I add. "Hell, from what Markie told me yesterday, people have even gotten the idiotic notion that he might be interested in me!" 

      Almost before the words are completely out of my mouth, Orange Cat yowls indignantly as a throw pillow zips past my head, almost hitting him before disappearing behind the chair. "Don't even start with that rubbish, or I swear I will smack you silly!" Alice announces. "You know I bloody well hate when you do that. There's no reason at all for Ashley, or any other bloke, for that matter, not to offer you some notice. You're a lovely girl, despite what Philip has apparently made you think, you're one of the kindest people I've ever met, and I have no intention of listening to you put yourself down, so stop it!"

      Jinxx turns his head and gapes at her, his eyes almost the size of saucers, but I just shake my head and reply, "Simmer down there, Ronda Rousey, I was simply stating a fact. I may not have been here that long, but I've spent enough time with Ash that I have a pretty fair idea what kind of girls he goes for, and we all know I'm not it. But he's just so sweet and charming with women that people think that he means more by it than he does. You're right, that's just how he is."

      She settles back in her seat, but he's still staring at her rather warily, which causes me to crack up. He turns to give me a puzzled look, and demands to know what's so funny. "Dude, you were looking at her like she'd suddenly turned into Zaphod Beeblebrox or something," I eventually manage to wheeze. "I'm going to assume that she's never gotten pissed off at you yet, otherwise you wouldn't have been so startled. Trust me, that wasn't even close to the first time she's gone off on me for 'putting myself down'. Which, to be honest, I don't think I do, I'm just realistic about what most guys expectations are."

      "Then 'most guys' are idiotic cockwombles. End of argument." Alice declares, which we're both fine with. "So now that we're finished with that, go on and tell us why Ash broke up with his fiancee."

      He finally manages to stop gawking, and says, "Yeah, right. Anyway, he basically attributed her little meltdown to her being tired from traveling and sort of brushed it off, and they decided to spend some 'quality time' on the bus together while the rest of us checked out some of the other bands. We didn't see either of them again until the next day, when we were almost to the next venue. Everybody started getting up and she was already in the front of the bus, sitting on the couch. After the rest of us were up, she asked if someone would go wake Ash up for her, because she needed to talk to him about something, so C went back and rousted him."

      "He came out and asked what was up, and she just handed him a sheet of paper. He asked what it was, and she informed him that she'd made a list of non-negotiable rules for their relationship, and if he didn't agree to them, the engagement was off. He read through it, and the poor dude looked like somebody had hit him over the head with a plank for a few seconds, but then his face just... changed. It basically went totally blank, he passed the paper to Jake, who was standing next to him, and it made its way around. Basically, she said that none of the other girlfriends could be on the road with us unless she could be there, too, and that he wasn't allowed to hug, take pictures with, or be too friendly with female fans. She had also unilaterally decided that when we finished the tour, he would be moving to Dallas, and that his bass tracks for future albums would either be cut there and sent to us, or we'd have to come there, unless we scheduled recording sessions for school breaks, so she could come with him. Also, he was to cut off all of his female friends, and they wouldn't be allowed to come to the wedding." 

      He stood there for a bit, just looking at her like he'd never seen her before, then he said, "So this is how it's gonna be, then?" She said yes, it was, and that if he really wanted to marry her, it shouldn't be a problem. He didn't say anything for a few seconds, and then he hollered up at our driver and asked how long until we got to the venue. Jimmy yelled back that it would be about forty-five minutes, and Ash just started playing with his phone."

      "She seemed to be a little confused, and asked what he was doing, and he glanced up from the phone and said, 'I was checking the numbers for cab companies close to the arena, and arranging for a car to be there when we arrive.' She asked why, and he said, 'Because you'd have a hell of a time getting to the airport on foot from across town. You might as well go back to the bunks and get your shit together, because after we walk off this bus, we're done. When we first met, I thought I'd lucked out by finding a smart, beautiful girl with a great sense of humor and a terrific personality, but as it turns out, what I have is a paranoid, controlling brat, and I'm gonna take a hard pass. If you honestly think that I'm gonna put my neck in a noose for somebody who not only thinks that I'm gonna take orders from her, but that she has the right to dictate what other people can and can't do, then you obviously don't know me at all, because that's never gonna happen. If you'd just talked to me like a rational adult, we probably could have found some sort of compromises for most of this crap, but you lost me at 'non-negotiable'. I hope you have a nice life, but you're gonna have to do it with somebody else.' Then he just grabbed a beer out of the fridge and started dicking around on Facebook."

      "And that was it, then?" Alice queries. 

      "Not quite. She stomped off to the back of the bus and made a huge production of gathering her things, while the rest of us just sat around up front. She apparently expected him to cave in and agree to her bullshit, because she kept peeking through the door, and he was just playing with his phone and ignoring her. She came back out and tried to convince him to take it back, and even said that she'd be willing to agree to some of his compromises. He just looked at her and said, 'No, don't think so. You've made it pretty obvious that you trust me about as far as I can toss this bus, and there's no way I could ever trust that you'd keep your word after this. And if there's no trust, there's no relationship worth mentioning, so... nope. Too little, too late.' She just stood there looking totally shocked for a minute, kind of like she was thinking, 'Well, this didn't go quite the way I planned,' and then she just burst out crying and ran back to the bunks until we got to the venue. She was still crying when she got into the cab he'd called, and he got so fucked up that night that we were afraid he wouldn't be able to play in the morning. But he did, even though he had to duck backstage twice to puke before the end of the set."

      "And they never talked or saw each other again?" I ask, and he shakes his head.

