Ashling

Chapter 35

Let me tell you something about playing Monopoly.

You sit down happily with your friends or family, ready to have fun. You have all sorts of snacks around you; chips, popcorn, soda, water, sweets, marshmellow, anything you want. The game begins and you easily buy the first property you land on, and you feel like you've mastered the world. You buy some more properties. Then, there comes your dumbass moment, when you make the decision of not buying the railroads. You slowly realize how beneficial those might have been, had you bought them. A creeping discomfort settles over as you realize that your one and only opponent has all those railroads and you fucking keep stopping on them. Rents increase on the properties, and you fight to build skyscrapers. Tension builds up and it soon turns into a war. All that's left is Mayfair; buy the dream place and build a skyscraper there and voila!

"Mayfair is all mine, baby!" Cassandra boasts as she buys the most expensive property and builds a - wait, what?! She's already building a skyscraper there! Where the hell did she get all the money from?! Oh, right. Me.

"Wait till you come on this one, I am so sucking the money out of you."

I hate her. Can I kill her? I'm already on a bank loan and she's making me bankrupt.

"I don't wanna play.. This is so boring." I try to sound as casual as possible but fail miserably bad. Cass bursts out laughing and makes an 'L' sign with her hand.

"Loooooooser! Loser, loser, loooooser!" She chants.

I roll my eyes and fake a yawn. I am never playing Monopoly again.

"Are you sleepy?" She asks.

"Nope."

"Come on." She gets up and offers me her hand.

"Where are we going?" I ask as I give my hand in hers, my heart racing from the electricity that just travelled all over my body from the touch.

"Just come."

For a split second - and I am not proud of my brain for thinking this - I have this twisted, perverted thought that we're going to the bedroom to make out. I literally have to shake my head to dismiss this.

She opens the back door and leads me to her backyard. It's small, bounded with a fence and grass all around. She lets go of my hand and lies down, signalling me to follow suit. I shrug and lie down beside her, careful to keep a respectful distance between us.

"So, Cass.. What're we doing?"

"We," she says. "Are gonna look up at the sky and make out shapes from stars."

I frown. She has got to be kidding me. "What are you, four?"

She retorts, "What are you, forty?"

I chuckle a bit before crossing my hands beneath my head and concentrating on the sky. It's such a dark shade of blue, almost as if it's black. Stars are shimmering everywhere; millions of little white lights. It's been so long since I did this, lie underneath the stars, that it feels surreal right now. Scenarios like this are so rare in Manhattan, lieing here right now makes me realize how much I miss this.

"What're you thinking?" She softly asks.

"Wanna know why blue is my calming color?" I look over at her and she slightly nods. I turn my head back towards the sky.

"Whenever my parents fought, I used to go hide in the storeroom. It had all our stuff; toys and clothes and rolled up carpets etcetera. The walls were painted blue. Every time I'd look at those walls, that color, I felt myself relax. So, there."