FLASH DRESSED FOR the Asher Christmas party and, at Mrs. Scheinberg’s request, let her neighbor do both her hair and her makeup.
“Easy on the lipstick,” Flash said as Mrs. Scheinberg applied the lip liner. “I usually don’t wear much.”
“You will tonight. Bright red. You’ll look glamorous. Even better, you’ll look like Christmas.”
“You don’t even celebrate Christmas,” Flash reminded her.
“Ah, but I do celebrate glamour. There. All done. Go look at yourself.”
Flash walked to the mirror on the back of Mrs. Scheinberg’s door and nodded her approval. She felt like Holly Golightly in Mrs. Scheinberg’s sleek red dress with the fitted square neck and her black elbow gloves and high heels.
“Wow. I do look glamorous. I don’t look like me, but I look good.”
“You look beautiful. Just like you. Do you like your hair?”
Mrs. Scheinberg had curled it with a fat curling iron, and after adding a little hair gel, Flash had a head full of sleek and elegant waves.
“It’s perfect. Thank you for everything,” Flash said, and left a bright red kiss on Mrs. Scheinberg’s cheek.
“My pleasure. Now you need to go. You’ll be late.”
“I’m going. I’ll have the dress back to you by tomorrow night,” Flash said.
But Mrs. Scheinberg only smiled.
“No rush. Kiss that handsome man of yours for me when you see him.”
Flash grinned. She’d been doing that a lot lately.
“My pleasure.”
She headed for the door.
“Veronica, dear?”
“Yes?” Flash turned around.
“A little birdie told me that Mr. Ian Asher has a big present he’s giving you tonight.”
“Is he?” Flash said, smiling again. “That devil. It’s not even Christmas yet.”
“He is. I want you to know that you should accept this gift even if you don’t want to at first.”
“You’re being strange.”
“I know,” Mrs. Scheinberg whispered. “But I’m eighty-eight so I get to use that as my excuse. Now go. Have fun. Be safe.”
Flash had no idea what big gift Ian was giving her tonight. The mystery occupied her mind the entire ride to the Mount Tabor neighborhood of Portland. Ian had warned her a week ago that he would have to meet her at the party. His father would need him to help organize the staff and that was Ian’s job every year. Flash didn’t mind. It would give her a second chance to make her grand entrance and blow Ian’s mind. He’d never seen her in a dress before, not even a skirt. All she wanted to do was put a huge smile on his too-handsome face, kiss him, drink wine together and celebrate their first Christmas together. The first of many, she hoped.
And tomorrow, she’d put in her thirty days’ notice on her apartment and start moving her stuff into Ian’s house.
“Oh, shit,” she breathed when she pulled up to Ian’s father’s house. She knew it would be a nice house. Dean Asher was a millionaire, after all, but she hadn’t expected this place—a sprawling white Victorian mansion that consumed the large corner lot it had been built upon. White Christmas lights edged the roof, the porch and the balcony, and their yellow glow made the whole house look as if it had been trimmed in gold leaf. Every door wore a green-and-red wreath and every window held a flickering yellow candle. And through the front bay window Flash spied a Christmas tree that must have been twelve feet tall from the looks of it. And Ian wondered why sometimes she worried he was out of her league...
Then again, maybe there were some perks to dating a rich guy’s son. This was a nice fucking house. Spending Christmases here would not be a chore. When she imagined herself growing up in a house like this, she couldn’t imagine she would have turned out as well as Ian did. Ian was down to earth, normal, grounded. He didn’t throw his money around. He could have lived in a house like this in a wealthy neighborhood and he didn’t. He could have driven a Porsche but instead he drove a Subaru like everyone else in Oregon. And he could have fallen in love with someone with money or connections. Instead he’d fallen in love with her. If he wasn’t going to punish her for being working class, she wasn’t going to punish him for belonging to the one percent as long as he didn’t lord his father’s money over her. And so far he hadn’t. So far he’d been the perfect boyfriend. Although he had apparently gotten her a big Christmas gift. That made her a little uncomfortable. She hoped it wasn’t expensive whatever it was.
Flash tried not to think about it. She was nervous enough as it was, coming to this important Asher family party. Ian said all his dad’s family would be there—aunts and uncles and cousins and second cousins and grandparents. She’d find one of the out-of-town cousins to talk to, preferably one who felt as out of place as she did. They could hide in the corner somewhere, sip wine and ignore the rest of the party.
