by Jae
It felt like a tender caress…and it didn’t stop. Either it was the most stubborn streak of color ever, or Ashley had forgotten what she had set out to do. Not that Sasha was complaining. She held very still and stared into Ashley’s nougat-colored eyes.
Ashley’s face was moving closer—or maybe it was Sasha who was leaning toward her.
Sasha shuddered as Ashley’s breath warmed her lips. This was crazy. This was… Without a conscious decision, she wrapped her arms around Ashley to tug her closer and bridge the remaining inch between them.
Ashley didn’t resist.
Just as their lips were about to meet, the front door opened with a loud jingle.
They jumped apart.
“Hi, Ashley.” It was Betty Mullen, the owner of the hair salon next door. “I saw that you’re still working and thought I’d drop by to remind you of your appointment tomorrow.”
“Oh, right.” Ashley pretended to be busy with the centerpiece but didn’t pull it off at all. Her voice trembled. “Midnight, right? Um, I mean, noon, of course.”
Betty gave her a strange look but then nodded. “Yes. You said you only have time during lunch.”
“Yeah, sorry. I’m very busy with the wedding and all.”
“Then I won’t keep you and your new assistant.” With a smile and a wave, Betty ducked out of the shop.
Ashley slumped against the counter. “Oh my God. She almost…” She covered her face with her hands and then dropped them. “Do you think she saw?”
“No. I’m sure she didn’t, or she would have reacted differently.”
“Right,” Ashley said but started to pace anyway.
Sasha wanted to embrace her to calm her, but she knew it would probably have the opposite effect. “Would it really have been so bad if she’d seen us together?” she asked, her voice a near whisper.
Ashley stopped pacing and reached out as if to touch her arm but then pulled back before her hand could make contact. “It’s not about you, Sasha. I’m proud to be your friend.”
“Friend.” A headache started to throb behind Sasha’s temples, and she reached up to massage it away. “We tried to be friends, Ash. It’s not working. Friends don’t look at each other the way we looked at each other in that photo. They don’t kiss each other the way we were about to.”
“I’m not denying that,” Ashley murmured.
“Yeah, not as long as we’re alone. But you do as soon as someone else is around. You act as if the world would end if anyone found out about us.” The words were painful, but she knew she had to say them—to herself and to Ashley. “I can’t keep doing this to myself. This back-and-forth we’ve been doing isn’t healthy for either of us. If you can’t be all in, I have to be all out.”
Her heartbeat thrummed in her ears as she waited for Ashley’s reply. A part of her hoped Ashley would declare herself all in, even though she knew better.
Ashley just hung her head.
The pain in Sasha’s head spread to her chest. “You know what? I think I’d better go. I have a very early day tomorrow.”
“Sasha!” Ashley called after her. “Please, wait! I…”
Sasha didn’t wait around to hear what she had to say. It wouldn’t be the words she longed to hear anyway.
Chapter 20
Ash had tossed and turned all night, unable to settle down. Sasha’s words rang through her head, and she couldn’t forget the expression on her face right before she’d walked out.
In the few minutes that she did sleep, she dreamed she was walking into the bakery stark naked and declared her love for Sasha in front of everyone, including Mrs. Beasley.
Someone shouted, “disgusting,” and threw a cupcake at her.
Even her former math teacher wrinkled her nose and leaned across the small café table to whisper something to her husband.
Ash’s parents got up with stony expressions and walked out.
The hurtful comments still echoed in her ears as she jerked awake. After that, she gave up on sleep and decided to start her workday early.
When Brooke arrived several hours later, she had already done both bridal bouquets and was in the middle of prepping the flowers they would need for the boutonnieres and corsages.
Brooke got herself an apron and joined her at the workstation.
She had helped with boutonnieres once or twice before, but it had been a while, so Ash showed her how it was done. “Take one of the roses and cut the stem to the length you need—about four inches.” She snipped off the end of her rose to demonstrate. “Don’t cut off too much. You can always cut off more, but once it’s gone, it’s gone.”
