Beauty and the Mustache (32 page)

I opened my eyes and found
him watching me, his silvery blue gaze piercing and savage. I saw
his lack of self-control, the same feral madness that was
overwhelming me.

Furthermore—and I know
this will shock the hell out of people because it shocked the hell
out of me—Drew brought me to the edge of euphoria and over its
precarious precipice in less than sixty seconds. One minute I was
fumbling to feel and taste him; then his mouth was on my breast and
his hand was in my panties; then my head was thrown back and I was
riding the rollercoaster, sky diving, and bungee
jumping.

I was still so turned on,
so hot for him, I couldn’t muster enough common sense to be
embarrassed. As the tremors subsided—leaving my legs weak and
wobbly, my body spent and humming—Drew wrapped his hand around the
back of my head and brought my face to his chest. He nuzzled my
cheek, his hot breath fell over my ear, and he bit my neck. Then,
he licked it.

I held on to him so I
wouldn’t fall on my ass. Speaking of my ass, Drew moved the lovely
hand (that seconds ago had brought me to release) from the front of
my panties to my bottom, and he squeezed me with a ragged sigh,
like a moan escaping on an exhale.

“
Fucking hell, I love your
body,” he growled. “You are perfect.” He pulled me against him,
alternately kissing and biting my jaw and collarbone.

My breathing hadn’t yet
normalized and my heart was still beating a thunderous pace in my
chest, but my mind was clearing, and it couldn’t believe what I’d
just done, or rather, what we’d just done.

I exhaled roughly and
blinked against the tears that were gathering in my eyes. Drew
stilled, his mouth pressed against my shoulder. He must’ve sensed
that I was crying or was about to cry, because he moved his hands
to my upper arms and held me just far enough away to inspect my
face.

“
No, no, no….” he said in
a rush, then he leaned forward and placed gentle kisses on my eyes.
“No, don’t cry. Please don’t cry.”

“
I’m a
bad person,” I said, though it wasn’t precisely what I meant. If my
brain had been functioning properly, I would have said something
like,
What in tarnation is wrong
with me that I can’t stop thinking about you when my mother is
dying and my evil father is about to show up and make all of us
even more miserable, and you’re going to bear the brunt of his
awfulness, and yet never far from my perpetual melancholy is the
hope that you’ll find some way to take me in your arms, read me
your poetry, rile me up with Nietzsche quotes, engage me in a
battle of wits, and make me feel good.

“
No, Ash. You’re not a bad
person.”

“
I am. I’m a horndog. I
just got off in the shed at three o’clock on a Friday like a farm
hussy, or a…a tool shed hussy.”

He chuckled and wrapped me in his arms,
brought me against his delightful chest.

“
No, Sugar. You are not;
you aren’t any of those things. You are loveliness personified; you
are grace and fascination. I think of you and I stop breathing. I
worry that any movement will steal the image of you from my mind’s
eye. But the memory is a pale, hollow specter to luminous reality.
Because when I see you, when I touch you-”

“
Oh my God, you have got
to stop talking!” I grabbed his face with both my hands and brought
his mouth to mine. If I hadn’t, I might have spontaneously
exploded.

When I was sure he
wouldn’t extract himself and continue torturing me with his prose,
I wrapped my arms around his neck and stood on my tiptoes, relaxing
into the delectable sensations caused by another perfect
kiss.

Oxygen became a concern,
and I was getting worked up again, so I pulled away, lowering my
forehead to his shoulder and breathing heavy.

“
I like how you shut me
up.” Drew was also breathing heavily. He tried to run his fingers
through my hair but failed. It was just too tangled from my fight
with the straw pile.

“
I like shutting you
up.”

My admission made him
laugh and he kissed my forehead and cheek. We stood together
embracing in the shed for several short, quiet moments until our
breathing evened and our hearts slowed.

I gnawed on my bottom lip,
pulling it between my teeth, my mind occupied by the fact that I
was standing in my momma’s shed with a man that I craved, trusted,
but didn’t really know anything about. And he’d just brought me to
orgasm in sixty seconds.

If there was ever a man I
should get to know better, this man was him.

***

The walk back
to the house wasn’t weird, and that was what was
weird about it…if that makes sense. Also weird, we took the long
way—the really, really long way.

Drew put his arm around my
shoulders and I wrapped mine around his waist. I stole his cowboy
hat and plunked it on my head. It was too big, so I pushed it back
and let it rest at a precarious angle.

“
I found a joke for
you.”

I glanced up at him.
“Really? What is it?”

“
Have you heard my
Nietzsche joke?”

“
Uh, no.”

“
Well, there isn’t
one.”

I waited for a beat,
confused. Then, I got it all at once and I rolled my eyes. “That’s
a terrible joke.”

“
Okay, how about this
one.” He cleared his throat and tried to flatten his smile. “What
did God say at Nietzsche’s funeral?”

“
What?”

“
Nietzsche is
dead.”

This one made me laugh. I
closed my eyes and shook my head, allowing Drew to guide our steps.
“That one is hilarious. Good job.”

We walked a ways in
companionable silence, and I allowed myself to enjoy the comfort of
his arm on my shoulders, being tucked into his side like I fit
there; like a space had been made just for me. The late afternoon
sun was at our back, and the first real autumn chill danced over my
skin, making my shoulders shiver.

“
Are you cold?” he asked,
looking down at me.

“
No. Not really. It feels
good.”

Drew pulled his hat from my head and
released my waist, instead holding my hand and tugging me toward a
felled tree in the midst of wildflowers. Most of the blooms were
gone as summer was giving way to cooler weather, but their stems
came to our knees like tall grass.

