Beauty and the Mustache: A Philosophical Romance (Winston Brothers Book 1)

by Penny Reid

  I told myself I didn’t care, and I think I believed it, mostly because I was burying my mother. Drew, me, us—it didn’t really matter. I was having one of those nothing matters because we’re all going to die anyway moments.

  I watched with some fascination as they lowered Momma’s casket into the ground after a few prayers.

  Reverend Seymour then expected us all to place a handful of dirt on top. I refrained.

  When it was over, I glanced over my shoulder and saw my friends and their husbands standing at the back of the tent, all in black dresses and suits. Drew was talking to Quinn and Fiona. The three of them seemed to be in deep conversation. My attention moved over the rest of the group, and I caught Marie waving and blowing me a little kiss. I gave her a grateful smile.

  I also noticed that two of Momma’s hospice nurses were present, Marissa and Joe. They were standing together, holding hands, and both gave me gentle smiles as our eyes met. I suddenly realized that neither Roscoe nor Billy had ever been in the running for Marissa’s affections, and I wondered how I could have been so blind to what was happing around me over the last six weeks.

  What else had I missed? What else had I not seen?

  As the crowd departed for the reception, several of Momma’s friends from the library started blowing bubbles over the gravesite.

  “Naomi Winters is a wiccan, I think.” Billy leaned close and whispered this information in my ear.

  “What do bubbles have to do with being a wiccan?”

  He shrugged and shook his head. “I honestly don’t know, but if it bothers you…”

  “No. It’s fine.”

  Billy and I stayed behind from the crowd, let the cars clear out, and watched the ladies blow their bubbles. I glanced at his usually serious face and found his mouth curved upwards in a half smile.

  Unprompted, he said, “Do you remember when we were kids and we had that bubble machine?”

  I nodded, immediately recalling the memory. “You and Cletus put it up in a tree and told me the bubbles were fairies.”

  He grinned, his eyes losing focus. “You were so cute. I think you actually believed in fairies and unicorns and all that stuff.”

  “I used to.” I nodded, remembering fleetingly how it felt to believe in magic.

  “I think when you left, you took that with you,” Billy said unexpectedly.

  I glanced at him again, searching his face. I didn’t want to tell him that when I left, I’d buried that part of myself, much like we’d just buried our mother.

  “You’re a good woman, Ash. You deserve happiness, unicorns, rainbows, and bubble fairies. Don’t settle for less.”

  I swallowed and smiled at my brother; when I managed to respond, my voice was rough and uneven, “Thanks, Billy. You too.”

  Of the seven kids, he was definitely the toughest. But I suspected he also felt things the most deeply.

  The reception was held at the library, and that’s when Darrell showed up.

  Really, we were lucky. He could have crashed the service, making the entire day unpleasant. For him, it was quite thoughtful to wait until the end of the day’s events to make a scene and attempt a kidnapping.

  Unluckily for Billy and me, we were his targets.

  Billy pulled into the library parking lot, which was so full we had to park on the grass. I was just getting out of the car, straightening my dress before walking in with Billy when I felt a hand grab my wrist and yank me off my feet. I would have fallen except my father wrapped his arm around my waist, half lifting me.

  I gasped then screamed. He slapped me hard across the face twice, and my cheek hurt like a bee sting radiating outwards, down my jaw, around my eye.

  “Shut your mouth, girl. You do not scream at your daddy.” He shook me roughly, tossed me against the car, then grabbed me again.

  In my peripheral vision, I saw Billy run around the car and charge my father. Unfortunately, my father wasn’t alone. Two very large bikers reached Billy before Billy could reach me. One punched him in the gut and the other hit him over the head with a metal pipe of some sort. He crumpled, falling face first into the grass. He didn’t have a chance.

  Fear for my brother spurred me into action. I struggled in my father’s grip and managed to stomp his foot and elbow him in the ribs. His hold loosened just enough for me to head-butt him; the impact of my crown hitting his nose gave a satisfying crunch. I hoped I broke his nose, because my head hurt like a futher mucker.