As she pulled in front of the house she saw that Ian’s father had hired valets to park the guests’ cars. Valets? For a private house party? Flash took a deep steadying breath. She could do this. She was an artist, after all. A real one now that her work had sold to an art collector. When people asked her what she did for a living she could say with all honesty, “I’m a professional artist.” She’d been waiting for years to be able to say those words. She told herself she didn’t care what Ian or anybody was giving her for Christmas this year. Some stranger out there with good taste and deep pockets had already made her biggest dream come true. What more could she ask for? Nothing.
She passed her keys to the teenage valet who declared, “Cool truck,” before hopping in and driving it away. She really hoped Dean Asher had hired those guys. If you wanted to make good money stealing cars, this crowd was the one to target. She walked through the front door of the house—no one stopped her—and found a glittering horde of people gathered in the downstairs rooms. She saw the mayor, the governor, a few cast members from that TV show that filmed in Portland every summer and drove Ian crazy by blocking traffic in front of his Pearl District apartment. Everyone was dressed to the nines. Some to the tens. Like that guy over there in the tuxedo and the white bow tie who could have been James Bond, as suave as he looked in that getup. She stared at him boldly, and he returned the stare before plucking a champagne flute off a passing tray and walking over to her where she stood under a large bough of mistletoe hanging from the ached doorway.
“Did it hurt?” he asked.
“Did what hurt?” she replied as she took the champagne from his hand.
“When you fell from heaven?”
“Ian—that was the most pathetic pickup line I’ve ever heard. And I’ve heard a lot of them.”
“I’ll have you know that was a very good pickup line.”
“Was it?”
“You’re going to have sex with me later, right?” he asked.
“Well...yeah.”
“Then clearly it worked.” Ian bent and kissed her lightly on the lips. She wanted more of a kiss than that but she saw a flash when their lips met—someone in a suit had just taken their picture.
“What was that?” she asked as the man in the suit with the camera slipped into another room.
“Reporter from the Portland Mercury,” Ian said as if she should have known. “Drink up, we need to go meet the fam. Also, you look incredible.” He held out his arm and together they walked from the front room down a hall toward the sound of voices coming from a back room.
“You don’t look so bad yourself. I’m glad you like the dress.”
“I love the dress. I love the lady in the dress even more. And I will love the lady out of the dress most of all.”
“You’re already trying to get me naked?” she asked.
“Yes. My old bedroom’s upstairs,” he said. “We will make a pilgrimage to it before this night is over.”
“Is that an order?”
“Yes.”
“Just in case I never told you,” she said, standing on her tiptoes to whisper in her ear. “I love your orders.”
Ian kissed her again in the darkened hallway before leading her through the door. He’d brought her to a large ebony wood paneled library where young women in red and silver sequined dresses sat on the arms of leather sofas chatting to men in tuxedos. An older couple sat on the sofa with a baby between them kicking her feet in shiny new baby girl shoes.
The chitchat quieted as Ian cleared his throat.
“Everybody, I want you to meet Flash, my girlfriend. Real name Veronica, everybody calls her Flash. She’s a metal sculptor and a welder and the best thing that’s ever happened to me. So be nice or you’re all out of the will.”
“Whose will?” asked a girl who was obviously a teenager and trying very hard not to look like it tonight. “Yours or Uncle Dean’s? Because I’ll behave for Uncle Dean’s will. Probably not yours, though.”
“That’s fair,” Ian said. “Flash, this is my cousin Angie. Angie, Flash.”
“Hi, Flash. Cool ink,” Angie said with a bright smile, and Flash thanked her very sincerely. So far tonight she’d had her truck and her tattoos complimented. She might survive this party, after all.
She met Ian’s grandparents, John and Marianne, and the baby was Penny, his cousin Jake’s daughter. The introductions rolled on for a few minutes until she was dizzy with names, relations and connections. But so far so good. Everyone was friendly, especially Ian’s grandparents.
Her tension started to ease as she fell into comfortable conversation with Ian’s aunt Lacey and her daughter Petra. They talked about Portland’s art scene, a topic Flash could handle with ease. Petra was an aspiring writer who was heading into an MFA program in the fall. Flash talked about the handful of art classes she’d taken, and when she casually mentioned she’d sold a piece recently, Petra high-fived her. She had a novel on submission and knew what it was like waiting for that all-important phone call.
“How you doing?” Ian whispered into her ear as they walked to the large formal living room for his father’s announcement. Flash braced herself for more photographs.
“Good. I like your family.”
“They like you.”
“They’re drunk,” she said. “Of course they like me.”