“
Come, sit.” He
instructed, forgoing the tree trunk in favor of sitting on the
ground amongst the flowers.

I plopped down next to
him, and we sat in companionable silence for a while, absorbing the
general splendor of the field. It was untouched, unlike the area
around the house. My brothers and their hobbies and messiness had
cluttered the acre or so nearby the house, but the rest of the
fifteen acres were woods, fields, and wilderness.

The trees in Green Valley
were still green, but the trees on the mountains were already
changing color. Red, orange, and yellow-carpeted misty mountains
reached to the blue sky. With the coronation of vivid fall colors,
the mountains announced the change in seasons.

I felt Drew’s gaze on me,
so I turned to face him, my expression open and questioning. But he
didn’t say anything. Instead, he just stared.

“
What are you looking
at?”

“
You.”

“
Yes. Obviously you’re
looking at me, but why? Do I have food in my teeth? Lettuce in my
hair?”

“
Nope.”

“
So, you’re just, what?
Just looking at me?”

“
Yes.”

I wrinkled my nose and
wagged a finger at him. “There is something wrong with you…in the
head. You’re odd.”

“
Ash, there is nothing odd
about me looking at you.”

“
Keep your eyeballs to
yourself.”

His mouth pulled to the
side as he openly admired my face, and then he recited, “‘There is
an innocence in admiration: it occurs in one who has not yet
realized that they might one day be admired.’” He repeated this oft
quoted Nietzsche-ism liltingly, almost coyly.

I rolled my eyes. If ever a Nietzsche quote
had been misused, this was the time.

“
Puh
-lease. If you haven’t figured out
by now that ninety-nine percent of females in eastern Tennessee and
western North Carolina admire you coming and going, then you’re an
idiot. And I know you’re not an idiot.”

“
You misunderstand.” His
stony face cracked with a smile. “I don’t care about ninety-nine
percent of females, Ash. I was referring to just one.”

I watched him, studied
him, inspected him; and Drew watched me right back. My stomach
twisted, and my chest was heavy with a growing disquiet.

I was feeling more than I should.

Drew, holding my gaze,
tugged on my hand and lowered himself to the earth and me with him.
He then spent a few seconds positioning us so that I was tucked
into his side, his arm around me, my cheek on his chest.

I lay still for a full
minute, staring forward with wide eyes, confused as to what was
going on.

“
Relax,” he said. “You’re
all stiff.”

I lifted my head and
looked at him, searching his face for clues; it gave me no hints.
If anything, his expression made me more muddled. This was
primarily because his eyes had gone all soft and were caressing my
face. Furthermore, he’d threaded his fingers into my hair and was
rubbing it with his fingertips like it was silk and he was enjoying
the texture.

“
What’s going on?” I
blurted, my face and voice betraying a hint of panic, I’m sure.
“What are we doing?”

“
Lying here.” The side of
his mouth hitched.

“
But why? What did I
miss?”

“
I don’t think you miss
much.”

“
But I missed something. I
definitely missed something….” I looked up and down the length of
him. “I missed something big.”

His hand was still in my
hair, his fingers moving in and out of the thick curtain and softly
brushing my curls to one side then the other. My body began to
relax, because what he was doing felt good.

“
Drew….” I sighed his
name, but when I heard the sound of it—what I sounded like saying
it, like it was an invitation—I shook myself and refocused. “We’re
laying in a field of wildflowers.”

“
What do you have against
wildflowers?”

“
Nothing, except…we don’t
even really know each other.”

“
I know you.”

I
tsked
. “Well, I don’t know
you.”

“
What do you want to
know?” He asked this softly, his cherishing eyes trailing a path
from my forehead to my neck, shoulders, arms, stomach, then back up
in an equivalent unhurried study.

I paused at that, because
the answer to that question was
so
much.
There was
so
much
I wanted to know.

My mouth opened and closed
and I blinked at him. I officially had a blinking problem. “I…I…I
guess I’d like to know how you met my mom, how you met my family,
where you come from.” I knew Momma’s point of view, but I was
curious about Drew’s perspective. I also wanted to know how his
sister knew my father.

He nodded, but didn’t stop
playing with my hair or giving me his distracting, reverential
looks. “My sister committed suicide after your father pretended to
marry her when he was already married to your mother.”

My mouth?

The one that was already open?

Yeah, that one.

It dropped.

My eyes also blinked in
rapid succession—big surprise!—and I shook my head, managing to say
only, “Oh my God.”

I couldn’t believe that he
just…said it. He said it like he was telling me about his first
grade science project. I felt like a bomb had gone off. My ears
were ringing.

But he continued like he
hadn’t just said something completely life altering. “My sister
basically raised me after my mother died; she died shortly after I
was born. My sister, Christine, was fifteen years older, and she
had a lot of mental health issues.” Drew shrugged, his eyes
shifting to a passing cloud. “She was manic depressive.”

“
Oh my God. Drew….” I
placed my hand on his cheek and turned his face back to mine. “I’m
so, so sorry. I’m so sorry.”

I couldn’t help myself; I
shimmied up his body and gave him a quick kiss.

He swallowed, and his
features hardened as if he’d willed them to. Yet, when he spoke,
his tone was gentle, verging on indulgent. “You don’t need to
apologize. You didn’t do anything wrong.”

“
My father is a
bastard.”

“
Yeah.” Drew nodded. “So
is my father. Your dad and mine have a lot in common.”

I gave him a sad frown.
“Is your dad a polygamist?”

“
No. But he’s a US
senator, and he seduces other men’s fiancées.”

The first part I remembered Roscoe telling
me weeks ago.