Beauty and the Mustache (24 page)

“
I…I mean,” I stammered,
and I could feel the smile fall from my face as mortified
understanding of what I’d actually said took the place of my
kiss-daze.

“
I know what you meant.”
He said this quietly, in a way that was meant to ease my
embarrassment.

I cleared my throat and
glanced at the floor then back to him. “Well, you also have an
amazing singing voice.”

His grin became a little
self-conscious, but no less sincere or warm. “Thank you. That’s
nice of you to say.”

“
I mean it.” I nodded
vigorously, wanting him to understand that I was being honest. “I
don’t hand out false compliments because that only serves to
diminish their value. I’m telling you, Drew Runous, you have an
amazing singing voice. You should be singing all the time. You
should live your life singing all your words—starting
now.”

He laughed. His eyes
reminded me of shining silver bells on Christmas, merry and bright.
“All right, I believe you. Thank you.”

“
Your Viking name should
definitely be Drew the Singing Marauder, or I still like Drew
Never-A-Dull-Moment.”

He lifted a single eyebrow
as he responded, “Nah, most people would call me Drew the Boring,”
his tone was flat and dry.

I snorted. “What people?
Alligator wrestlers? Somali pirates?”

He shrugged and spoke
plainly without bitterness or malice like he was explaining a
universal truth. “Normal people want to go to bars, parties, hook
up; socialize, be seen. Money, power, influence….” He took a deep
breath before adding, “I’m not like that.”

“
What are you like?” I
asked before I realized that I’d spoken.

His single eyebrow lifted
again at my bold question, and a hint of a smile tugged at the
corner of his mouth. When he answered me, his voice held a
suggestion of Texas swagger and charm, catching me off guard.
“Sugar, I think you know what I’m like.”

I couldn’t stop the
pinpricks of awareness dotting the skin of my arms, neck, and
chest; nevertheless, I tried to flatten my grin. “Tell me
anyway.”

He just shook his head at
me like I was a little strange. The truth was, I just wanted to
hear him talk, and he so rarely spoke about himself.

“
Okay…how many people our
age debate philosophy? Read poetry? Learn about invasive species
and the effect they have on sensitive ecosystems? Or how about
moving to the middle of nowhere and just being? Just simply
living?”

I got the impression that
Drew was referring to someone in particular; maybe that gold digger
my mother had mentioned. As well, I felt like he was giving me a
rare glimpse into Drew—who he was, why he was always poking me with
the Nietzsche stick—and I admired what I saw.

“
Very few,” I responded
honestly. “And those who do usually end up being attacked by
bears.”

Drew laughed like I’d
caught him off guard, and the sound was contagious. Soon we were
laughing together. As the laughter receded, we watched each other
for a stretch, during which I nearly lost myself in his silvery
eyes.

I was thinking about
living in the middle of nowhere with Drew, reading poetry, debating
philosophy, and learning how to just be. I didn’t think that
sounded boring at all. If I added in my knitting group and books,
it sounded like paradise—especially if he were
shirtless.

Or naked.

When that image shot
through my mind, I blushed scarlet and looked away, pretending to
be extremely interesting in the crowd milling about.

“
It’s good to see you like
this,” I finally said when I was brave enough to look into his eyes
again.

“
Like what?” He stepped
forward, smiling down at me, and I lifted my chin to meet his
eyes.

“
I’ve known you going on a
month. Usually you’re….”

“
I’m what?”

“
Honestly, you’re
persnickety and intense, but…” I gripped his arm to stay any
potential retreat, “…you’re never boring.”

We shared a smile and a
gaze. It was one of those incredibly rare
I like who you are and I want to know you better
moments in life when you look at another person
and know that they’re feeling a similar degree of affection and
esteem for you too, and excitement at the possibility of a deeper
acquaintance.

It’s a spark—understanding
the person as an individual and valuing him or her as such. It’s
the tantalizing potential and promise for more—more time, more
shared experiences, more moments of intimacy.

It’s a moment of perfect
singularity, and it is completely different from mutual attraction
because it’s never based on physical factors, and it’s not related
to gender. I’d only ever experienced this phenomenon with female
friends, the giddy excitement of finding a person who I genuinely
wanted to know better.

But this time, with Drew,
it felt more profound and a lot scarier.

“
You talk when you cease
to be at peace with your thoughts.”

―
Khalil Gibran

“
I’m
glad you
almost died.”

I stopped, frowned, and turned to look at my
brother Jethro over my shoulder.

“
What did you
say?”

His brown eyes stared back
at me, his expression thoughtful and distracted.

“
I said I’m glad you
almost died.” He smiled a crooked smile and crouched next to the
water’s edge. He picked up a flat, smooth stone and turned it over
in his palm.

My eyebrows arched and I
opened my mouth to respond, but then couldn’t think of anything to
say. Eleven days had passed since my waltz with the raccoon, and
eight days had passed since the episode with Drew at the Friday
night jam session. Both felt momentous, but for different
reasons.

One made me feel more alive and more aware
of my surroundings.

The other made me feel
muddled and scared and more aware of my surroundings (especially if
those surroundings included Drew).

Instead of responding to
Jethro’s disturbing statement, a sound escaped the back of my
throat, similar to an
Uhhhhhh
.

Seeing or sensing my
confusion, Jethro waved his hands through the air, still holding
the stone, and shook his head. “No, no, no—you don’t understand,
Ash. You’ve changed. We were worried about you. You’ve changed
since the thing with the raccoon; it’s like you’re finally
awake.”

“
Oh,” I said, immediately
understanding what he meant, because he was right.

