Beauty and the Mustache

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.”

CHAPTER 23

“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.