Like Sasha, her tired brain provided.
The thought slammed into her with the force of a tractor trailer.
Sasha was gone, and she had only herself to blame. She couldn’t expect her to hang around, not even as friends, if she refused to deal with her fears.
“He loves you, he loves you not,” Brooke commented with a laugh.
Ash pushed away her thoughts of Sasha and looked at her. “Um, what?”
Brooke swiped a strand of her hair—cherry red this month—out of her face and pointed at the workstation.
Ash glanced down. Without her realizing it, she had been plucking the petals off her poor rose and was now worrying the empty stem between her fingers. She dropped it as if she’d burned herself.
“So, what’s the verdict?” Brooke grinned. “Does he love you? And more importantly, who is he?”
“There is no he,” Ash said firmly, hoping to end the topic of her love life.
Brooke flashed a teasing smile. “Ooh! So it’s a she?”
The blood drained from Ash’s face. She wanted to rapidly shake her head, but her body was frozen. “I…I…”
Brooke’s grin died away. Her kohl-rimmed eyes widened. “Holy fuck! I was just kidding, but it’s true, isn’t it? Wow, that’s so…wow!” She whistled through her teeth and looked like someone who had gotten water in her ear because she couldn’t stop shaking her head. “It’s Sasha, isn’t it?”
A new surge of adrenaline shot through Ash. Her first impulse was to deny it all, as she had any time Travis had brought up his suspicions about her and Holly. But she couldn’t bring herself to say it. It would have been a betrayal of everything she and Sasha had shared. Her vocal cords refused to work, so she merely nodded.
“Yaass!” Brooke pumped her fist. “That’s totally lit!”
Ash peeked over at her. “Um, translation? Is that good?”
Brooke chuckled. “Yeah! It’s, like, cool. I just told Logan last night that I’m totally shipping you two.”
“Shipping?” Ash felt as if her brain was too sleep-deprived to make sense of this conversation. “You’re not talking about mailing a package, are you?”
Brooke roared with laughter. “No. It means I’m rooting for you and Sasha to get together.”
“Oh.” Ash’s mind was spinning. Then a ripple of alarm skittered down her spine as her brain caught up with what Brooke had just said. “Wait! You talked to the Beasleys’ son about us?” she squeaked out.
“Yeah,” Brooke said in a why-wouldn’t-I tone. “I just told him that I don’t think Sasha keeps bringing us cupcakes because I love them.”
Ash pulled out a stool from under the counter and dropped down on it. “You don’t think he’ll tell his parents?”
Brooke snorted. “He doesn’t even talk to them half of the time. Why would he mention you?”
Yeah, why would he? Apparently, this wasn’t a big deal for young people like Brooke. Ash suddenly wished she were their age and could start over. “So you’re both fine with it…with me being…um, gay?”
Brooke didn’t bat an eye. She trimmed the stem of another rose. “Of course. Sasha’s great. Not as boring as Derek. So, you like her back, don’t you?”
/> Ash stared down at the rose petals she had plucked off. “It’s complicated.”
Now it was Brooke’s turn to ask: “Translation?”
Ash gave a tired smile and looked back up. “I do.” God help me, I really, really do. “But we’re not…together or anything, so please don’t tell anyone, okay?”
“Okay, but it’s really not a big deal.”
“It is for some people in town,” Ash said.
Brooke groaned. “Man, I can’t wait till I have enough money to get out of this town.”
Ash gave a teasing tug on a cherry red strand of hair. “As much as I’ll be happy for you when you finally do, I’ll kind of miss you.”
“Oh, don’t worry.” A cheeky smile flashed across Brooke’s face. “I’ll be back for your wedding to Sasha.”
“Brat!” Ash threw a snipped-off stem at her and marveled how normal all of this felt—as if it really didn’t matter one bit that Sasha and she were both women.