My relationships with my
brothers were becoming a real thing. I credited the raccoon attack
for waking me up, but I also recognized that two other important
factors had improved interactions:

1) I now used the
downstairs bathroom exclusively; I’d surrendered to the fact that
the upstairs bathroom was an ophthalmic hazard as well as dangerous
for my blood pressure and mental wellbeing.

2) I made loud noises
everywhere I went outside of the den, downstairs hallway, and
kitchen. This consisted of banging pots and pans, singing “Old
MacDonald Had a Farm” at maximum volume, and—if I was in a
particularly goofy mood—shouting, “Ready or not, here I come!” If I
announced my presence, the chances of walking in on a scheduled or
unscheduled sausage-packing session decreased
exponentially.

The summer heat was
becoming autumn temperate. I took walks, sometimes more than once a
day. I enjoyed the woods and all the beauty of the surrounding
wilderness. I removed my shoes and waded into the stream behind our
house, which was where I was now, out with Jethro, hopping from
stone to stone in the stream.

It was Saturday and his
day off; he was spending it with me. We’d spent most of the day in
the den with Momma, then later in the kitchen making turkey potpie.
I made the crust; he made the filling.

But for the last hour or
so, we’d been quietly exploring the wilderness of our childhood,
reliving old memories, visiting old haunts.

“
Hey, so….” Jethro paused,
his attention on the stone in his hand. “I ran into Jack again the
other day. He asked about you.”

“
Jack?”

“
Yeah, you know, Jackson
James, the dumbass that broke your heart in high
school.”

I wrinkled my nose then
snorted. “He might have broken my heart, but it’s not the way you
think.”

“
I remember, Ashley. You
were pretty torn up about it. No one knows why.”

“
First of all, I wasn’t in
love with him; I didn’t like him that way.” I wiggled my toes and
shuffled a few steps forward, aggravating the floor of the stream
and causing a little sand cloud to float over my feet.

“
Then why were you his
girlfriend?”

I shrugged and glanced up at my brother.
“Because he was nice to me, and everyone else was an asshole.”

He opened his mouth to
respond then closed it. His eyebrows danced around a little on his
forehead before he finally said something. “Well, you shocked the
hell out of everyone when you chose him. And then he shocked the
hell out of everyone when he dumped you.”

I sighed at the memory and
twisted my lips to the side. I’d broken things off with
Jackson—romantically—during our last week of high school. I’d
explained to him that I didn’t see a future for us as
boyfriend/girlfriend, but I’d desperately wanted to remain friends.
I guess I misjudged his feelings because he told the whole school
that he’d dumped me, which basically meant that the whole town knew
within days.

Then he wrote me a letter
telling me that he never wanted to see me or speak to me
again.

Looking back on it now, it
felt silly and ridiculous—high school, dumping, letters, rumors,
drama! I no longer cared about who dumped who. I cared about losing
my best friend.

“
Hey! Where are you guys?”
The sound of Billy’s voice calling through the woods pulled both
our gazes in the direction of feet crunching on fallen
leaves.

“
Over here.” Jethro called
back then turned to me, rolling his eyes. “Billy is the smartest
guy I know, smarter than Drew even, but he doesn’t know shit about
tracking in the woods.”

I smirked in response, my
black skirt gathered in my hands as I stepped down from the stone
and into the cool water. The stream was up to my knees and rushed
past with purpose. Therefore my skirt—which fell to mid-calf when I
wasn’t trying to keep it from getting wet—bared my legs to my
thighs.

“
I heard that,” came a
stern response.

I stiffened and my head
shot up, because the stern response was Drew’s voice, not
Billy’s.

Drew and Billy finally
emerged and, upon catching sight of their approaching forms, I
turned away and walked further into the water. I felt confused and
flustered. My heart was beating like it wanted to escape my chest,
and my neck was hot and itchy. I didn’t know where to
look.

This was now my body and
brain’s response to Drew, especially after our hallway conversation
and our very disorienting maybe-friend-kiss.

Since our conversation at
the jam session, Drew and I hadn’t talked much, not about anything
of substance. But he no longer felt like an enemy or an entitled
usurper.

He didn’t feel much like a
friend either.

I continued to study him in the mornings.
And in the afternoon if he was around. And in the evenings if he
stayed for dinner.

All this watching and no
speaking or touching had yielded a whole lot of mixed-up
emotions.

Yet, somehow, watching him
from afar felt a lot more natural than interacting with him up
close. Maybe this was because on some level Drew felt like a
fictional character, too good to be true, too perfect to be real.
This nagged at me. I felt like I was missing something obvious, or
maybe I hadn’t yet asked the right question to determine his
ulterior motives.

Yes, I was a creeper, but
I didn’t care. Drew brought these compulsions out in me, so he
could just suffer through my leering and take it like a
man.

Or a girl. Because, if
there’s one thing a girl grows up learning how to do, it’s
suffering through leering.

“
Jethro, I need the keys
to the Chevy,” Billy, always one to get down to business, hollered
at us through the trees. He did this even though he was close
enough to be heard if he’d employed a normal voice.

Growing up, Billy always
seemed perplexed by the forest. He’d talk louder than necessary, do
stupid stuff like throw rocks at beehives, and try to walk on
stepping stones with his shoes on. It’s like the woods made him
dumb.

“
Butter on biscuits,
Billy! I told you I hung the keys up in the kitchen.”

If I hadn’t been so
disconcerted by Drew’s presence, I
definitely
would have given Jethro
shit for saying
butter on biscuits
as a means to express his frustration. We’d all
been raised with the notion that
butter on
biscuits
was just as bad as the
f-bomb.