Ashleigh's Dilemma Read Online Free Page A

intimidated him for a bit, but when she didn't seem to make a big deal about it, he put it aside. Ashleigh learned that Patrick had graduated from the University of British Columbia with a degree in English Literature and a minor in History.
    “Is that why you own a tree maintenance company?” she asked, smiling to herself, teasing him for the first time. She was thinking of his business card that offered every imaginable service as long as it had something to do with trees.
    Patrick saw this as a good sign. “Absolutely, that is exactl y why!” he laughed; “Why,” he added, “Do you not think we're not well matched?” and he laughed again, as for once so did Ashleigh. Her laughter came from deep within and it transformed her. His smiled widened in response. It was only momentary, however; seemingly aware she was opening she quickly withdrew. That was the real Ashleigh though Patrick imagined as he felt he might finally be making some progress. He smiled warmly and briefly let his hand settle on the small of her back before letting it slip away. She didn’t like that. She let him know by twisting away.
    They talked on and on, she recovering and settling in comfortably next to him but without looking at him, keeping her eyes locked on the way ahead. They followed the path along the bank of a river, swishing their feet through the leaves, Patrick sometimes kicking them up so high they tumbled down on top of them. Ashleigh smiled and laughed quietly with him, sometimes feigning anger as she brushed the leaves from her hair; but then, almost motherly, turning to him and picking off the odd leaf still clinging to Patrick - yet another side of Ashleigh that could not help but surface, he thought. Again, though, she quickly destroyed that illusion; when Patrick reached back to help her up a particularly steep part of the trail, she angrily refused his assistance by slapping his hand away. Unsettled but amused, and knowing what she was in for, he let her clamber up on her own. She slipped twice muddying her boots and the knees of her new hiking pants before she finally reached the top completely flustered by her behavior as well as her inability to negotiate the steep slope without slipping. She brushed herself off and followed him, catching up to him in a few paces, he not waiting for her.
    By the end of the hike, the last turn, when he felt he might say so, Patrick confessed he would like to be a writer, and that he had already written a novel – albeit unpublished as of yet. That interested Ashleigh. “I haven't known too many authors,” she admitted.
    Even though she often wouldn't look at him directly, she did this time. She was gauging him to see if he might be lying, or exaggerating, he supposed.
    She could see he was not, however, and this, too, surprised her. She said, breaking the contact by looking away, “I don't think I could do that.” 
    “Well, with a PhD in physics, I think you could.”
    “I don't think that qualifies me, exactly.”
    Patrick turned to see if he could tell what she meant by that, but the look on her face gave nothing away. At no time did she ask him what he wrote about, or why, the title of his novel, or why it had not been published. He didn't explain anything further and she didn't pursue it.
     
    Later, Patrick wrote a short story about their hike and he let Ashleigh read it. He handed her the story sealed in a brown envelop after another lunch at Subway . This is part of what she read later that night after she had prepared for bed and slipped between the carefully folded sheets - and after she had propped herself up and slipped on her glasses:
     
    T hey walked together along the path through the forest, in step, their feet hissing through the fallen leaves flying up to float about them. The air was crisp, fresh, smelling of oak and wet earth. The sun, flashing free, though not warm, dropped through the raining canopy, crystalline and prismatic, temporarily blinding them as,