I got into Ash’s pickup, slightly out of breath from the cold and grateful not to have to make the ten-minute walk home. “Thanks for picking me up—it’s awful out there.”
“No problem,” he said, pulling away from the curb. “I guess we’re not going to the Shack tonight.”
Tuttle’s other response to a storm like this was to behave as if the apocalypse was upon us. Schools canceled classes, businesses closed early, and though I hadn’t been to Landry’s, I’d bet my last dollar that there’d been a run on bottled water and canned goods.
“Are they closed?”
Ash nodded. “Luckily, though, I came prepared.” A wicked grin slid across his face.
“What does that mean?”
“Look in the back seat.”
I looked. There was a picnic basket stuffed with goodies, including two bottles of wine, sitting on the bench in the back. My internal reaction was How romantic, followed up quickly by Omg what does this mean? “I thought I was supposed to buy you a drink tonight?”
“Next time.” He smiled. “I tried to pick out your favorites. There’s one of their famous charcuterie plates in there with cheese and crackers and some chocolate truffles. Oh, and a can of Pringles, of course.”
I looked at the basket overflowing with all the things I love, and an emotion I couldn’t readily identify swept through me. “I can’t believe you did this.”
“You like?”
“I like,” I said, and raised my eyes to meet his. “Very much.”
Ash pulled into my driveway and turned off the engine. “Listen,” he said, turning toward me. “I don’t want you to feel any pressure. I just wanted to do something nice for you. You may not realize this, but your friendship has been really important to me over these past couple of months. Moving here and taking over the funeral home…it was hard, and you’ve shown me that life in Tuttle can be…well, I don’t know…good, I guess. I thought some good food and wine might make you smile, that’s all.”
But it wasn’t just food and wine to me; it was a selfless gesture of kindness, something he did for the sole purpose of making me happy. One of my reservations with Ash was that he’d been so volatile when we’d met—up then down; hot, then cold. But I had to admit that once he’d decided he was staying in Tuttle Corner for good, he’d been more up than down. More hot than cold. Literally. I looked over at Ash with his amber eyes and sandy brown hair, and it was like some kind of switch flipped inside of me. In the space of a second, images of Jay and Chloe, Ryan and Ridley, even Tabitha and Thad flashed through my mind, and I thought, Why not me and Ash?
I reached over, put my hand behind his neck, and pulled him in. Our kiss was warm and sweet and full of all the things I couldn’t think to say, a combination between a thank-you, an apology, and an invitation. When we finally pulled away, it was Ash who was at a loss for words. I lowered my eyes, a counterweight to our intimate moment. I wasn’t exactly embarrassed, but the heat that drove me to kiss him left me feeling exposed. The silence stretched on for another few moments until I broke it. “C’mon, let’s go inside. It’s freezing out here.”
“Not where I’m sitting it’s not,” he said, a distinct note of bewilderment in his voice.
Once we got inside, we ate, we drank, and we talked about what we were going to wear to the party. It was fun to focus on something superficial for a change, and by the time we’d gotten halfway through the bottle of wine, we’d gone online and ordered a cheap top hat and walking stick for him, some strands of faux pearls, a cigarette holder, and a feather headpiece for me.
“How’s it going with the investigation into Flick?” he asked after we’d exhausted our party-related conversation.
I caught him up on what had happened over the past couple of days and the connection I’d just discovered between Flick’s notes and the Claremore Ministries logo. “What I can’t figure out is what a televangelist like Wyatt Claremore could possibly have to do with my grandfather or Flick.”
“Maybe they knew each other in college or worked together somewhere?”
“I don’t think so.” I paused. “I just wish Flick would have talked to me about what he was working on. He was so damn stubborn about wanting to ‘protect’ me from whatever it was he was looking into.” I braced myself against the you-should-be-careful reaction I was used to getting from people like Carl and Jay and my mom.
But Ash just shrugged. “He was old-school, that’s all.”
“What do you mean?”
“He was from a generation when men felt they had to protect women and children—and to him you were both. It sounds ridiculously outdated now, but that’s how they were raised. My PopPop was—is—the same way.”
“How’s your grandma doing?”
He held up the bottle of wine and raised his eyebrows. I did a shrug/nod combo. I probably didn’t need any more, but the mild buzz I had was so pleasant, I figured what the hell.
“She’s holding up okay, I guess. It’s just so sad. They’re each other’s whole life, you know?”