      "Not as far as any of us knows about, anyway. And that's the last time we ever heard him say anything about marriage, or having a family. But after his grandma died, he told me once that he kind of felt bad about it sometimes, because even though she never nagged him about it or anything, he knew that she'd always kind of hoped that he'd find somebody to 'settle down' with, and that now she'd never get to see it, and I quote, 'In the unlikely event I can ever pull that off without fucking it up again.' So the way I see it, although I'm not stupid enough to tell him this, is that he feels like he's at least partially at fault for the engagement falling apart, and even though part of him would like to try again, the other part is fucking petrified of the idea, because he doesn't want to chance having it blow up in his face again."

      "Yeah, I can kind of relate to that," I acknowledge. "Especially since I know damn good and well that if I ever get into another relationship, there's a better than even chance the exact same thing is gonna happen. Actually, considering the fact that Santanico Pandemonium is hell-bent on grabbing every guy I have an interest in, the odds are probably even higher than that."

      Alice starts giving me the side-eye again, so I decide to change the subject before she launches another cushion, and start talking to them about the music for the party, which I volunteered to set up when the DJ fell through at the last minute. We spend a little while working on the start of a playlist, but then Alice gets a call from her agent about a possible booking, and I decide that I should probably head home and finish up the last minute details on Ashley's gifts and the music before I have to start getting myself ready.

      After I divest myself of my new feline friends, she gives me a goodbye hug before getting into her call, and Jinxx walks me to the door. Then, as I step out onto the porch, I hear, "Hey, wait just a sec, will ya, Steph?"

      I turn back toward him, and he says, "You know what you were saying earlier, when she freaked out on you? Well, I don't know if my opinion counts for much, but I have to say, I'm on her side with this one."

      I just sort of raise an eyebrow, and wait for him to continue, which he does, saying, "You seem to be pretty certain that Ash wouldn't be interested in you just because you're not borderline anorexic and your BMI doesn't consist of at least forty per cent silicone, and if that's true, then he's not nearly as smart as I've always thought. Maybe this is just my opinion, but I think he'd be a lot better off, if not with you, then with someone like you. And like Alice."

      "How do you mean, exactly?"

      "I mean someone smart, and considerate, who actually values someone for who they are as people, and not for what they have or how much attention you can get by being seen with them. Someone who's willing to go out of their way to help people, and give them a chance to redeem themselves when they do something stupid. Kind of like she did with me."

      I shoot him a quizzical look, and he just gives his head a quick shake and responds with, "Since you're giving me that look, it's pretty obvious that she hasn't mentioned that particular... incident, so if you don't mind, I don't think I will either. Truthfully, I'd kind of like to forget it ever happened."

      "Why should I mind, dude? Your life is your business, and Alice is pretty sharp, so I trust her judgment. If whatever it is didn't put her off of dating you, then who am I to second-guess her?"

      I'm a bit surprised by his reaction, which is to essentially leap off of the top step and sweep me up in a bear hug. "This is exactly what I mean!" he informs me. "You're not badgering me for more than I want to share, not making assumptions about anything, and you're willing to accept me just because of the fact that Alice cares about me."

      "Yeah, but that's conditional, dude," I interrupt. "As long as she's happy, we're cool, but if you fuck her over, what I'll do to you will make what happened to Joleen look like a fucking love tap."

      "And I wouldn't expect anything less. In fact, if I'm ever that stupid, I deserve whatever you throw at me. Alice is the best thing that's ever happened to me, and I'd sooner cut off my own hand than do anything to risk messing this up. And, since you and Alice are such good friends, I hope that means that we can be friends, too."

      "Of course we can! Hell, I thought we already were!"

      "I thought so, too, but I figured I'd make sure," he chuckles. "And CC has told us about how you've been letting him vent about his problems with Tiff, which is very nice of you, too. Has he told you what your new nickname is, by chance?"

      I have to pause for a second to think, but nothing comes to mind, so I say, "Evidently, that would be a no. Please enlighten me."

      "Well, instead of being the 'BFF', you have now been christened his 'BBS', which stands for 'Bonus Baby Sister'. He thinks you're pretty great, y'know."

      "Well, the feeling is mutual, he's such a doll, and I think that may be one of the sweetest things I've ever heard. I'll have to talk with him about this later."

      "Sounds like a plan to me," Jinxx replies. "So, hopefully you see my point now. Obviously, I can't speak for Jake or Andy, but C and I have both figured out that you're definitely someone worth having as a friend, and I hope Ash has enough sense to appreciate it too, whether he ever thinks beyond that or not. And any guy who can't figure out that the contents of the package are infinitely more important than whatever wrapping they come in, whether it's your's, Alice's, Kina's, or anyone else's, is the one who'll be losing out."

      I'm not entirely sure how to respond to this, so I just give him another hug, say, "Thanks, dude. I'll see you at the party." then head to my car. As I pull out of the driveway, my head is spinning a little bit from trying to process everything I've been told. 

      Hearing the backstory of Ashley's engagement, along with what I know about his relationship with Cyndee, make it a bit easier to understand his behavior where women are concerned, so it should be a little easier to cut him some slack from now on. He's a sweet, intelligent, generous guy, with a heart the size of the fucking state, but he's afraid to take a chance on getting it stomped on again, and I understand completely.

      But as I head home, my brain keeps circling back to what Jinxx said before I left, about Ash being better off with someone like me. Sure, if I'm honest with myself, I'd probably give up years off of my life to have somebody like him show an interest in me, but I'm also rational. This means that I'm fully aware of how unlikely this is, and I have to make sure that I don't let myself develop unrealistic expectations that would most likely just scuttle our friendship, because it's too important to me to risk losing.

      Ash has an image to keep up, for the band and his business, I don't fit in with that, and I can't imagine that I ever will. So, I just have to accept my position in his life.

      I'm smack-dab in the middle of that place that people always dread:

      The friendzone.