The Kiss That Launched 1,000 Gifs (23 page)

“Linda, you’re on the air,” Grace said. “What question do you have for us?”

Silence answered back.

“Linda?” Grace repeated.

“I’m here,” a woman said hesitantly. “I didn’t think I’d get through. This is all kind of surreal for me.”

“Well, we’re glad to have you,” Grace said, trying to lure the woman out of her shy corner. “What’s your question?”

“I, um… it’s serious, I’m afraid,” Linda said. “Not like everyone else calling you this week. I feel bad dampening the mood by asking, but at the same time, I really respect Ashton and want his opinion.”

Grace motioned for Ash to take the lead and he gave her a nod.

“What’s bothering you, Linda?”

“It’s my… son,” Linda managed and Grace watched Ash lean forward and give the woman his undivided attention.

“How old is your son, Linda?” he asked as Grace settled into a spectator position.

“Seventeen,” the woman answered.

“And what did you catch him doing?” Ash asked, his voice still a big ball of reassurance.

“I didn’t catch him, per se,” Linda said, following his lead. “It was something he said, not something he did—at least I pray he hasn’t done anything.”

“I see. And you want my opinion about what he said?”

Linda took a deep breath. “Yeah.”

“Then lay it on me,” Ash reassured her. “No holds barred, remember, Linda? If this question bothers you this much, then it matters. And if it matters to you, it probably matters to another listener. Do you believe that?”

The answer was shaky, but it came. “Yes.”

“Good,” he said, leaning into the mic. “Now I know it’s hard, but can you tell me what your son said that got you so upset?”

Linda cleared her throat and Grace felt a ping of anxiety as the air went dead for a couple of seconds. Dead air was a cardinal sin on the radio. Ash knew that, but he wasn’t pushing Linda. He waited her out.

“Whenever you’re ready.”

Linda cleared her throat. “We were shopping last week, and there was a girl in the store who was dressed immodestly. I mean, her outfit was cute and looked like something you might see in a movie, but it showed a lot of skin, if you know what I mean.”

“Sure,” Ash said. “I think we’ve all seen outfits like that when we’re out and about.”

“Yeah,” Linda agreed. “And I was hoping my son wouldn’t notice her, but of course, he did.”

“As seventeen year old boys do.”

“Yes, but this was different, Ashton,” Linda said. “I looked at my son watching that girl and felt… uncomfortable. I’d seen his expression before in men that scared me, only I was seeing it in my son’s eyes. It frightened me. I mean, this is my son! I know him, but in that moment I felt like I didn’t know him at all.”

“And did you talk to him about what you saw?” Ash asked.

“I tried,” Linda said. “I mean, I reminded him that no matter what clothes people are wearing, we’re all still people and deserve respect.”

“And what did he say?”

The woman took a shaky breath. “He actually had the nerve to tell me that some people don’t want to be respected, and I didn’t need to defend them. Then I said that the girl was actually showing a lot of respect for herself by putting effort into looking so good when she left her house, and he said, ‘No, we both know why she put so much effort into looking good, Mom. And it’s not because she wants my respect.’”

Grace felt her blood chill as she sent Ash a look to see if they’d just heard the same thing. Based on the look in his eyes, he’d heard the same undertones she had.

This was serious—like, consult-a-professional serious, not phone-it-in-to-a-talk-show-host serious.

How in the world was Ash going to handle this?

“I’m so sorry, Linda,” he said in full sincerity. “That must have been awful for you to hear from your son.”

“You have no idea.” Linda was crying. Grace could hear it in her voice.

Ash took a breath, clearly weighing his options. “Can I ask if his father is in the picture?”

“He is, but we’re divorced and his father is remarried.”

“I see. And has his father talked to him about this?”

“Honestly?” Linda said, voice shaky. “I don’t know if that’s where he learned this attitude from or not.”

Frank tapped on the sound room glass, holding up a paper with large block letters showing information for a local support group.

“Am I right to be worried?” Linda asked.

“Honestly, Linda?” Ash said, his voice soft. “Yes. You are right to be concerned. But I also want to make sure you understand that I think you’re being very brave in expressing your concern with me.”