“Sad,” I agreed, “but kind of beautiful too. That kind of love seems pretty rare these days.”
We were both sitting on the floor, leaning against my overstuffed sofa. I’d moved the coffee table and spread out a blanket so that we could have a proper picnic since he’d gone to the trouble of buying the basket and everything. (I was pretty sure he didn’t just have that thing lying around his rental.) Coltrane, unmoored by this new furniture arrangement, had fled to the couch. He’d mostly been sleeping, but every now and then he’d roll his big floppy head around to keep an eye on the prosciutto. I plucked one of the remaining pieces off the board and fed it to him over my shoulder.
“That’s one spoiled puppy you got there.”
“Don’t I know it.” I gave Coltrane a kiss on his long, furry snout. “But I can’t help it. Just look at that face, it’s perfection.”
“It sure is.” From his tone it was clear Ash was not talking about the dog. I felt my cheeks begin to flush. I could feel him looking at me. “Should we talk about that kiss?” he said quietly.
“Not unless you want to.” I was suddenly very interested in the hem of my shirt.
He brushed the tips of my toes with his. “I could think of a few things I’d rather do.”
A current of attraction zipped through me. It wouldn’t take much, a tilt of the head, a slight turn of my shoulders… I just wasn’t sure. And I wasn’t sure why I wasn’t sure.
I took another sip of my wine. “It’d change everything, you know?”
“I know.”
“Do we want to do that?”
“I think one of us does…” he said with a playful edge to his voice.
I laughed, the wine rounding the edges of our conversation.
Ash turned his shoulders so we were face-to-face, or face-to-cheek, I guess. He tucked a strand of hair behind my right ear. Then he leaned in and kissed the side of my face, leaving his lips there for one-Mississippi, two-Mississippi.…
Screw it. I turned my head and let his lips find mine. The world faded out and we were lost to the energy that had been building for months. Whatever reservations I had disappeared, and it was just him and me. Everything was happening so fast—like we were racing against time, or perhaps our better judgment. He leaned me back onto the floor, his hand beneath the curve of my neck. I felt the weight of his chest against mine, his hot breath on my neck, and then suddenly he stopped.
“What’s wrong?” I asked, breathless.
“Riley, are you sure about this?”
“Yes,” I said without thinking, and grabbed his T-shirt and pulled him back down. I lifted his shirt over his head at the exact moment the doorbell rang. We froze in place—which for the record was me pinned underneath Ash, whose entire head was inside his T-shirt. Coltrane ran to the door and started barking.
“Who is that?” Ash whispered.
“No idea.”
The knocking came again, followed by more barking. Ash reached over to get his T-shirt off the floor. He sat up and put it on; I smoothed down my hair.
“Riley?” Knock, knock, knock. “Are you home?” It was Holman.
Are you fricking kidding me? What the hell was Holman doing at my house at nine p.m. on a Wednesday night?
“Yeah,” I called out. “Hang on.”
“Who is it?”
“Holman.”
As I turned to go open the door, Ash pulled me close. “Get rid of him.”
My stomach fluttered in the best possible way, and I leaned in for one more kiss. Then the knocking started again. I was going to kill Holman.
“Hey,” I said, opening the door just enough for him to step inside. The icy sleet was coming down sideways thanks to the brisk wind. “What’s up?”
Coltrane stopped barking once he saw Holman. I’m pretty sure Holman had never once petted him, but Coltrane was nothing if not an optimist. He wagged his tail and tried to nudge Holman’s hand with his nose. Holman raised his arms up by the elbows to get them out of reach. “I tried calling but didn’t get an answer.”
I glanced over at my phone sitting on the breakfast bar. “Sorry—we were just, um, having dinner.”
Holman looked over at Ash, blinked, and then focused his attention back to me. I knew Ash wasn’t Holman’s favorite person in the world, but this was a cool greeting, even for him.
“My power’s out,” he said. “From the ice storm. My whole building is without power.”
“Oh.”
“And my laptop is at approximately eight percent.” He paused, presumably waiting for me to react to this information. When I didn’t, he said, “And I have a lot of work to do tonight.”
“Oh.” The good Southern girl in me knew I had to invite him in, but the girl who had been on the couch with Ash a minute ago resisted.
“And it was starting to get really cold in my apartment.” Holman’s voice moved one standard deviation above his usual calm tone. “And I have Raynaud’s disease—it’s not advisable for me to get too cold.”
