"She said we could still be friends."
She said more than that. Ashley apparently wanted to get out of the escort racket, and into a business selling "ice cream and salad."
"Even though I was working at the market, she thought I had a lot of money. She thought I had a big savings account or something. I said, 'Well, I gotta tell you something, Ashley, all this money came from credit cards, it didn't come from me.' And when she heard that, her whole thing changed. She was like, 'Oh, really? I guess I'm not going to do that restaurant.'
"I guess what I'll never know is, at the end, would it have been a friendship thing, or did she like me because she thought I was someone who had a lot of money? But some of the things we did as friends were not money-related. It was just going out to have dinner somewhere."
Steve tells all of this without shame or anger or embarrassment. If anything, he gets a bit wistful at times. Is he a romantic? Is he a sucker?
"It was just the first experience I had, having that much fun with a girl. Even though it cost me so much money, most of the time I had a good time. It's just too bad it happened the way it did. I'm sure there are guys out there who want to experience that kind of thing, but it's so easy to do it and get stuck in it. It felt bad that I was paying another human being to have sex with them; I think that's why we never had sex after we became friends."
And that is where the friendship ends.
Steve has not seen Ashley for a couple years, but her memory lingers on for him, and not just courtesy of the five credit-card bills that still line his mailbox every month. There's the photo she left their last time together.
"I wanted to drive by the house and just leave it there, put it in the front yard or on the car, but I thought she might take it the wrong way. It still bugs me sometimes; probably one day I'm going to get rid of it. There are times I almost want to just find her, but I don't think that'd be the smartest thing in the world to do. I need to forget about her."
Whether Ashley would really be offended if Steve tossed her picture on her lawn in some future dawn is a question only she can answer. But Steve, well, Steve has come to at least one conclusion. While it may not be the smartest notion a man has ever thought, it's got to be right up there on the wisdom list.
"As soon as the money runs out, everything else kind of runs out with it."
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