“I feel like such a failure,” Linda cried.

“Please don’t see it that way,” Ash said, leaning into the mic as if it somehow brought him closer to their anonymous caller. “All of us want to see the best in those we love, which means it’s often very natural to ignore warning signs when we see them. We don’t want anything to be wrong, so we often act too slowly or not at all. But if I say nothing else helpful to you today, I hope it helps to hear me say this: You are right to see your son’s behavior as a red flag, and you are right to seek out help. And while calling me may be a first step, I hope it is not your last.”

“That’s not what I wanted you to say,” Linda said, her voice cracking slightly.

“I know,” Ash said gently. “But you were brave enough to ask a hard question, so I have to be brave enough to give you an honest answer. If your son is talking like that in front of you, then he has people in his life who are reinforcing that attitude. A young man doesn’t say that to his mom without saying it a hundred times somewhere else. That’s my take on the situation.”

Linda took a shaky breath. “I appreciate it.”

Dead air again, only this time Grace didn’t panic. Part of her was too impressed with how well Ash was addressing the situation. He hadn’t joked, and he hadn’t downplayed the situation. It was a tough call, but he’d handled it.

Grace opened her mouth to help Ash segue into the resources Frank wanted them to pass on when Ash held up his hand for her to stop.

“Can I ask you an uncomfortable question now, Linda?” he asked.

Wait. Ash wasn’t ending the call? Grace sent a nervous look to Frank, who looked equally panicked. But what could they do? Ash clearly had the reins on this one.

“Yes,” Linda replied.

Ash hesitated a moment then plowed ahead. “Have you ever had a frank discussion with your son about what rape is?”

Grace felt all the air leave her body. In the sound booth Frank covered his mouth in his hands and paled. It seemed Ash had just stepped out of everyone’s comfort zone.

“Not sex,” Ash reiterated. “Rape. Have you or his father ever talked to him about that?”

“He knows it’s wrong,” Linda said quickly.

“Yes,” Ash said. “But would he know if he’s guilty of it?”

With a single sentence, all the air seemed to disappear out of the sound booth as Grace joined Frank in covering her face with her hands. She sent up a prayer that Ash knew what he was doing. Any man who sought to lecture a woman about rape was treading on epically thin ice, and Linda wasn’t responding. There was every possibility that things might go very bad very quickly.

“There’s a reason I ask,” Ash said, a little more conversationally. “You know I have a niece around your son’s age, right Linda?”

“Yes,” Linda said. “You’ve mentioned her several times on the show.”

“Yeah,” Ash said with the first smile since the call began. “She’s great. But a few months back we had to have a candid conversation.”

“About what?” Linda asked, her voice much less shaky.

“Something that happened at a party,” he said, his hand starting to work on the stress squeezer. “At first she wouldn’t tell me anything, but I could tell something was off with her and her friends. I dug around and found out about a police report made on behalf of one of my niece’s classmates.”

“I see,” Linda said cautiously.

Ash kept his tone solemn but conversational as he pressed on into the danger zone. “When I sat down with my niece to talk about what happened to her classmate, I found out that things weren’t as cut-and-dry to her as they were to me about what happened. For example, the police report clearly stated that her classmate had been sexually assaulted at a party while under the influence of alcohol, but teens who were at the party—who could have stopped the assault, and didn’t—had all sorts of excuses for why they overlooked the red flags and made room for rape to happen.”

Grace literally couldn’t breathe and she was pretty sure Frank was having a heart attack in the other room. Ash was going there. He was really, really going there and there was no way to stop him short of cutting to a commercial.

“My niece hadn’t been at the party,” Ash continued. “So she felt guilty for that. In her mind, she could have stopped it if she had been there. But she knew people who had been at the party, and they all seemed to be saying the same thing: her classmate had been asking for it. She’d dressed for it. She’d flirted for it. She’d said provocative things in front of everyone as she voluntarily drank herself into passing out. The kids who had been at the party—both male and female—seemed to agree that they didn’t really think what happened was really rape, since they all believe the girl would have consented if she’d been awake.”

“Oh, my goodness,” Linda breathed.

