Inside Out(46)
The next day, Ashton had to go to rehearsal for SNL, and I had to get back home for a performance Scout was in at school. We continued our conversation digitally: Ashton and I couldn’t stop texting. Between every wardrobe change at rehearsal he was texting me, and I couldn’t resist replying immediately: it was that level of frenzied attentiveness. We were texting back and forth so much it was like that game where you try to keep a balloon in the air and you don’t want to be the one to let it drop.
It was a beautiful clear day, but when I got to the airport that afternoon, it was completely shut down; they said a massive storm—level four—was coming. It was the strangest thing: the sky was sunny, cloudless, and blue, but I literally couldn’t leave New York City. It felt like the universe was opening up this window for us, demanding that we spend more time together. Of course I texted Ashton immediately. “You’re not going to believe this, but my plane’s not taking off. Do you want to hang out?” That night, he texted me between each sketch while they were taking off his wig and stuffing him into the next one, and he came over as soon as he finished the show.
After that, we weren’t able to see each other for several weeks. But we were on the phone constantly, totally connected, buzzing with infatuation and excitement. It felt great. When I entered the relationship with Ashton, I had a newfound confidence that my perceptions were clear and strong, and that I knew myself—this was the gift from that very centering period in Hailey, away from the action and distraction of L.A. I didn’t feel insecure around him. It was the way I’d always wished it could be: love that felt pure and simple and profound. I knew what I wanted more explicitly than I ever had before in my life, and it seemed like maybe life was presenting me with just that: real intimacy. A soul mate.
He was twenty-five. I was forty. But I’m telling you: we couldn’t feel it. We were totally in sync, from our very first conversation. Keep in mind, when I was twenty-five, I became a mom. I skipped straight from being a young adult into motherhood and marriage. When I met Ashton, it almost felt like a do-over, like I could just go back in time and experience what it was like to be young, with him—much more so than I’d ever been able to experience it when I was actually in my twenties.
And it’s not like he was some flaky kid. He had a very mature approach to life. He had a bigger picture in his mind: at twenty-five, he was already extremely focused on his future. He was—and still is—the hardest worker I’ve ever met. That was uplifting and dynamic to be around.
A few weeks after that first meeting, Ashton and I finally had a chance to see each other again in Los Angeles. We had spent so much time on the phone talking by then, it was almost overwhelming to see him in person. Just the touch of his hand was electric, because there was already so much emotion behind it. We went to In-N-Out Burger, trying to avoid paparazzi and keep things low key. I knew, from day one, that if Ashton and I got together, it would be a feeding frenzy. It was just too juicy with our age difference, with me having been out of the public eye and Ashton being very much in it at that moment because Punk’d was such a thing. I tried to warn him about what was coming if we became a couple. I told him, “You will be followed. They will be everywhere. That ease of movement you’re used to? It will be a thing of the past.” But he didn’t really take it in. How could he? He later confessed that if he’d fully grasped what it would be like, he might never have gotten involved with me.
After dinner that night, he took me to see a piece of land he’d bought just below Mulholland Drive in the mountains above Beverly Hills, where he wanted to build his dream house someday. I loved that he was such an expansive thinker who seemed to look at life in its entirety, who wasn’t just reacting to whatever came his way. It was another perfect night, one that I’ll never forget. Maybe because I was older and more self-assured than I’d been in previous relationships, or maybe because I’d finally made peace with my body, or maybe just because of the inherent nature of our dynamic, but for whatever reason, I felt completely safe with Ashton, which made it possible to connect sexually in a way I’d never experienced before.
That sense of security also enabled me to be emotionally vulnerable and open in a new way. I had completely shut out the memory of that awful experience with Val when I was fifteen; I didn’t even know to file it under “rape” in my own mind. I just knew it haunted me. That whenever I was in a situation where I felt vulnerable, the fifteen-year-old me was who showed up. Ashton was the first person I really talked to about that, and it allowed me to start dealing with that trauma, that shame, and to start healing.
He had a night off, and he decided to fly back to Idaho with me, to see my life there. Hunter and Sheri-O, who happened to be in L.A., were flying out to Hailey with me, and as we were driving to the airport, I told Sheri, “I have a secret: I’m kind of going out with Ashton Kutcher.” Sheri said, “I have absolutely no idea who that is.” We pulled over to a newsstand and Hunter jumped out and bought a Rolling Stone, which had Ashton on the cover. When Sheri looked at it, she said, “Well, he’s certainly hot enough!” And I certainly agreed.
Ashton was very shy when we all met up at the airport and got on the jet that Bruce and I still shared. In fact, he was so nervous he barely spoke a word during the entire flight. I was reminded of the first time I went on a private plane with Bruce early in our relationship, and how thrilling and strange that had been. When we landed in Hailey, we went to go pick up our girls: Scout and Sheri’s daughter Sarah Jane were just getting back from a school trip to a wilderness survival course. Ashton turned to me in the car and said, “I want you to know, I don’t take coming into a kid’s life lightly. I know it’s not something you can just come in and out of.”