Maybe it doesn’t, that new voice in her head said.
Finally, Ash swiped the destroyed rose into the wastebasket and picked up a new one. “Come on. Let’s get these roses wired. Those boutonnieres won’t make themselves.”
By noon, Ash was glad to escape the flower shop for her appointment at the beauty salon. Not only did she need a break from making boutonnieres and corsages, but maybe the gossip usually going on at Betty’s shop would bring her back down to earth before she could start believing that a life with Sasha might be possible after all.
When she entered the beauty shop, her mom’s friend Karen sat at the color station with her head full of highlight foils. She seemed to spend more time in there than she did at home, even now that she was a grandmother.
One of the hairdressers was blow-drying Jenny’s hair.
Ash greeted them as Betty led her to one of the sinks in the back.
“Everything?” Karen shouted over the noise of the blow-dryer.
The hairdresser nodded. “Everything—including his boxers. They were strewn all over the lawn.”
Betty draped a towel over Ash’s shoulders and adjusted the temperature of the water. “Have you heard?” she asked while she shampooed Ash’s hair. “Heather caught Barry cheating—in their own bed, no less. She threw all his stuff out on the front lawn.”
“Good for her.” Heather might not have gotten the hidden message in the carnations-and-snapdragons bouquet, but at least now she knew about Barry’s affair. Ash’s eyes fluttered shut as Betty’s practiced fingers started to gently massage her scalp. For a moment, she allowed herself to imagine they were Sasha’s fingers instead.
While Betty shampooed her hair and then rinsed out the suds, she and her employee continued to catch their clients up on everything that had happened in town this week. No wonder the beauty salon was nicknamed Gossip Central.
“So,” Betty asked as she walked Ash over to the cutting station and wrapped a cape around her shoulders, “what are we doing today? Just taking off half an inch, as usual, or do you want something special for the wedding?”
At the mention of the wedding, Karen lowered the magazine she’d been flipping through. “Oh, that’s right. You’re going to the wedding. You’re friends with the bride…um, the brides. Or is one of them called something else?” She laughed and shook her foil-wrapped head. “Doesn’t a wedding like that get confusing sometimes?”
Even the hairdresser shut off the blow-dryer so she wouldn’t miss Ash’s answer.
Jenny rolled her eyes and opened her mouth, but Ash was done letting others answer for her.
“No,” she said quietly but firmly. “Not at all. I just call them by their names.”
“I think a wedding with two brides is great,” Betty piped up. “Men’s hair is always so boring at weddings. Not like you can do much with an inch of hair.”
Her down-to-earth argument made Ash stare at her in the mirror.
“Plus I’ll be able to say I’ve done Jenna Blake’s hair for her wedding.” Betty moved her fingers in a rectangle as if she was imagining putting up a certificate somewhere in the salon.
No one could argue with that, so the conversation moved back to Barry’s affair.
Betty ran her fingers through Ash’s waist-length hair. “So, the usual?” she asked again.
It was the same question Sasha always asked her whenever she entered the bakery to get cupcakes.
Ash started to nod and tell her to just snip off the split ends. But it didn’t feel right. Instead, she found herself saying: “You know what? Let’s try something different.”
“Ooh! You’ve met someone!”
Immediately, everyone’s attention was on her again.
Ash whirled around in her swivel chair. “Um, what?”
“Anyone who comes in here and wants something different either recently went through a breakup or they’ve met someone new,” Betty said. “And I know it’s not a breakup, so…”
“I’m doing this for me, not to appeal to anyone else.” Ash shrugged beneath the cape. “I…I guess it’s just time for a change.”
“All right.” Betty trailed her fingers through Ash’s hair. “So, how big of a change are we talking?”
Without allowing herself to think about it, Ash indicated a point just above her shoulders.
“Wow. That’s a lot.”
“I know,” Ash croaked past the lump in her throat.
“Are you sure?” Betty asked. “Your mother will have a heart attack.”
