Beauty and the Mustache (34 page)

My blood pressure spiked.
I couldn’t open my eyes. The silence was just too awkward, too
awful. Furthermore, I didn’t understand why he’d done it. He could
have just walked along saying nothing, agreeing to nothing,
contradicting nothing.

“
Wait…wait, wait, wait….”
I heard Beau huff. “Are you saying that you and Ash, that you two
are….”

“
Yes,” Drew said. “That’s
right. And I respect you and Ashley too much to mislead
you.”

Beau huffed again, and I
opened one of my eyes to peek at my brother. Beau was looking at me
with incredulous worry.

“
Ash….” He took a step
closer to me, his tone solemn. “I like Drew and all, he’s done a
lot for us, but are you sure about this? No offense, Drew.” He shot
a look at Drew then back at me. “What do you have to
say?”

I glanced at Drew, found
him watching me with his quicksilver eyes, his expression open,
unguarded, and trusting. I couldn’t help but smile at
him.

“
Yes,” I
said to Drew then faced my brother. “Yes, Beau. The answer is yes.
Yes, I have no sisterly feelings for Drew. Yes, we’re getting along
just fine, better than fine,
way
better than fine. But thank you.”
I stepped away from Drew and reached for my brother’s shoulders,
standing on my tiptoes to give his cheek a kiss. “Thank you for
caring what I think.”

He smiled down at me like
I was crazy. “Ashley, of course I care what you think. You’re my
sister. If you’re not happy, then I’ll make sure….” His eyes slid
over to Drew’s. “I’ll make sure no one is happy.”

***

Momma hadn’t woken
up since I’d left to go butcher the roosters,
which meant she also hadn’t eaten anything.

We still hadn’t heard from
my father.

Drew went to work on the
pie as soon as we arrived home, but I couldn’t sit still. My neck
itched and I felt like I had bees behind my eyes all through
dinner. The food, Jethro’s meatloaf, which was usually
exceptionally tasty, was like sawdust in my mouth.

I insisted on doing the
dishes, mostly because I needed to be moving around, I needed to be
doing something. I finished in record time then set my mind to
reorganizing the spice drawer.

When Joe, the night nurse, arrived, I
followed him into the den. Cletus was there, sitting on my cot in
his pajamas and reading what appeared to be a scientific
journal.

Drew was also present. He
was reading to Momma from the book
The
Neverending Story
. I managed to give him a
small smile, and the smile he tossed back did a good bit to both
increase and settle my nerves.

“
She still hasn’t eaten?”
Joe asked this to the room, his voice quiet and
concerned.

“
No, she hasn’t,” I said,
and my eyes met Joe’s. “Is it time for a tube?” I already knew the
answer to this question.

Before Joe could respond,
Drew said, “She doesn’t want that. It’s in her living will. She
said she doesn’t want a feeding tube.”

My gaze darted to his. His
eyes held an apology, but the set of his jaw told me it wasn’t
negotiable.

“
On Monday she was
laughing and joking around.” Cletus said this from the cot. “Why is
she so quiet? It’s only been five days.”

“
Maybe she’s just tired,”
I said, but it sounded completely lame.

I looked her over. A small
sheen of sweat glistened on her forehead and upper lip. I laid my
hand from temple to temple to check her temperature. She was
cool.

“
She doesn’t have a
temperature,” Joe said. I could feel his eyes on me.

I nodded then addressed my
next words to Cletus. “What do you think you’re doing? You’re in my
spot.”

Cletus shook his head.
“Nah. This is my spot tonight. You’ve been hogging it, and I want
it.”

“
Cletus….”

“
Don’t look at me that
way, baby sister. I’ll tell you what, if you can lift me up and
carry me to my bed, then you can have this one. As it is, I’m tired
and ready to sleep.” As though to punctuate his words he yawned and
waved us toward the door. “Now get out of here. I already beat Joe
at chess sixty times this week.”

“
It was twelve
times.”

“
Yeah, might as well have
been sixty.” He yawned again. “Go on, get.”

Joe chuckled as he left.
Drew stood, placed his book on the wooden chair, and crossed to me.
I wasn’t watching him. I was focused on and thinking about the
perspiration covering my mother’s upper lip. It didn’t make any
sense. The room was cool, but not cold. She felt cool, not clammy.
I didn’t get it.

Drew fit his hand in mine
and tugged on it, leading me out of the room. Once the door closed
behind us, he pulled me down the hall, to the stairs, and up to my
room. I followed him, still thinking about Momma’s lip and
forehead, thumbing through my brain and all the possible causes for
her sudden sleepiness and lack of interest in food.

I wondered if I should
wake her up to eat the pie. I was pretty sure she’d be interested
in pie.

“
Hey…where you going?”
Jethro called after us, rousing me from my thoughts.

“
I’m taking Ashley to
bed,” Drew responded without turning to look at my brother or
stopping our ascent up the stairs.

“
Oh.” I saw Jethro nod,
his gaze watching us. Abruptly his eyes narrowed and he planted his
hands on his hips, but he said nothing else.

Drew led me into my room
and closed the door behind us. I was tired. I was also distracted.
So when Drew turned and kissed me—a soft, lingering closed-mouth
kiss that made me forget what I’d been thinking about and where I
was—my hands twisted around his neck and I kissed him back,
pressing my body to his.

We did this for a while.
He kissed me. I kissed him back. He seemed to be holding himself on
a tight leash, because he was controlling the intensity level by
withdrawing every so often and placing feathery kisses on my neck
and collarbone. His hands stroked and massaged my back, yet never
felt anything but frustratingly comforting.

However, when the back of
my knees hit the bed and I fell backward, and he climbed onto it
and loomed above me, the room—and everything else—came into
focus.