“There are benefits to being in a Catholic family,” he said.
“You have three uncles and four aunts and that’s just on your dad’s side of the family.”
“There are downsides to being in a Catholic family.”
“I’m never going to remember all their names.”
“Don’t worry about that,” Ian said under his breath. “I don’t even remember them.”
“I heard that,” Ian’s uncle...Lewis? said. Yeah, Lewis. Maybe. Or Louis. Oh, fuck it. She was buying them all name tags for Christmas.
The family lined up along the walls of the elegantly appointed formal living room as Ian’s father stood in front the Christmas tree as several reporters took pictures.
“You have a reason for inviting us?” one reporter asked Dean Asher. “Or did you just miss us?”
“I missed you, Joe. You have no idea how much I’ve missed having you at my house. When was the last time?”
“Four years ago,” Joe the reporter said. “Last time you announced you were running for the senate.”
“You’re stealing my thunder,” Dean said.
“So that means you are running for reelection?”
“No,” Dean Asher said.
“No?” Joe said. Everyone in the room went silent. This was not the announcement everyone had been expecting.
“Instead I’m running for the House of Representatives. You know, the big one. In DC.”
“Oh, holy shit,” Ian breathed. The entire room heard.
“Thank you for that, son,” Dean Asher said. “My first endorsement, everyone.”
With that, everyone in the room applauded and cheered wildly. Under the cover of the noise, Ian leaned in and whispered in her ear.
“Second floor,” he said. “Last room on the left.”
“What is?” she whispered back.
“My old bedroom. Slip out while nobody’s watching us. I’ll be there in fifteen minutes.”
“You’re really going to fuck me at your family’s Christmas party?”
“Do you even have to ask?”
“You know, Mrs. Scheinberg said you had a big Christmas present you were going to give me tonight. Is it your cock?”
“I can’t tell you that. It would ruin the surprise.”
“Okay, I’m going,” she said. “But if you show up with your dick in a box, it’s not going to be a happy holiday.”
Flash slipped out of the living room while Ian’s father was launching into a speech about why he was ready to go to Washington. She didn’t feel too bad about missing out on the speech. First of all, Ian had ordered her to go upstairs. And second, Dean Asher already had her vote. Not like she was going to vote against her boyfriend’s dad.
Trying to look as casual as possible, Flash headed up the stairs with a purposeful stride. If anyone saw her and wondered where she was going, she’d simply tell them she was looking for the bathroom. Too much champagne. That excuse worked every time. She made it to the second floor and found it much cozier and homier than the downstairs. No fancy oil paintings on the walls up here. No leather sofas and libraries that looked like something out of an English manor house in one of those mystery movies where the murder is always solved by the unassuming old lady. She peeked in on one room and found a simple yellow guest bedroom. Another room was nothing but labeled file boxes—years and years of tax returns for all of Dean Asher’s business ventures. Boring. She couldn’t wait to see Ian’s childhood bedroom. She hoped it was full of embarrassing stuff like photographs of him at prom or posters for stupid movies he’d been obsessed with as a kid or old Playboys or something good. Something she could tease him about mercilessly for as long as they lived.
She opened the door and flipped on the light switch.
Her heart fell to her stomach and stayed there.
Standing right in the very center of the floor of Ian’s old bedroom was a sculpture. Her sculpture. The sculpture he’d inspired her to make while talking about his mother.
“You son of a bitch,” she said, choking back tears. Ian did the one thing she told him not to do. He was the one who bought her sculpture from the gallery. This was supposed to be the amazing Christmas present he’d gotten for her? She had never felt more pain, more disappointment. She’d been on cloud nine for two days feeling like her life as an artist had finally begun and there was proof it had all been fake. An art collector hadn’t seen her talent and bought her stuff. Ian had bought it so she could move in with him. The sense of betrayal tasted like copper in her mouth. There was nothing for it—she would do what she’d told Ian she would do if he dared buy one of her sculptures.
She would never see him again.
* * *
IAN LOVED HIS FATHER. He really did. And one thing he loved about his father was his speeches. They were equal parts entertaining and long-winded. And tonight Ian knew the speech would be especially long as his father had decided—without telling him—to run for the US House of Representatives instead of for reelection as a state senator.
Well.
Good for Dad. Meanwhile, Ian needed Flash’s body and he needed it five minutes ago.