  He released me at once, his hands coming up to his face. I screamed long and loud as I debated what to do next.

  Should I run to Billy? No. The bikers were between me and my brother. That effort would be futile.

  Should I look for a weapon? No. I was on the edge of a library parking lot, not in a ninja locker room.

  Should I try to make a break for the library? Yes. Because Darrell was the only one between me and the building, and Darrell was busy cussing and screaming about his nose.

  Just for good measure, I kicked him in the shin with my pointy black flats as I ran past. I was aiming for his balls, but chickened out at the last minute.

  I heard the bikers shout behind me, but I didn’t spare a glance to see if they were in pursuit. I sprinted around a large bush and began to cross the throughway separating the parking lot from the library when I was nearly run over by a car.

  The car swerved to keep from hitting me, and it missed by itches. It was a police cruiser, and sitting inside was Jackson James. He was staring at me like I’d beamed down from space.

  I ran to the driver’s side door and nearly tackled him when he opened it.

  “Jackson, I need your help, I need your help.”

  “Ashley, slow down, slow down. What happened to your face?”

  “Forget about my face, you need to come with me.” I tugged on his sleeve, trying to get him to move to where Darrell and his biker buddies were doing God knows what to my brother.

  Jackson dug in his heels and placed gentle hands on my shoulders. “Calm down, I know you just came from the funeral and you got to be real upset, but you shouldn’t just run in front of cars—”

  I growled, “To hell with this!” and reached for his sidearm.

  That’s right, I took his gun.

  That must’ve shocked the poo out of him because I was already around the hood of his car and beyond the bush when I heard him shout, “Ashley Winston! Did you just take my gun?!”

  I had no idea if he followed.

  I jogged back to where Billy’s car was parked and found the two bikers loading my brother into his trunk; my daddy was leaning against the side of the car holding his nose, his head tipped back.

  I flicked off the safety and pointed the gun at the bikers. “Do not touch him,” I said with steel in my voice.

  The bikers, who looked like any of the other bikers I’d ever seen growing up—old, dirty, sweaty, unshaven but without a beard, big belly, covered in leather—stilled, their widened eyes moving between me and the gun I held.

  At the sound of my voice, my father glanced up. Peripherally I saw him hold one hand out to me, palm up, as though beseeching me.

  “Now, Ashley, baby girl, you need to give me that gun.”

  The bikers hadn’t moved from where they stood on either side of the trunk, Billy’s incapacitated form half in, half out of the car. They were staring at me and seemed to be sizing me up.

  My father moved like he was going to take a step in my direction. On instinct, I lowered the gun to the tallest biker’s knee, aimed, and fired.

  He fell to the ground, clutching his thigh. I’d aimed too high.

  At the very least, I hoped the gunshot would get someone’s attention. We were in the parking lot of a library, for hootenanny’s sake! Shouldn’t someone have come around by now? Didn’t people read books? And where was everyone from the burial site? The parking lot was basically filled with cars. Wasn’t anyone done checking out his books and heading to the parking lot by now?

  “Holy
shit!” The shorter of the bikers exclaimed. To shut him up, I lifted the gun and pointed it at him.

  “You will step away from my brother or I will make you a eunuch.”

  He nodded, his hands held up in surrender. “Sure thing, sweetie.”

  “Don’t call me sweetie!”

  “Fine, fine. Just let me get my brother here and we’ll get out of your way.” The shorter biker shuffled to his fallen compatriot, who was cussing and hollering on the ground.

  I watched them both with narrowed eyes, looking for any sudden movements.

  “What the hell is going on?” I heard Jackson’s exclamation paired with the pounding of his footsteps on the pavement. Obviously, he hadn’t come after me until he heard the gunshot. He was maybe the worst police officer in the history of ever.

  I didn’t take my eyes off the bikers. “Jackson, you remember my father, Darrell? Well, he and his friends just jumped Billy and me, and as you can see, they’ve loaded Billy into the trunk of his car, and I think they were trying to make off with both of us.”

  My father’s ability to speak smoothly was inhibited by his broken nose. “Now, that’s not true. I came by to pay my respects, and Billy, he….”

