by Amber Burns
Astra’s wavering is settled by her sigh.
I follow her instructions to toss the brush in the trunk after she pops it open. I kick off the snow from my boots and slide into the passenger’s seat of her Corvette, careful not to ruin the worn, but neat interior cushion with snow and slush.
Astra pulls out and finds Harry’s with only minimal instruction on my part. “These meters are off after five,” another town feature that hadn’t changed. I glance at her dashboard confirming the late hour. “We’re good.”
“You know a lot about Orange Compass,” she looks my way after she’s done parallel parking. “Did you live here before?”
“A long time ago, yes, and I do right now,” I point out the B&B across the street two doors down before leading the way to Harry’s front steps, holding the door for Astra and following her into a shouting match at the back of the building.
“What part of this being a horrible mistake don’t you understand?” the woman on the other side of the counter – although she looks ready to change that by climbing over to pommel old Harry, slaps both hands on the counter.
“All of it. I run a business here, lady,” he shakes a crooked finger at the petite blonde with her back to the front door. “I don’t need any trouble now, so if you aren’t going to be selling or buying then I’d like you to leave.”
“I’m not leaving here until I walk out with what rightfully belongs to me.”
Harry cackles. “Rightfully or lawfully? I don’t deal in scams, lady, I run an upstanding business and if your belongings ended up on this side,” he gestures to his end, “it’s because a fair trade went on.”
“Fair my ass!” The woman leans across the counter, lifting a hand to strike.
“Holly,” Astra peels from my side. She grabs the woman’s lowering arm and tugs her back. “What are you doing?”
“This cheating scumbag is trying to rip me out of my jewelry.”
“Cheating? Not you, Mr. Colbert, surely,” I come up at Astra and her friend’s rear. The feisty Holly turns her blue-eyed glare on me and I might have cowered if curiosity didn’t soften her stare.
Harry is even more suspicious.
“Do I know you?” he squints, the fleshy folds around his eyes sagging and giving the illusion of completely shutting. He’s looking meaner by the second. Astra’s friend Holly really pushed the old man’s numbers. He had to be ready to toss us all out on our asses.
“Well, speak up boy,” he snaps loudly. “And you,” he matches Holly’s glowering, “thought I told you to cough up some business or get out of my store. You got cotton in your ears, lady?”
“I’ll show you cotton,” Holly’s struggling with Astra keeps up until I clear touch her shoulder. Astra’s friend jerks to a still.
“And who are you?”
I smile, catching Astra’s head shake as if I’d divulge what – the fact that I gave her flowers and chocolates, or forced her to let me come along for the ride. “A friend of a friend,” is what I say, my smile growing at Astra’s palpable relief. “So, what’s the problem here?”
Holly’s speculating whether to trust me, but it’s short-lived. “Only that I want my jewelry back. My son came in here and sold some precious heirlooms and mementos without my knowledge,” her stressing is water down Harry’s back.
“I can’t referee who each and every seller. The kid came in here, said the stuff belonged to his mother and he was doing you a favor by cleaning out.”
“He’s seventeen!” Holly screams. “I’m sure that’s illegal and if I find out it is, I’ll make sure you pay big, old man.”
“What did you say you, you little bitch?”
Holly’s eyes bulge out and she is really now trying to climb over. Save Astra’s stopping her, her long, brightly colored nails would have reached old man Harry Colbert and he’d have more to worry about than the shrapnel facial scarring from the flash bomb that was supposed to have shattered on the rock he was hiding behind during the Vietnam War.
“I dare you to say that again, you sagging old scheming fart! Come on, come on! Think you’re a big, tough man using sexist terms, right? Let’s see what you got then,” Holly is taking Astra for a ride.
Lola’s counsellor tosses me a pleading look. I’m shocked enough she’s asking for my help it takes longer for me to react. I approach her friend’s other side and grab her stretched arm, pulling back her clawing hand.
“How about you ladies go get some fresh air?”
“Fresh air,” Holly jerks her head my way. “Who the hell did you say you were again?”
“Holly, please.” Astra gives a furious shake when she has her friend’s attention. “Let’s just go. For now,” she adds hastily, prompting Holly to open and close her mouth on a similar exclamation.
When I figure she isn’t going to launch herself at Harry again, I drop my hand and she lowers her arm, Astra pulling the irate Holly towards the exit. Not that she leaves quietly.
“I’m going to knock his fake-ass veneers out, Astra, I swear if I don’t get my stuff back from that old sexist bastard.” Holly’s grumbled threat and Astra’s soothing comments carry out with the merry jingle of the store bell. Then it’s me and Harry facing off.
“You just going to stand there and stare.” He sets his hands wider on the glass. “If you’re planning to start something too, I’ll call the cops, you hear me, boy. So buy something or get the hell out of my store.”
I throw my hands up. “No plans to rob you, Mr. Colbert.”
