Trashley: Thirty-Eight

You gotta pay to play

Ashley was in Minnesota visiting her kids while I was in Los Angeles going through her things. I had never snooped on Ashley before because I’m one of those annoying righteous morons who respects people’s privacy. And now I regretted it, because as soon as I started snooping, I hit the motherload: a stack of papers showing missed Tesla and Affirm payments, liens against Ashley for thousands of dollars from the state of Minnesota, letters from the IRS demanding more than forty thousand dollars in back taxes, several loans taken out in Cecelia’s name, the mysterious sale of a Subaru to CarMax, and six months of missed mortgage payments.

Creditors were hounding Ashley for money, and I had no idea how much she had put herself in debt, but it was enough to make me sick, which meant it was a lot.

I wondered if Ashley had targeted me on purpose, wanting to get her hands on my #MeToo lawsuit money, which I didn’t even have yet. And I’m sure she wanted to get in on my parents’ goldmines and woolly mammoth ivory. Ashley probably pictured herself diving into piles of gold, like Scrooge McDuck. Dumbass.

She looked at me like a dog salivating over a piece of steak. I was nothing but a walking, talking, golden ticket with big blue eyes, a dazzling personality, and incredible hair. It reminded me of the saying you gotta pay to play. In her mind, all she had to do was pretend she didn’t care about money because she was rich as fuck, then close the deal and get me to either…