  “Billy knocked himself out and landed in the trunk?” Jackson asked, his voice laced with sarcasm. Jackson might have been a terribly derelict police officer, but he did know my family history. He used the radio on his shoulder to call for backup, and I could feel his eyes on me. I found it curious that he hadn’t yet tried to take the gun out of my hands.

  When he finished calling in the situation on his radio, he took a pair of handcuffs from his belt and said, “Cover me,” as he walked by.

  He then walked straight to my father and began reading him his rights. The shorter biker was next, then the taller one. Of the three, Darrell complained the loudest and barked something about police brutality.

  Jackson was slapping cuffs on the man I’d shot when I heard the sounds of people approaching by foot. My eyes flickered to the side and I did a double take, almost dropping the gun. Relief flowed through me quick and warm.

  Jethro was at the front and broke into a run when he saw me. Drew, Quinn, and Duane were close behind.

  “Ashley, what’s going on? What are you doing?” Jethro slowed as he neared, his eyes bouncing around the scene like a Ping-Pong ball.

  Quinn withdrew a gun from the back of his suit pants, nodded to me, and announced his presence to Jackson.

  Drew, however, walked straight to me—never slowing, holding my eyes the entire time—and slipped his hand over mine, fluidly taking the weapon from my grip. He flicked the safety on with his thumb and wrapped an arm around my waist.

  “Are you okay?” His free hand moved over my body as though searching for injury.

  I nodded, looking up at him. “Yeah…I’m okay.”

  He placed one hand on my chin and turned my face, his eyes shooting fire, his jaw clenching as he looked at my cheek and eye. “You’re going to have a black eye.”

  I blinked at him and realized he was probably correct. My right eye must have been very swollen, because I was already having trouble seeing out of it.

  “We heard a gunshot,” Quinn explained. “Who fired? Who was shot?”

  Jackson spoke before I could. “I fired. I shot this one,” he pointed to the biker with the toe of his boot. “I handed the gun off to Ashley to provide cover so I could get the three of them sorted.”

  “Which one of them hurt you?” Drew asked through gritted teeth.

  I studied him through my one good eye. “Does it matter?”

  “It matters to me.”

  My next words echoed what I’d been thinking all day and emerged from my mouth before I knew I was going to say them. “Why? I’m not your problem anymore.”

  Drew flinched, his hand falling from my face, and he leaned back as though I’d pushed him away.

  “What’s wrong with Billy?” Duane was at the trunk of the car, leaning over his brother.

  I stepped away from Drew and immediately missed the brief oasis of comfort he’d offered, comfort which I stupidly took even though he never needed or expected anything from me in return. I crossed to Billy to see what could be done for him before the ambulance arrived.

  Jackson walked to Drew; in my peripheral vision, I saw him hold his hand out as he said, “You can give me my gun back now.”

  “Hey,” Duane was standing next to me. “What happened to you?”

  “I got hurt.” My fingers were on the back of Billy’s head, probing for signs of bleeding; I responded without turning. “But, don’t worry, I’ll recover.”

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  “I have learned that to be with those I like is enough.”

  ― Walt Whitman

  Time heals all wounds. Time is of the essence. Time is short. Time is on my side.

  Lies. All lies.

  Time is the enemy. Time was playing for the other team. Timed stretched like an endless desert. The only thing time does is stagger along like a drunk sailor and give you wrinkles. And syphilis.

  Summer begot fall, fall begot winter, and winter begot seven thousand feet of snow in Chicago—give or take six thousand, nine hundred, and ninety feet. And it was only the last week of November.

  Luckily for me, it was my turn to host knit night, and I had the next day off work. This meant that once I arrived home, I didn’t have to venture out into the howling wind and driving snow for thirty-six hours. I could get dressed in my thermal PJs and get drunk.

  But I wouldn’t get drunk. I didn’t like how I felt when I got drunk, how I lost control when I imbibed beyond reason. I’d done it once since returning from Tennessee and had to be physically restrained from drunk-dialing Drew.