“What’s Raynaud’s disease?” Ash asked, looking somewhere between grossed out and concerned.
“It’s a condition in which the blood vessels in my hands and feet narrow in response to cold or stress, causing a restricted blood flow to my appendeg—”
“—it’s fine, Holman,” I said, cutting him off. His medical explanation broke the lust-induced trance I’d been in. “Come on in. You can work here.”
Holman, who was carrying his laptop and had a cross-body bag full of files slung across his slender frame, looked relieved. “Thank you.”
Ash widened his eyes at me as I led Holman to the kitchen table. Sorry, I mouthed.
As Holman busied himself with setting out his files and notebooks and plugging in his laptop, Ash tried to make conversation. “I read your story on the new laws regarding medical marijuana in last week’s paper.”
Holman looked up but didn’t offer a response. I knew him well enough to know this was because Ash’s comment was merely a statement of fact—neither a compliment nor an insult—therefore Holman did not feel obligated to respond. (This wasn’t the first time I’d heard someone make this sort of comment to Holman.) But Ash seemed hurt by his lack of response. He looked at me for help.
I tried to grease the wheels. “So, what’d you think?”
“It was great. Really insightful.”
“Thank you, Ash.” Holman seemed genuinely pleased. I hoped this was the beginning of a warmer relationship between the two of them. “Riley, do you have any green tea?”
“Sure.” As I went into the kitchen to make a cup of tea, Ash threw me a look, then said in a slightly stilted voice, “Hey, do you want to watch that movie in your room, so we don’t bother Holman while he works?”
Smart boy. “Um, yeah, sure,” I said. “Great idea!”
“What movie are you guys going to watch?” Holman asked.
I said, Little Women, at the same time that Ash said, John Wick 3.
“I guess we’ll have to negotiate!” I said, then forced a laugh. Ash faked one too.
Holman, who never faked anything, just blinked again, twice. “Good luck settling on a genre.” He put in his earbuds and started typing. Ash and I hurried toward my room.
A second later, Holman’s voice called out, “Hey, Riley?”
We were halfway down the hallway and out of Holman’s line of sight. “Yeah?” Ash playfully pushed me up against the wall and started nibbling at my neck. I tried to bat him away. Sort of.
“I’m in communication with one of my neighbors who decided to stay at the apartment complex, Joseph in 3F—he doesn’t have Raynaud’s,” he said. “And if the power isn’t back on by eleven, would it be all right if I spent the night on your sofa? If I don’t get the proper amount of sleep, my performance at work will be less than optimal.”
Ash had worked his way up to my ear. “Sure. Fine. Whatever.”
“Thank you.”
We started toward my bedroom again.
“Riley?” Holman called again.
I hung my head. Never had this fifteen-foot hallway seemed so long in all my life. “Yes?”
“Are you going to take Coltrane with you?”
“What? Why?”
“He’s doing that thing where he stares at me again. It’s very unsettling.”
It was true, Coltrane did like to stare at Holman. My theory is that Holman was probably the only human Coltrane had ever met who would simply not pet him, talk to him, or interact with him in any way, and he found this unacceptable. For the record, I agreed.
“Um, I’m sure he’ll settle down soon and lie on the couch. Don’t worry.” There was a pause and I felt like maybe we were home free. For a second.
“I think he wants something from me,” Holman said. “I am not sure I can work under these conditions.”
I sighed. “Fine. C’mon, Coltrane!”
Coltrane trotted down the hall and the three of us went inside my bedroom. The second the door was closed Ash took a step toward me. “Are we actually alone again? Finally?”
“Oh no,” I said, pushing him away. “No way.”
“What?”
“Not with him here.”
“He can’t hear anything—he has his headphones on.”
“Him.” I stepped back and pointed at Coltrane, who had jumped onto my bed and was turning around in circles, a habit he always did before he laid down.
“Are you serious?”
“Yes! I can’t possibly…with my dog in the room. That’d just be weird.”
Ash looked over at Coltrane lying comfortably among my pillows. “He looks to me like he really needs to go out.”
I laughed. “You think?”
A second later, as if on cue, Coltrane let out a big exhausted sigh and rolled over onto his side. He looked as though he might never move again.
“Asshole,” Ash said to him playfully.
“All right,” I said, a smile on my lips. “Now for the most difficult decision of the evening: What movie should we watch?”