“Do I know you, boy?” he leans closer, the anger slightly leashed by his curiosity once more. His milky blue eyes widen just as I see the lightbulb going off in his severely balding head. “Well, well. If it isn’t the McBride boy…”
“Ryker, Mr. Colbert,” I supply, my smile tightening as Harry cackles, revealing the gold veneers replacing two bottom teeth.
“I know who you are, boy. Your mother didn’t go and make a reputation in this town with decent folk for no reason.” He drops to his elbows over the counter, his grin growing the longer the silence stretches on my part.
The first person other than the Lopezes to know of my return to Orange Compass, and he’s summing up all the reasons I’ve had to keep my trap shut about my arrival.
“What brings you to me?” Harry cocks his head at the door. “One of your lady friends out there?”
I follow his gaze to Astra trailing Holly back and forth across the store front, their mouths moving rapidly, clearly the process to calming Holly falling on Lola’s sexy counsellor.
“What if I’m interested in buying what the lady wants?”
“Oh?” He goes up onto his hands, frown deepening the groves bracketing his mouth. “You got big money now, boy.”
“Something like that,” I nod at the glass case to get him moving.
Harry pulls out a ring of keys, jolting a memory from two decades out of the most secreted drawers in my head. I clutch a hand to one of my pulsing temples and breathe through the process.
“Hardly worth its weight,” Harry’s mumbling helps to draw me to the present.
Rising slowly and dropping the box with a clatter on the counter, the ornery, old shop keeper gestures dramatically. “You want the whole enchilada then?”
“Woo me.” I bring my hands to the counter.
He opens the box and spreads out the goods. I count two necklaces, one a simpler choker, the other a gold chain carrying a large sapphire pendant, four matching gold bracelets and a white gold solitaire stunner.
Harry hooks his pinky in Holly’s ring and holds it up, the spotlighting above the front counter catching the diamond. “This was probably the only thing really worth the sale. The rest won’t pick up much. But I could sell this to some Benny passing through.
“Unless you can convince me otherwise,” he trails off, holding the ring close, but out of reach.
I hate the smarmy smile pulling his pock-marked cheeks. He tilts his pinky down and the ring slides off and into its box.
He rustles up the other pieces and stores them in their hiding place.
“Well? You in, boy, or you going to leave me to mine?”
“You’re right about the jewels. They can’t be all that much. Two grand sounds about right,” I step back to avoid his spittle as he barks.
“Nice try. Three thousand or clear through to the door. I’m not bluffing when I say I’ll dial for back-up.”
Ignoring his threats to involve the police, I whistle for effect. “Three sounds a bit high, don’t you think? The kid didn’t talk you out of half of that, did he, Mr. Colbert?”
Harry is quiet. He has a petulant look about his curled lip. “That doesn’t sound like you,” I say, more of my award-winning acting.
“Like I said, it’s three thousand for the whole box.” He raps his knuckles over the glass casing around the jewelry box. “I can’t just hand out jewelry for every idiot mother and thieving spawn. I run a business here.”
Since he looks ready to burst, and I want out of the suffocating space, I reach for my wallet in my back pocket, keeping my eyes on him as I pull out all the bills I have in there, thirty two in total. I set it on the counter in the middle, tucking my wallet away as he hesitates to scoop up the bills and count them.
“That should be more than enough for what the lady gave you,” I’m reaching for the box, handling it carefully to keep its contents in place. At the door I pause. “You still have your clients fill out those pink and yellow receipt slips right?”
I take Harry’s silence as a ‘yes’. “Do yourself and that lady a favor next time and call her if her son tries to pull that crap again. Go a long way in saving your business.”
Pushing through to the world outside is bliss. I let the cool air wash over me, bathing my bundled nerves and uncoiling the oppressive heat under my collar in Harry’s shop.
Facing my direction, Astra is holding her friend by the forearms, her head is down and her lips are moving. I catch the end of what she’s saying.
“…and if not, I’ll help you buy it back,” her gaze shifts to meet mine and her friend notices, turning to glance at me as well. Regarded by both women, I finally breach their cozy circle with the package.
“I believe this is yours,” I say.
At first Astra’s friend, Holly blinks through her shock, her mouth falling open. She reaches out with both hands and I yield the jewelry box. Her velvety gloves skim the old leather case, fingers brushing the in-set false gems, and her smiling gaze blind to the missing gems in the diamond pattern encasing the box.
“Thank you,” she whispers, her eyes mysteriously watery. She coughs and clears the phlegm reining her voice in. “How did you manage to let the old Scrooge to see reason and all things good and sweet about the world?”
“A little elbow grease goes a long way.” I shrug and Holly laughs and laughs. I grin sheepishly at Astra whose own eyes are shining warmly. Astra’s friend lifts the hand covering her mouth to her throat, settling from her long, hard mirth. She coughs again; the sound unlike her laughter is unpleasant.
