Beauty and the Mustache (39 page)

We all stared at her,
waiting for her to realize that she’d just inadvertently spilled a
figurative can of beans.

“
Uh…what?” Marie
asked.

Kat sighed, finishing her
wine with three gulps, her face shading a color to match; she
continued in a quiet voice. “I just meant, don’t push him away if
you care about him.”

Fiona cleared her throat, drawing our
attention to her, and gave a little shake of her head. This meant
that we should leave Kat alone and not press the issue.

Sandra, as usual, was the
one to pick up the dropped ball. “Well, back to delicious Drew. I
can understand why you’re hesitating. He’s a game warden in
Tennessee. It’s not like he could get a job in Chicago.”

“
He could, just not as a
game warden,” Janie volunteered. “He’s got a PhD in biology and
wildlife management from Baylor. He could easily get a job in
Chicago.”

I shook my head. “No. No—I
would never ask him to move to Chicago. He doesn’t belong there. He
belongs here, in the woods and wilderness. He would wither and die
in a big city. He needs wide open spaces and wild animals and
breathtaking views and the quiet of the mountains. It wouldn’t be
right; I would never ask that.”

“
But what if he wanted to
be near you?” Elizabeth squinted at me. “Nico left New York; he
moved his TV show to Chicago to be with me.”

“
That was different.” I
was still shaking my head. “Nico moved from a big city to another
big city and got the bonus of being closer to his own family.
Doesn’t he have a sister in Chicago? And the rest of his family is
nearby in Iowa?”

“
Most of them, yes. That’s
true.”

Sandra interjected. “But
please tell me you two have done the deed.”

My mouth fell open in
stunned indignation. “Sandra Fielding Greene, I know you did not
just say that to me.”

“
I did just say that. You
two are having eye-sex every time you’re in the same room together.
If you haven’t taken a roll in the hay yet, then you need to before
you come back to Chicago with us. Tap that keg, Ashley. Tap
it!”

“
Fiona? Help me out here?”
I looked to Fiona to be the voice of reason and found her watching
me with a measured expression.

“
Ashley,” she started,
stopped, sighed, and began again. “Ashley, it’s clear to me that
you are leaving Tennessee with a broken heart.” Her mouth tugged to
the side and her eyes were sympathetic. “Your mother just passed
away. You have to give yourself some time to grieve. Your path
leads back to Chicago, at least for a little while. And Drew’s path
is here in Tennessee. Whether those paths meet or cross again is
entirely up to the two of you. Don’t let Sandra push you into an
intersection before you’re ready.”

Sandra
tsked
. “Oh, you and your traffic
analogies. Twerk and jerk, that’s what I always say.” Sandra
smacked her thigh for emphasis.

“
Ugh, Sandra. Can we have
one conversation without you making twerking references?” Marie
shook her head. “I am so over twerking.”

Fiona held my eyes and we shared a smile.
Her advice gave me a measure of peace, but my selfish heart wanted
everything now. It wanted Chicago and knit nights. It wanted my
brothers. It wanted the old mountains and the fall colors, the
winter snowfall, the spring blooms, and the summer fields of
wildflowers.

My heart wanted my momma
back.

And my heart wanted Drew.

Sandra’s crass response
pulled Fiona and me out of our moment. “You know you love it. And
besides, if you’re twerking right, you should be under and he
should be over.”

“
What is twerking anyway?”
Fiona asked the room. “I saw someone on Ellen talking about
it.”

“
You don’t have enough
junk,” I said. “Go eat more pie.”

“
My junk’s in the
front—the stomach,” Elizabeth said. “Is there a way to twerk with
your belly?”

“
No. That’s berking.”
Sandra said this right as Kat was taking a sip of water, which
promptly shot out of her mouth.

“
Damn it, Sandra!” She
wiped her chin.

“
You’re
lucky it wasn’t wine.” Sandra shook her head at Kat
and
tsked
.
“When will you ever learn, don’t drink when I’m
talking.”

“
Berking?” Janie asked.
“Like the artist Bjork?”

“
Completely different.
Berking is belly twerking,” Marie explained.

“
That’s not berking,” I
said flatly. “That’s jelly rolling.”

The room erupted in
laughter, and I couldn’t help giggling at my own joke.

“
Oh my stars! I have
missed you,” Sandra said, standing to give me a hug, pressing her
cheek against mine. “I’m so glad we have you back.”

***

My brothers as
well as my ladies and their husbands departed
after midnight. Jethro led the caravan back to town where they were
all staying in a quaint old inn until after the funeral.

Drew and I tidied up the
house, bagging the remaining bottles for the recycle bin and wiping
down counters. There wasn’t much to straighten, as Elizabeth and
Janie had gone through the living area before departing and
gathered all the empties. Fiona and Greg had washed and put away
the dishes, and my brothers carted the trash away in the bed of
Jethro’s truck.

As I was walking past the
sliding door to the porch, I caught my reflection. I was smiling.
It felt good to smile, and I was grateful for the distraction of my
friends on the night before the funeral.

Drew caught up with me and
kissed me on the cheek. “Go get ready for bed.”

I acquiesced and shuffled down the hallway
to the bathroom, stretching my arms over my head as I went.

After I was all washed up and minty fresh, I
changed into my pajamas and turned down the covers of the bed. A
bright star out the window caught my attention, so I turned off the
lights and opened the balcony door, stepping out to the porch.

It was still cold, but the
rain had cleared. There was no moon. The stars were pinholes of
brilliance against a black sky, vivid and bright. A sudden thought
struck me: stars felt like a distant idea or concept in the city
sky. They were dim and faraway.

But here, I felt as though
I might be able to touch them if I lifted my hand, reached out, and
wished hard enough.