“That’s what I thought, too,” Ash replied. “Especially when my niece asked me a very earnest question: Did her classmate’s behavior at the party constitute consent, or was it really rape?”

“And what did you say?” Linda asked, and Grace felt herself leaning forward—equal parts terrified and interested—in anticipation for his answer. He hadn’t bombed yet. Maybe there was hope. Grace literally crossed her fingers under the table.

Ash paused and chose his words carefully. “I told her that it makes me sad that in our culture rape is the only crime I know of where the guilty party can claim that they are innocent because they were too tempted not to take what they wanted.”

Grace’s mouth fell open as she let out a breath she hadn’t known she’d been holding.

“I asked my niece to imagine that any other crime had happened that night—like let’s say that her classmate had shown up with a brand new car and been bragging about it. Let’s say she’d even showed her keys to the kids, let them sit in the car, and teased that she might let someone drive it. Then I asked my niece: If one of the boys at that party grabbed that girl’s keys after she passed out, took her car for a drive, and crashed it, would her classmate’s earlier behavior constitute permission? Did that boy have her permission to drive her car?”

“No,” Linda answered. “Absolutely not.”

“Is it still stealing?” Ash asked.

“Yes. Definitely,” Linda said, her voice gaining strength.

“And could the boy who stole the girl’s keys go to court and claim that he was too tempted after seeing the car not to steal it? And it was the girl’s fault for dangling the idea of driving in front of him and teasing him by letting him sit in it and showing him the keys?”

“Absolutely not!” Linda said, sounding mad.

“I agree,” Ash said, keeping his voice solemn. “So my niece and I talked about that for a while—how being real mad is not justification for killing, and how seeing a diamond necklace we really want isn’t an excuse to steal. My niece is a girl, so the conversation obviously talked about how she, as a human, has the right to look how she wants to look without anyone else assuming she is obligated to give sexual consent simply because they’re attracted to her.” Ash leaned into the mic, his face as earnest as Grace had ever seen it. “Being desirable is not consent. The hope to be seen and loved is not consent. And even ill-advised cries for attention are not consent. Consent is consent,” he said firmly. “And the argument that a perpetrator was tempted or that the victim was clearly looking to attract someone, thereby justifying an assault, is outright hypocrisy when compared to how we treat other felonies in our court system.”

“I… I hadn’t thought of that,” Linda whispered.

“Well, it’s something I believe, and it’s also something I think we should discuss more frankly with our children,” Ash said. “So I hope you talk to your son a bit more about how he’s choosing to see women. And after you do that, I hope you take things a little bit further and explore some therapy options so your son can talk to an adult about things he may not be comfortable saying to you. I think it would really make a difference. I’m going to give you a website to visit. We’ll put a direct link up on our page for anyone who wants to check it out. Do you have a pen, Linda?”

“Yes, I’m ready,” came Linda’s reply.

As Grace listened to Ash pass Frank’s information off to their listener, she felt an odd ache in her chest… like her heart was beating wrong. She couldn’t decide if the sensation felt bad or good, but it was definitely intense.

Aware of the webcam, Grace fought the urge to press the heel of her hand into her heart to see if it would help alleviate the tension that seemed to be building up as Ash’s words replayed in her head. The Ash Grace knew was so laid back and casual that she would have never guessed that he had such a compassionate speech stored up inside of him.

And the fact that he’d actually had that conversation with his niece? That somewhere out there a young girl had a uncle as hunky as Ash—a man who could have any woman—sit down with her and have a conversation like that warmed Grace’s heart so much that breathing became a little difficult.

Her mind chose that inopportune moment to relive the sensation of Ash’s mouth on hers the week before. Her heart picked up its pace at the memory before her conscious mind stepped in and reminded her she needed to stay focused. They were broadcasting live… which sucked, because there was literally nothing Grace wanted more than to walk into Ash’s arms and thank him for being a good man.

So what was stopping her?

Once Linda hung up, Grace leaned into her mic. “Okay, ladies, I kind of need to give the guy sitting across from me a hug for that call. So we’re going to cut to commercial now, and if you’re watching on the webcam, this hug’s for you.”