“It’s my hair. I’m sure,” Ash said, even though she wasn’t.
When the first thick strands fell to the floor, Ash held her breath, expecting a feeling of regret to sweep over her. Instead, she felt strangely light.
“Like this?” Betty held up a now shoulder-length strand.
Ash stared into the mirror. She couldn’t yet imagine herself with shorter hair, but she told herself she’d get used to it. “Yes. Exactly like that.”
It was after eight by the time Ash locked the flower shop behind her, but instead of driving straight home, she found herself at the cemetery. The sun was starting to set as she walked along the familiar concrete path to her sister’s grave.
A fresh, colorful bouquet of peonies lay on the grave, indicating that their parents had recently been by. Since they had been Melissa’s favorite flowers, their mother always grew them in her garden.
Ash sat cross-legged in the grass beside the grave, the way she’d sat on Melissa’s bed when she’d been eleven and had needed someone to talk to. She reached out her hand and traced her sister’s name and the words never forgotten with her fingertips. The solid granite tombstone was warm beneath her hand.
“Hi, Sis,” she said, then was quiet for some time because she had no idea where to start. She hadn’t done this in a while.
Finally, when the sun dipped toward the horizon, she whispered, “I’ve met someone. Well, not really met. I knew her all along, but somehow, I didn’t really see her until a few months ago. It’s Sasha—Mae Peterson’s niece. She’s funny and kind, and we, um, had an adult sleepover when we were in Florida, and now I think…I think I’m in love with her, and I don’t know what to do.”
She blurted it all out in a rush, then snapped her mouth shut and pressed her fingers to her lips.
Her words seemed to echo along the rows of graves.
In love with her… The mere thought of it sent tiny shocks through her body. But, at least to herself, Ash could admit that it was true. What she felt for Sasha was unlike anything she’d ever felt for anyone before. Even the love she’d felt for Leo and Holly felt like immature crushes in comparison.
“I think she feels the same, Missy. But she walked away, and this time it’s for good—unless I do something big to get her back. If I want a life with her, I need to come out. But that could mean losing Mom and Dad.” She rocked b
ack and forth. Never had she missed her sister’s hug more than she did right now. She wondered what Melissa would have said if she had been alive. Would she have accepted Ash’s sexual orientation, or would she have shared their parents’ conviction that it was wrong?
Ash didn’t know since she hadn’t been old enough to talk about adult topics like that with her sister. All the missed time together hurt.
Steps sounded somewhere behind her.
Ash gritted her teeth. Couldn’t she find some peace anywhere in this town, not even in the cemetery? She turned her head to see who was disturbing her.
The sun stood so low now that she had to shield her eyes with her hand.
After a moment, she could make out Leo’s slim figure. She held the bouquet of white lilies she had bought at the shop earlier today. Her steps faltered, but then she walked up to Ash. “Visiting Missy?” she asked, as if it was the most normal thing in the world to talk to your dead sister.
But then again, Leo had always understood what Melissa had meant to her. Ash nodded. “And you? Visiting your dad?”
“Yeah. With the wedding being tomorrow and all, I thought it might be nice to bring him some flowers too.”
Ash couldn’t imagine getting married and not having both of her parents there. But if she ever got married, it would be to a woman—and her parents would most likely refuse to come. A deep sadness gripped her at the thought.
Leo sat in the grass next to her. “Hey, you cut your hair!” She reached out as if to touch the shorter strands but then let her hand drop to her lap.
Ash bit her lip. It would take some time until they would be completely comfortable around each other again. Ash knew that, and she was willing to work on it.
“Yeah. I’m still not used to it.” Ash ran her fingers through her shoulder-length hair. “My parents will probably have a heart attack when they see it.”
Leo leaned back on her hands. “Do you like it?”
“I think I do.”
“Then that’s all that matters,” Leo said. “The time when your parents got to choose your haircut for you is long gone.”