  It hadn’t been pretty. While I was intoxicated, I spilled the entire story; my friends provided seven shoulders to cry upon.

  Sandra, Nico, and Fiona were huge Drew advocates at first. They didn’t exactly pressure me, but they did take every opportunity to subtly hint that I should contact him and be honest about my feelings.

  I couldn’t. I kept picturing his face, gently letting me down. When I played the scene in my head, I was that poor girl Jennifer I’d heard the women murmuring about at the jam session, all gussied up in my yellow dress and wielding a banana cake to a man who could probably out-bake anyone he knew. He would tell me how beautiful I was—pretty face, nice piece of ass, trashy accent—but that he didn’t need anything from me.

  He’d been honest from the start about not needing me. I couldn’t fault him for that.

  Once the three of them realized that the only thing accomplished by their subtle hints was my silence and a growing rift between us, they stopped pushing.

  Now we—my knitting group and I—collectively called him Dr. Ruinous. Note the addition of the ‘i’. Sandra thought of the nickname. I think it was her peace offering, a way to show me that she was on my side.

  Still, I rarely discussed him. Instead, I marinated quietly in my hurt feelings. When my friends brought up my unusual silence during our knit nights, I attributed it to the lingering grief caused by my mother’s sickness and death, which was true to a great extent.

  I missed her every day, and I didn’t know how to mourn openly and loudly.

  Therefore, I escaped in books, but I avoided reading romance novels. I didn’t need to read any happily-ever-afters. Instead, I settled into the contentment of just being with the people I liked.

  When I arrived home from work Tuesday night, Kat was already there. She’d never returned the key to my apartment, and I’d never asked for it back.

  “Hey!” she called from the kitchen. “I hope you don’t mind, I stopped off and picked up wonton soup and eggrolls for the gang. I’m using your one pot to keep it warm.”

  I couldn’t help my smirk. “I have more than one pot.”

  “No, you don’t. You literally have one pot. By the way, I grabbed your mail. It’s on the coffee table. You got a packag
e.”

  “A package, eh?” I was intrigued; my momma used to send me packages with some frequency before her death. I had no second source of packages other than Amazon Prime.

  I stripped off my winter gear—boots, hat, gloves, scarf, second scarf, outer jacket, inner jacket, a third scarf, sweater—and strolled over to the coffee table, leaving my wool socks on. The package was really a large, padded envelope; it had no return address and the postmark indicated that it had been sent from Franklin, North Carolina.

  I didn’t know anyone in North Carolina. At least, I didn’t remember knowing anyone in Franklin, North Carolina.

  I gathered a deep breath and set to opening the package, but was interrupted by the external intercom. Tucking the envelope under my arm, I jogged to the speaker and pressed the button.

  “Who is it?”

  “Let us in! We’re freezing our tits off.” Sandra’s voice was distorted and clouded in static.

  “Okay, let me hit the buzzer,” I replied. I pressed the button and added, “I’ll leave the door unlocked so you can come on in when you get up here.”

  I walked into the kitchen to check out the soup. Kat must’ve gone to General Tso’s. They put baby bok choy in their wonton soup and use both shrimp and pork.

  “Mmm, that smells good.”

  “I know you like General Tso’s soup.” She gave me a shy smile—most of Kat’s smiles were shy—and pulled out a bottle of plum wine. “And I picked this up.”

  “Oh, nice. I’ll open it.” I placed the unopened package on the kitchen counter and searched for the bottle opener.

  Kat and I had been talking recently about sharing an apartment to save on rent. After Christmas, we planned to finalize the details. Originally, I’d wanted to go to Tennessee for the holiday, but as the date approached, I was seriously considering staying in town and picking up extra shifts, which was typically very lucrative. Plus, I didn’t particularly like the idea of being in my mother’s house without her in it. As well, the Dr. Ruinous issue was an ever present dung beetle in my pie.

  However, I really missed my brothers. The thought of spending Christmas without them felt unacceptable. I wondered if I could talk them into meeting me halfway between Chicago and Green Valley, or maybe just an hour or two from the homestead.