“
Wait a minute, wait a
minute….” I pressed my hands to his chest as he hovered over me,
bending to bite my neck. “What are we doing?”

“
Kissing, he whispered in
my ear then licked my earlobe.

I shivered, swallowed, and
squeezed my eyes shut. “I don’t think we should be doing
this.”

“
Why?” He continued to
kiss, lick, bite—repeat.

“
Because I….” I breathed
out a ragged sigh. “Because I’m worried about Momma.”

He stopped his sweet
ministrations and lifted his head, his eyes moving over my face. He
seemed to be considering me as well as what I’d just
said.

After several long
moments, he lay on his side next to me and threaded his fingers
through the long locks.

“
I know, Sugar. I was just
trying to distract you.”

I turned on my side and faced him. “You were
doing a good job.”

His lips twisted to the
side and he watched me, his hands moving in my hair, then he
surprised me by saying, “I’d like to sleep here with you
tonight.”

I opened my mouth, but
didn’t know how to respond because I wasn’t sure what he was
asking.

Reading my mind, he added, “Just sleep. I
just want to sleep.”

“
Oh.” I
nodded my understanding, thinking about
just sleeping
next to Drew and
finding that I quite liked the idea. The thought of hugging someone
all night long was really appealing, especially if that person was
Drew. It would be like having a big, strong, Viking
man-pillow.

I realized he was still
waiting for my answer, so I leaned forward and brushed a kiss
against his mouth. “Yes. That would be nice. Thank you.”

His eyes narrowed as I drew away. “You need
to stop thanking me.”

“
I can’t help it.” I
kissed him again then whispered against his mouth, “I was raised
with manners.”

***

I awoke abruptly
for no reason in particular and was startled by
the surrounding darkness. It took me about ten seconds to figure
out that I was in my room—not in the den—and that Drew was next to
me, fast asleep.

He was warm and solid, and
our limbs were knotted in perfect chaos. His arms were around my
torso. My arms were around his neck. His head was on my breast. One
of his legs was between mine, and our calves were hooked around
each other.

It felt divine.

So I relaxed into the
feeling for several minutes before searching for the clock on the
nightstand; I found it, and next to it was Drew’s leather notebook.
I looked at the brown binding, studied the Norse symbols on the
front, and found myself wondering what was inside. I’d witnessed
him writing in the book from time to time and somehow doubted it
contained field notes.

Shaking myself, because
what Drew wrote in the notebook was really none of my business, I
glanced at the clock. It was just before 4:30 a.m. and, despite my
current epic levels of snuggly comfort, I felt like I had a stone
in the pit of my stomach and a bug in my ear.

I was gripped by a desire to get up.

Despite the carefulness
with which I tried to extract myself from Drew, I woke
him.

“
Ashley,” he started
awake, saying my name before he’d left his dream state, his arms
tightening around me.

“
Shh…Drew,” I whispered.
“I need to get up.”

He peered up at me as
though confused by the sight of my face. “Ashley?”

“
Yes.”

“
What are you doing
here?”

“
Drew, you’re in my bed.
We fell asleep.”

“
Oh.” His hand slid down
my body—from waist to thigh—as though checking to see if I were
real.

His confusion made me
wonder what he’d been dreaming about if he’d said my name upon
waking but was surprised to see me there.

“
Why’d you wake me up?” He
asked my chest.

I wrinkled my nose at him.
“I didn’t mean to. I was trying to get up without disturbing you;
it was an accident.”

“
Oh…” Again, he said this
to my chest. His hand caressed its way up my body until it rested
on my ribs just below my breast. “This is a really nice way to wake
up.” This time he spoke mostly to himself, but his eyes didn’t
budge from my boobs.

Growing warm around my
neck, I tamped down the desire rising within me and tried to sit
up. “Drew, I need to pee. Remove your arms before my bladder
explodes.”

He reluctantly released
me, falling back onto the bed with a heavy flop as I stood. “On
second thought, we shouldn’t do this again,” he
muttered.

I reached for my robe and shrugged it on.
“Why not?”

“
Because…reasons,” he
growled.

I pressed my lips together
to keep from smiling, my eyes moving over his bare chest and
stomach, illuminated only by the faint glow of the moon and
starlight streaming in through my window. He was right, of course.
Waking up tangled together wearing very few clothes—it wasn’t a
good idea. Not if I was planning to walk away when all this was
over and return to my life in Chicago.

Maybe that’s why I’d woken
up so suddenly with a hard feeling in my belly. Maybe my brain and
my stomach were in cahoots, trying to warn me against my
heart.

The thought made me sad
and flustered, so I quickly left the room without another word and
took two steps toward the bathroom, but then stopped. I stood
motionless in the upstairs hallway until the count of ten, because
a sense of foreboding was nagging at me.

Impulsively, I changed
courses and descended the stairs, walked down the hallway to the
den, and pushed open the door.

It was quiet except for
the sound of Cletus’s gentle snoring and the beeping of Momma’s
machines. Of course, I knew the name of the machines and what their
beeps meant from my schooling, training, and years as a floor
nurse; but now, attached to and monitoring my mother, they became
just beeping machines.

I inspected the room for
some sign or source of my disquiet, and I realized that Momma was
awake.

I crossed to her, smoothed
the hair back from her forehead with one hand, and reached for her
fingers with the other.

“
Momma,” I whispered. “Are
you okay? What can I get for you?”

Her eyes were wide, but she struggled to
swallow. I released her for a quick minute and opened the cooler by
her bed where I kept her ice chips. I filled a cup and brought it
to her lips. She accepted a few gratefully, closing her eyes and
sighing.

I felt a stab of guilt
that I’d been upstairs snuggling up with Drew, and she had been
down here thirsty and awake. I vowed that I would sleep only on the
cot from now on.