While everyone else in the room was laughing at a particularly funny but good-natured jab at the governor, Ian slipped quietly out of the room and up the stairs. He’d been on edge all night as Flash met his extended family. The last time Flash had come to an Asher party it had ended in disaster. He’d told his entire family before she arrived that he was dead serious about this woman, and if anyone even stepped one toe out of line around her, this would be the last Asher party they’d be getting an invitation to. And every last one of them had behaved perfectly, treating Flash like she was already one of the family. He hoped by this time next year she would be.
Thoughts of their future together put a smile on his face as he snuck up to the second floor, looked around for any party stragglers and then strode to the door of his childhood bedroom.
When he opened the door he didn’t find Flash in his bed like he’d hoped. Although there was a woman in his room.
“Oh, my God...” he breathed as he walked around the metal sculpture that stood over five feet tall.
This was Flash’s sculpture of his mother. It had to be. The piece was ivy vines that had been sculpted into the shape of a woman’s body, one arm extended as if reaching for something or someone. Vines as veins. One long vine ran from the bottom of the woman’s left heel all the way up to the neck. And it was that central core of steel, the spine, that anchored the entire sculpture. He could see through the various leaves at the hollow core of the sculpture. But it wasn’t entirely hollow. Where the woman’s heart should be was a single ivy leaf hanging from a metal chain suspended in the chest cavity. Engraved on the leaf was one word—Ian.
“It’s your mother, isn’t it?”
Ian spun around and found his father standing in the doorway.
“Yeah,” Ian said. “It is. This is Flash’s sculpture?”
His father nodded. “You told me to go to the gallery to see your girlfriend’s art. I did. I wasn’t expecting...” He stood in front of the sculpture as if to look the woman in her ivy eyes. “I wasn’t expecting this.”
“It’s... I knew she was good, but I didn’t know she was this good,” Ian said. He felt like someone had punched him in the throat. He could hardly speak.
“I saw your name written on the heart,” his father said softly, his voice choked with emotion, “and I had to leave the room for a few minutes.”
Ian blinked back tears.
“You bought this?” Ian asked.
“I did. For you. For us. For our family. I want this in our family.”
“Flash said an art collector from Seattle bought this. She was so happy.”
“I didn’t want you knowing I’d bought it. It would have ruined the surprise. I saw you two sneaking up here. I wanted to catch you before you saw your Christmas present. I guess I was too late.”
“A little. I...” Ian walked around the sculpture again. “She called me her muse. She told me to give her an idea for a piece, and I said I wanted something of my mother since I never got to know her. I never imagined she’d do this.”
“I never stopped loving her,” his father said. “Even after all these years it still feels like an open wound. I shouldn’t have cut you off from her family. When she died...when the accident happened, she was coming back to me. She’d taken you to her parents’ house and I called and begged and begged for her to come back. And she wanted to come back but she wasn’t sure yet. She left you with her parents and she was on her way to meet me, to talk it out with me. She died coming back to me.”
“Dad...”
“And your grandparents, her parents, they did not want to give you back to me. I just lost my wife, and I was facing the possibility of losing my baby boy, too? We fought. It was an ugly fight.”
“They filed for custody?”
“They did. I won, but you lost. I blamed them for a long time for her death. That was unfair of me. My parents were as unhappy with us eloping as her parents were. And then I punished you by keeping you away from your grandparents because I couldn’t forgive them for trying to take you from me. I spent too many years seeing Ivy’s parents as the enemy instead of what they really were—my son’s family.”
“Dad, don’t you think you should be downstairs talking to the reporters?”
“You are more important. This is more important.” He pointed at the sculpture. “I want you to contact your grandparents. They’re still alive. I have their phone number, their address. They should see this sculpture. They should know their grandson and his girlfriend who made it. I have everything down in my office. Whenever you’re ready, I’ll give it all to you. And I hope you can forgive me for being so selfish with you the past thirty-five years. It was hard to forgive the people who tried to take my son from me. It was too easy to think about my own pain and my own grief instead of remembering they’d lost their daughter and were acting out of pain and grief just like I was. I don’t know if they’ll forgive me, but they’ll love you and that’s all that matters to me.”
“I don’t know what to say.”
“Nothing to say. I was wrong. And you know how hard it is for a politician to say he’s wrong.”
“Christmas miracle.”
“And all thanks to your lovely lady. Where is she, by the way? I want to thank her for this.”
“I don’t know.” Ian stuck his head into the hallway. “I wanted to give her the Christmas gift I got her so I sent her up here...”
Flash would have done what he asked. She would have come to his bedroom. She would have seen the sculpture. And he’d told her he’d gotten her a big Christmas gift...
