Member-only story
Trashley: Part Nineteen
DINK Life
We drove home to Los Angeles after spending a week in Big Sur and Bakersfield for my birthday. I felt like Ashley and her family were up to something shady after secretly listening in on them Facetiming Ashley’s kids. I already knew about Ashley’s ex-wife and kids, so I didn’t understand why her family was going out of their way to keep them secret. Or maybe they were keeping me a secret from them. Ashley had told me she wanted me to be their stepmom, a role I had zero interest in playing. When Ashley and I first started dating, she referred to us as DINKs, a term I hadn’t heard before. She said it meant Dual Income, No Kids. Which meant before Ashley, I was a SINK. But it turned out we weren’t DINKS because she had children all along.
On the drive home from Bakersfield, I told Ashley that my friend and neighbor Kirsten was taking me to Mozza, my favorite Italian restaurant, for my birthday dinner. Kirsten didn’t like Ashley because Ashley didn’t tell me she had a family when we started dating. And Ashley hated Kirsten for hating her. The car went silent, and for the next twenty minutes, I could see Devil horns growing out of Ashley’s forehead in my peripheral vision. I braced the steering wheel, preparing for impact. Ashley would detonate in three, two, one —
