“Sure,” I said, taking our glasses over to the sink. “Hey—did you know that Skipper Hazelrigg is planning to run for sheriff against Carl in the next election?” I turned on the water and started washing the dishes.
I didn’t need to turn around to know Ash had followed and was right behind me. I could feel the heat from his skin a split second before I felt his fingers sweep the hair off the back of my neck. My whole body went still.
He leaned in close. “Riley Ellison, are you trying to change the subject?”
I shut off the water but didn’t turn around. “No, I—it’s just—” I stammered, confused by the electric sensation of his fingertips. “It’s just—”
Ash put a hand on each of my shoulders. It was like time slowed down. I stood frozen, afraid to move. I knew I could stop this by wriggling out from under him, and I knew I could escalate it by turning around to face him. The only thing I didn’t know was what I wanted.
I closed my eyes. “Ash—”
He pulled back slowly, running his hands down my arms and squeezing my hands before letting go. “It’s okay,” he said softly, taking a step back. “I just thought that maybe since you were ready to get back to work, you might be ready to move on in other areas, too.”
I turned around now that we would no longer be nose-to-nose, but when I looked at his face, the slight pink in his cheeks, those sexy hooded eyes, I completely lost what I was going to say. My mind went blank, and I just stood there looking at him.
After a few moments, Ash let out an embarrassed sort of laugh. “Okay, I guess not. I’m sorry—”
“Don’t be sorry,” I said quickly. “I’m just a mess right now.”
“No—I misread the situation, clearly.”
“You didn’t, it’s just—”
“It’s okay, Riley. Really.”
I took a deep breath. “I just don’t know about a lot of things right now. I’ve probably sent mixed signals—I’m sorry—it’s not on purpose, I promise. I just don’t know whether I’m coming or going these days. But I like you…and I like our, um, friendship, or whatever we have. And I know there’s, like, this chemistry between us, but I’m just not sure what the best thing to do is, you know? I’m not sure if I’m ready for whatever this is, if it’s anything at all.”
“Wow, you really like to complicate things, don’t you?” He was joking, but the comment still stung. I looked down.
He sighed, sounding frustrated that his joke didn’t land. “I like you too, Riley. Obviously.” We stood there silently for a few seconds marinating in the awkwardness. “Let’s just forget about it for now, okay? We can revisit our raging sexual tension another day.”
That made me laugh, and as I did, all the weirdness went out of the room. We were friends again. Or something like that.
“Hey, my cousin Toad is having a New Year’s Eve party. Wanna come?”
I’d nearly forgotten about the holidays this year, given everything that had happened. I’d spent a somber Christmas with my parents. None of us felt much like going to church, though we did anyway, and my mom prepared her infamous tofurkey and we all sat around their house trying not to talk about the man we’d just buried. It hadn’t even registered that soon we’d be ringing in a new year.
“Um, sure,” I said, mostly because I didn’t know what else to say. I didn’t want Ash to think I was saying no because of what happened earlier, and besides, it was probably not a bad idea to get out of the house and spend New Year’s with people my own age.
“Cool. He’s going with a Gatsby theme this year.”
“Like, costumes?”
“Yeah, he gets really into his themed parties. He’s kind of known for it, but you don’t have to if you don’t want—”
I’d never met Toad, he was several years ahead of me in high school, but I’d heard about his legendary parties for years. It was kind of exciting to think I could be going to one. “That actually sounds really fun. I’ll do some research.”
“Great,” Ash said. He’d finished cleaning off his place from the table and had put his coat on. “All right, well I’ve got a one-thirty so I should go.”
“Thanks for lunch,” I said. Just before he turned to walk out, I added, “Hey—”
He turned around.
“I…um, I…” Now that I’d started the sentence, I didn’t know exactly where I was going with it. I think you look amazing in that color blue. I like how a strand of hair falls down and covers just one eye, and you have to flick it away every so often. I hope you’ll try to kiss me again someday. In the end, all I could come up with was, “I think you’d make a really good Nick Carraway.”
Ash titled his head to the side. “I can’t remember, was he a good guy or a bad guy?”
“Both—neither,” I said, then laughed. “More complicated than anything else, I guess.”
Ash flashed me a mischievous grin. “But he was handsome, right?”
“Definitely.”
“Does he get the girl in the end?”
“Afraid not,” I said, feeling the smile slide off my face. “He actually decides he was in love with an illusion and heads west.”
Ash winked and said, “Oh well, guess you can’t win them all.”
CHAPTER 3
By the end of the day I was feeling pretty good about my reentry into the world of the Tuttle Times. I’d already filed two stories and had picked out the subject for the weekly editorial obituary. Since most of the obits that ran in our paper were technically death notices—small tributes sent in by families or funeral homes—Flick had had the idea to bring back the obituary in its traditional form, a news article detailing the life of someone who had an impact on our community. The column had been a huge success, increasing our circulation with many readers citing the “Life in a Day” column as the reason they decided to take the paper after all this time.
I’d decided (and verified with Kay) that this week’s subject would be Myrna James Rothchild, known to all in Tuttle Corner as the “Christmas lady.” Myrna kept her house decorated for Christmas, inside and out, year-round. You’d often see her dressed up as Mrs. Claus on a sunny day in April or raking leaves in October, though her husband, Doug, refused to dress up as Santa during any month other than December. Throughout the years her obsession with the holiday grew, and she began offering tours of her 2,400-square-foot home that boasted more than thirty-seven Christmas trees, twelve bunches of live mistletoe, and 350-plus nutcrackers. And for two weeks every December, Myrna would rent a buck from Swanson’s Venison Farm in West Bay and tie up the poor beast in her front yard for photo ops. Whenever someone would point out that Rudolph looked more like a white-tailed deer than a reindeer, Mrs. Rothchild would wag her finger and say, “Santa doesn’t visit doubting Thomases.”
Myrna had been struggling with a heart condition for the past few years. She died in her sleep on Christmas morning, and although she would be missed, it was almost hard to feel sad, because Myrna herself could not have designed a more fitting exit.