And she would have been fucking furious at him because the only thing she told him not to do was buy one of her sculptures. He hadn’t, but his dad had.
“Oh, fuck,” Ian said with a groan.
“Ian!”
“Dad, I have to go,” he said.
“Go? Where?”
“I have to find Flash.”
“She was just here.”
“I know my girlfriend. She saw this and ran.”
“Why?”
“Because she told me to never buy any of her art.”
“You didn’t buy it. I did.”
“Yes, but she doesn’t know that. I need to find her.”
“Well, find her. I have a Christmas gift for her.”
“Dad, I don’t think she’ll—”
“She’ll want it. I promise. Go get your lady. Do whatever you have to do to get her back. Trust me on that.”
Ian didn’t walk out of the room. He ran. He ran out of the bedroom, down the hall, down the stairs, and hopped in his dad’s Prius since it was easier to get to than his own car. And his father said he should do whatever it takes to get Flash back. Surely that included grand theft auto.
He drove as fast as he safely could to Flash’s apartment complex. He ran up to her door and knocked.
And knocked.
And knocked.
Nothing.
He ran back down the stairs and knocked on Mrs. Scheinberg’s door.
He hated doing it. It was after ten and he assumed she was already asleep, but if Flash had come home, Mrs. Scheinberg would probably have heard her truck.
The door opened two inches only and Ian saw Mrs. Scheinberg peeking through the gap over the door chain.
“Ian? What on earth?”
She closed the door and opened it all the way.
“Flash isn’t here, is she?” he asked without further preamble.
“No, why would she be? She went to the party.”
“She did come and then she left. She won’t answer my phone calls or return my messages. Long story.”
“You weren’t mean to her, were you? Or your family?”
“No, I swear. It’s just a misunderstanding. A bad one, but still, it’ll be fine as soon as she talks to me.”
“You know she has her pride.”
“Yeah, I know, I know. Too much pride. I better go. I have to find her. Any idea where she’d be? Any idea at all?”
“Try 7212 Northeast Prescott.”
“That is a really specific answer,” Ian said.
“It’s her workshop,” she said. “If she’s not there, then I have no idea where she is. But she’s there.”
“You’re sure?”
“It’s where she went after she was kicked out of your last party.”
“We’re going to get this party thing right eventually.”
“You better. I don’t have a lot of years left and I better see a wedding before I go.”
“I promise,” Ian said. “You can be my best man. Best woman.”
“I’ll hold you to that.”
He kissed her cheek and headed back into Portland. On the way to Prescott, Ian called upon his mother’s faith and his father’s and prayed Flash was there. If she wasn’t at the workshop, he had no idea where she could be. She had other friends she could have run to and stayed with and it could be days or weeks before he saw her again. He tried to tamp down the apocalyptic thinking. It was just a misunderstanding. It was just a mistake. He wasn’t going to be like his father in twenty years still kicking himself for losing the woman he loved.
He pulled into the driveway of a weedy little green house with a hand-painted sign in the front window that read Studios for Rent. When he stepped out of the car he heard the unmistakable sparking sound of a MIG welding torch.
Ian knew he had to be careful if he didn’t want to take a torch burn to his face. He didn’t knock on the side door but simply slipped quietly inside and moved a safe distance from Flash’s worktable. She’d changed out of her dress and into canvas work pants and a white tank top. The dress hung on a hook behind the door. She’d wrapped it in plastic to keep it safe.
While he waited for her to acknowledge his presence, he glanced around the shop. He saw the mold she’d used to create the ivy leaves for the sculpture of his mother. She amazed him with what she could do with her mind and her muscle and her imagination.
Flash finally killed her arc and sat her welding gun down on the table. She raised the visor of her helmet and turned around to face him.
“What?” she asked. That was all. One word. What?
“What are you working on?”
“Nothing,” she said.
“Sounded like something.”
“Practicing a new technique I saw online. I’m playing with scraps. It’s fun when you don’t have to worry about screwing up.”
“You’re the only woman I know who would call practicing MIG welding techniques on scrap metal ‘fun.’ No, let me correct that. You’re the only person I know of any gender who would say that.”
“Not my fault you don’t know as many cool people as I do.”
Ian took a step toward her. She didn’t say anything to stop him so he took another.
“Are you going to ask why I’m here?”
“No,” she said. “But I’m guessing you’re going to tell me.”
“I am. But first, did you like your Christmas present I gave you?”
“No, I didn’t.”
“Why not?”