“Damn cold, won’t let up,” she shakes her head and coughs into the crook of her elbow.
“It’s your body’s way of warning you to go home, change into something warm, grab a bowl of the country harvest I brought last night, and catch some sleep.” Astra smooths a hand over her friend’s back, helping her ride through the succession of hacking.
When the worst of the coughing is through, a wry smile twists up Holly’s pale, unpainted lips. “Liam drank all your soup.”
“I’ll make more then, and stop by tomorrow.”
Holly turns her smile to me, her gratitude ready and warm. “Remind me to give you a proper ‘thanks’ one of these days.” She might have asked more, but hugging Astra, Holly heads to the sedan with flashing taillights.
We watch her pull out and drive down the opposite end of Main Street, towards the shore-residing streets of Orange Compass.
Coming down in droves, the snow chases Astra and me off the pavement outside Harry’s shop to her car.
“Whoa,” Astra yelps right off the sidewalk and reaches out for my arm. We both look down at the patch of black ice her boot revealed by lifting off the snow.
“Are you all right?” I ask, steadying her. She bobs her head, relinquishing her hold on my arm. I’m already missing the pressure of her fingers.
Instead of letting her go, I rest my hand over the small of her back, saying lightly, “I don’t want you to fall.”
Astra stiffens at my jocular tone, but she doesn’t rush her steps to escape my touch. She lets me walk her to the car, to her door and I round the hood to drop in beside her.
The ride back to St. B&J’s parking is both dark and quiet. I step out into the late evening when she parks beside my rental SUV, covered by the snow that won’t quit. I lean in through the open door and tell her, “Head off without me. I’ll clean up here on my own.”
Astra doesn’t reply. She opens her trunk and steps out. Pulling out her snow brush, our eyes meet. She breaks the short staring match, her brush pushing off the snow in my rear window. “It’ll be quicker if we do it together.”
I’m not about to argue against the company.
I grab the brush that came with the rental. We work quickly and quietly. I’m struggling to ask her and explain the ulterior reasoning behind the flowers and chocolates.
Speaking of the flowers and chocolates…
“They’re frozen stiff,” I touch the harden petals, and lift up the box of chocolates covered with snow. Astra nears; her eyes are unreadable in the darkening sky, but I hear the guilt in her voice.
“The tulips are probably too gone, but,” she holds her hand out. “I’d be happy to take the chocolates.”
My stomach is looping, my chest drumming: It’s like the moment before a show, the thrill of taking stage and center and holding the weight of the mic in my hand, the heat of the stage lighting and the hot excitement of the crowd pumping my blood.
Astra doesn’t seem to note my goofy smile, and I dial it down when she turns from setting the chocolates on her passenger seat.
My car cleared, I realize it’s time to say goodbye.
It might also be the only chance for me to ask her.
“Dr. Olsen?”
“Astra,” she smiles. “I prefer Astra.”
We’re standing close. I can almost make out the flecks in her eyes. Her breath puffs up, her neck tilting just to level out the height difference. I could lean down and kiss her, turn her to putty and then ply her with my request. She might be more favorable towards me that way.
“Astra,” she perks at her name, and is it my imagination or is she leaning closer towards me, anticipating the latest direction of my thoughts? “I – Have a good night.”
If she’s upset I can’t see it, nor do I want to. I’m beating myself up for the both of us.
Returning the same sentiment, I watch her walk away, my glance dropping to her rear again. I close my eyes and suck in the sweet, winter air to clear my head of what’s quickly becoming my favorite fantasy, dragging Doctor Astra Olsen to my chest, coming around and molding her breasts into my hand until I memorize their weight, and making her as wet for me as I am hard for her.
Her car lights sliding out of sight, I turn and drop behind my wheel, ready to split and hit the bath in the small, cozy room back at the B&B. I forgot my phone in the charge. It’s deathly cold and filled with messages and missed calls.
I delete all of Custodio’s call and check out the messages from the guys. Their arrival in a couple days reminds me of why I’m in this piece of shit town anyways. We’re going to throw Lola a sweet sixteenth that the teen, her family and friends and all the rest of her guests won’t forget anytime soon.
“Then what?” I bark a laugh, the sound harsh even to my ears, my hands squeezing the steering wheel as I bring the car round to face the parking’s exit.
Then I hit Liberty International catch the transit through O’Hare back to t
he land of angels and tinsel.
And I make a promise to myself as I pass the front desk of the inn, returning a quick greeting to the owners’ teen son flipping through a sports magazine, waiting for guests that likely won’t show.
In the shower I grip my stiff dick in my hand, stroking a steady rhythm, closing my eyes to zero in on the rising pleasure. My palm grows slippery from the combination of the showerhead pelting me and the pre-cum coming away from my tingling tip.
My unoccupied hand flattens on the tiled wall for support as I tug faster, completion nearing like the ending chord and lyric of a song.