“‘
From which stars have we
fallen to meet each other here?’” Drew quoted from behind me, and I
turned to see him leaning against the doorway. He was still dressed
in his black pants, white button-down shirt, and suspenders. But
his boots were off.

I smiled at him over my shoulder then turned
back to the sky. “Who said that?”

“
Your old friend
Nietzsche, as a matter of fact.”

I huffed a disbelieving
laugh. “Are you sure? That sounds far too romantic for Nietzsche.
It sounds more like Shakespeare or Byron.”

“
In the context of the
original text, the quote isn’t romantic. But I think Nietzsche was
a romantic soul, in a way.” Drew’s voice was deep and
thoughtful.

“
How so? Was he very fond
of cows?”

I heard Drew gather a
breath before responding, a smile in his voice. “No, not precisely.
He did say that women and men love differently, and I think there’s
a lot of truth in his philosophy on the matter.”

“
Let me guess, when a
woman declares her love, she does so with sweet grass and clover.
Cows love clover.”

“
You’re never going to
forgive me for the cow comment, are you?”

“
Nope.” I shook my
head.

We quietly watched the
stars, and I thought about how I might be able to steal this moment
and keep it, take it out and relive it when I needed Drew, when I
missed him. Because I was going to miss him.

Drew broke the silence by
saying, “I think Nietzsche would have appreciated the irony of his
end-of-life situation.”

“
What do you
mean?”

“
During
his last years, he was completely reliant on the kindness and
morality of his mother; then, after her death, his
sister. In his professional life, he insisted
that, at best, women were cows and that morality was an arbitrary
construct of society. But it seems to me that women and morality
showed him the truth in the end.”

I smirked at this, mostly
because I was surprised by his words, but also because the thought
was sadistically satisfying. This touch of sadism irked me about
myself.

Humans are at their worst
when they’re in the role of spectator. We eagerly watch as others
receive comeuppance, yet we reject simple truths about ourselves
even when the truths are gently administered.

I pushed these strange
philosophical meanderings to the side, likely a sign that I’d been
spending too much time in Drew’s company, and asked him for
clarification on his earlier statement. “Specifically what truth
was he shown in the end?”

“
Well, to a dying man,
intellectualism, pride, and philosophy have as much use as sand.”
Drew felt closer, though I didn’t hear or see him move; his voice
dropped in volume and tenor when he added, “Our will is only as
strong as our body; the desire for what we need will always trump
ideals.”

I shivered.

He continued, but he
sounded distracted, like he was talking mostly to himself. The
meditative, low timbre of his voice was hypnotic and paralyzing,
and it made my heart beat faster.

“
That’s always the way of
things, isn’t it? In the end, our vision is clearest.” I felt the
heat of him at my back just before he brushed his knuckles from my
shoulder to my wrist in a whisper light caress. “Without being
impugned by ideals—of image, perception, ambition, good intentions,
even honor—we gain the knowledge of what really matters, knowledge
that would have saved us from….”

I could hear the hesitation in his voice, so
I prompted, “Saved us from what?”

“
From wasting
time.”

“
For after all, the best thing one can do when it is raining
is let it rain
.”

―
Henry Wadsworth
Longfellow

I thought I
knew what I wanted. I thought I wanted to scorch
and smolder and burn. I was so wrong.

My desire for Drew wasn’t
a fire. It was a rainstorm. More precisely, it was a rainstorm in
the wilderness of the Great Smoky Mountains.

When desire is a flame, it
ignites—bright and hot. It’s exciting and sexy and physical. Fire
is a danger to which we are drawn; we like to play with it to see
if we can escape unsinged. You can see it, but you can never touch
it. You can never get too close. It’s about wanting. That’s the
fun, the allure, of fire.

But standing on that porch
with Drew at my back—not touching me, not speaking—nothing about my
desire for him felt fun, and it didn’t feel sexy or exciting
either.

Yes, I burned. Yes, the desire was physical,
but it was so much more than a craving.

It hurt like a thirst.

“
Drew, I
don’t….” I whispered, and I surprised myself because my voice
wavered then cracked. I cried. I bowed my head and leaned on the
railing of the porch. I wanted to say,
I don’t want to waste any more time
,
but my throat wouldn’t work because I was drowning.

He must’ve heard the tears
in my voice because his arms surrounded me at once, turning me so
that I was against his chest.

“
I’m sorry,” he said, then
he kept saying it. “I’m sorry, Ash. I’m so sorry.”

I shook my head and pushed
against him so that I could seek his mouth and quench this painful
thirst. He released me immediately. His arms fell away as he
stepped back to give me space I didn’t want. He pulled a hand
through his hair and looked miserable and dejected.

I couldn’t yet speak, but
I didn’t want him to misinterpret my actions. I launched myself at
him, my arms coming around his neck, my lips covering his—moving,
working, pursuing, chasing—until he comprehended my
intent.

He was stunned at first. I
could tell because, though he was kissing me back, his hands
lingered in a hovering touch on my hips, cursory and
tentative.

Then his hands were on my
body. His touch echoed, surrounded, felt layered and rich,
comforting. He sought to soothe me, but I would have none of his
softness. I wanted the storm. I needed a downpour.

I tugged off his suspenders and he helped me
by working them over his shoulders. I pushed him, walking him
backwards through the door, into the room, all the while
frantically pulling at his clothes, untucking his shirt,
unbuttoning his pants, unzipping him, reaching for him.

“
Ash,” he breathed,
lifting his head and catching my wrist.

“
I need you.” I pulled my
wrist from his grip and whipped off my shirt, pushed down my sleep
pants and underwear and captured his mouth, launching another
assault. “I need you. Please, I need you.”