“Because I told you if you bought one of my sculptures, I would never talk to you again, and you did it, anyway, because that’s what people like you do—whatever you want because you can and everyone else’s feelings be damned.”
Ian pointed at the dress hanging on the hook behind the door. “That’s your Christmas gift. I bought the dress from Mrs. Scheinberg for you.”
“You what?”
“I bought you that dress. She even gave me a discount as long as I promised to go to shul with her. That’s your Christmas gift from me. Not the sculpture. My father bought your sculpture. I had no idea he’d bought it and no idea he’d stored it in my old room when I sent you up there. I was as shocked to see it as you were.”
“Your dad bought it?”
“You were right. He wasn’t thrilled we were dating. He’s a politician. Image is everything to them, and you made him a little nervous. I admit all of that. But my father is a good guy ninety-nine percent of the time, and when I told him he should go check out your work at the gallery, he did. He saw the sculpture and fell in love with it. He bought it to keep in the family.”
Flash crossed her arms over her chest and leaned back against the worktable.
“You told him to go look at my art.”
“I was showing you off,” Ian said. “I wanted him to see how talented you are. And he saw. He said he had to leave the room for a few minutes when he noticed you’d engraved my name on the heart.”
“I did that because I know your name was engraved on your mother’s heart.”
“I’m sure it was,” Ian said.
“And I know that because it’s engraved on mine.”
“Flash...” Ian couldn’t speak anymore.
“It hurt more than anything ever hurt when I thought you’d betrayed my trust,” she said. “I felt that hurt all the way to my heart. It’s terrifying to love someone as much as I love you. I was looking for any excuse to get away from how much I love you. You gave me one.”
“Cutting your losses again?” he asked.
She nodded. “Yeah. I guess I need to stop doing that.”
“I’d appreciate it.”
She dug her hands in her pockets. She looked small and young, hurt.
“My mom was a hotel housekeeper when she met my father,” Flash said. “She’d started cleaning motels and worked her way up to a five-star hotel in Seattle. He was the sort of guy who stayed in five-star hotels.”
“Rich?”
She nodded. “And he was the sort of man who used women because he thought the whole world was a banquet, and he was the guest of honor. I’m sure you know the type.”
“Very well, unfortunately.”
“Mom got in touch with him when she found out she was pregnant. He refused to have anything to do with her or me. He sent her a check for ten thousand dollars and wrote ‘Final Payment’ on the memo line.”
“Asshole.”
“Seriously. When I was nine I asked Mom about who my father was and why he never visited or called or anything. Mom doesn’t like to lie or sugarcoat stuff. She said, ‘Your father doesn’t think we’re good enough for him.’ I feel like it’s coded in my DNA now, this distrust of men with money or power and especially both. And that’s shitty, right? Taking all that old pain that has nothing to do with you out on you?”
“You and my dad have a lot in common. You’re both punishing yourselves over things you didn’t have any control over. He didn’t cause the car accident that killed my mother. You didn’t cause your father to reject you before you were even born. And yet, decades later, you’re both still beating yourselves up over it. Dad won’t get remarried and you keep running from me.”
She rubbed her bare arms and shrugged. “I don’t want to be like this,” she said.
“I know. But I love you, anyway. And I’m not going to stop loving you. I’m going to love you long enough and hard enough that you eventually figure out that I’m not one of the bad guys. I understand it might take a while but you’re worth waiting for.”
“Are you mad at me?” she asked.
“For what? Doing exactly what you told me you’d do?”
“I jumped to conclusions. I should have talked to you instead of running.”
“I should have talked to you before I broke up with you. So I can’t really blame you for doing the same damn thing I did. I’m just glad you didn’t weld truck nuts to my bumper again.”
“How do you know I didn’t?” she asked.
“Oh, my God, did you?” He winced. Flash laughed and it was the sweetest sound he’d heard all night.
“No,” she said. “Only because I don’t have any on me. But the thought did occur to me.”
“If you ever weld truck nuts to my car again...”
“What?” she asked, lifting her chin defiantly.
Ian walked over to her table and took her into his arms.
“I’ll fuck you,” he said. “And you’ll like it.”
“That’s not much of a threat.”
“I’ll take any excuse to fuck you,” he said.
“I’m here. You’re here. Is that enough of an excuse for you?”
“More than enough.” He reached for her but she held up her hand to stop him.
“What?”
“Do the thing,” she said.
“The thing? Oh, yeah, the thing.”
Ian ripped his bow tie off and threw it on the floor.
“Okay,” she said breathlessly. “Now you can fuck me.”