Twist Into Me

by Devon Ashley

  The last thing I removed was the journal I began keeping when I was ten. I sat down on the edge of the bed and sighed, staring at its worn cover and yellowing pages. I used to write in it every weekend. Back then I had no way of knowing that by the time the pages were complete, it’d be filled with memories best forgotten.

  I had no idea why I kept it – I’ve certainly never bothered to read it. Maybe I just couldn’t let go. Or maybe it was to serve as a reminder, a reason to better my life.

  For a moment I actually held it over the trash can, willing myself to just let go. Of my mom. Of the memories.

  But I just couldn’t do it.

  I opened the drawer to the night stand and closed it back up, hiding the truth of my past once more.

  I couldn’t believe how just one night back in the comfort of the only real home I’d ever known could work wonders on my spirit. I grinned upon wakening, enjoying the calming melodies of the song birds perched above me on the roof outside my window. I had forgotten to pull the heavier curtains last night, so light streamed in through the gray sheers, brightening the room in the coolest of hues. The smell of bacon and coffee wafted up my nose, and despite the meal I put away the night before, my stomach screeched louder than a banshee for more of Nana’s home cooking. The time on my cell read eight-twenty-five, and I knew she typically opened the shop at nine, so I quickly threw on a pair of cotton shorts that matched the tank I wore to bed and hurried downstairs.

  “Ooh, honey,” Nana teased, cocking her browbone, “you wear that downstairs and all my future deliveries won’t even have to leave the building.”

  I chuckled as I made my way to the coffee pot, grabbing a piece of bacon along the way. “Sorry. I’m used to having a roommate who wears the same things I do, so we never really cared what we wore around the apartment. Maybe if you move the coffee pot directly to my room, I’ll have the sense to put on an actual shirt before coming down.”

  “Wear what makes you comfortable, Tessie. Heck, you’re already wearing more clothing than most girls wear in public these days.”

  I huffed, knowing all too well what she meant. After taking my first couple sips of coffee, I told her, “Trust me. I’m not a fan of gawkers, so I cover up pretty well.”

  I couldn’t be certain, but it sounded like she whispered, “Thank the Lord,” under her breath.

  “Are you hungry?” she asked. “There’s an extra waffle keeping warm in the microwave.”

  She didn’t have to tell me twice. I saturated it with syrup, grabbed the last pieces of bacon and joined her at the table. Her empty plate sat pushed to the side, the newspaper unfolded in her hands as she continued to flip through for an article worthy of catching her eye.

  “So would you like to join me in the shop today, or do you have something else planned?”

  I swallowed my food. “Nana. What could I possibly have to do yet? I have no friends and no clue what there is to do around here.”

  “Oh, Campbellsville hasn’t changed that much over the years. We still have the same things we did last time, maybe just more of them now. Besides, I wasn’t sure if you needed to get out and run some errands to get you settled first.”

  I shook my head, my mouth already full of another bite of her delicious Belgian pecan waffles. I had the distinct feeling I was going to put on a few pounds this summer, and if every meal she cooked was as good as the two so far, I so didn’t care.

  We worked all morning. Nana first showed me the website she had created that offered pre-designed selections customers could choose from if they weren’t sure what to get. Then she showed me the binder she kept in store that offered the same thing for walk-ins. It took about an hour to teach me how to create orders using her laptop, how to go about deciding on a price for special orders, and what to do to accept payments. It was a lot to take in, and I was a little slow helping the first three customers who came in or phoned in, but Nana stood by and walked me through it. By the fourth customer I was able to go solo from there on out, provided it wasn’t something weird. By lunch, I had completed a handful of online orders and sent them to the workroom printer.

  By twelve my stomach was beginning to complain. When I asked Nana if I should go upstairs and make us something to eat, she told me she had already placed a lunch order for us, and that it would be here soon.

  And that she had a surprise for me.

  “Nana,” I said, my voice rising with suspicion, “what did you do?”

  “Nothing,” she teased with a sing-song voice. She turned her back on me and headed towards the back room. “Now come along. We’ve got a few bouquets to make today.”

  I followed her to the workroom, which consisted of an incredibly large stainless steel island with a deep sink at each end. The walls were cheerily painted butter yellow. A farm door opened up to a sidewalk that led to the driveway outside the garage.

  I didn’t push her on the surprise. I’d rarely been given them in my life, and secretly, I was actually a little excited to get one; and it could’ve been a slimy snake for all I knew.

  Nana had a huge walk-in refrigerator with a glass door off to the far side. She tossed me one of the apricot-shaded aprons with her store logo that hung just outside it. I put mine on and wrapped the straps all the way around my waist and tied them in front. The moment we stepped in, the brisk air chilled me to the bone, and I immediately rubbed my prickled arms to keep them warm. The scent of flowers was overwhelming, and the chilly air burned my nostrils, freezing my brain in the process.

  “Okay, we don’t have too much time to begin before lunch, but I wanted to show you the layout.” I simply nodded as she moved through the flowers one by one, naming them off. I knew the more common ones, and others I recognized but apparently never knew their names. Like dahlias. Also, I never knew how many kinds of lilies there were for people to order. Thank God no one asked me earlier what we carried – they were just willing to accept whatever we’d put in the arrangement.

  Nana was definitely organized. Not only did she group all the same types of flowers together, but she even had them grouped by color within it, so a beautiful rainbow effect repeated over and over as your eyes scanned the U-shaped room. All except the front corner on the right, where flowers had already been pulled for orders waiting to be created. Nana retrieved a work order from her apron pocket, then grabbed all the stems that were in a single bucket and took them to the island. On the back wall was an endless shelf of vases, of which she grabbed a tall, clear glass that had a flared top.

  She was already cleaning and snipping the ends in the sink when the chime rang up front.

  “Why don’t you go get that? It’s probably our lunch.”

  “Okay,” I replied, pushing myself away from the counter.

  I hadn’t stepped but five feet into the shop when I spotted the woman weaving her way between displays. My face, my mood even, completely lifted ten-fold. It had been eight years since I’d last hung out with her, but I recognized my old playmate instantly. Her brown hair now had a hint of auburn and was several inches longer, but she still looked the same to me, just more mature. More beautiful even, like her olive skin had an even healthier glow, and like her chocolate eyes were richer, her makeup enhancing the soft contours of her almond-shaped eyes. She wore a khaki mini skirt, a black short sleeved polo that could zip down as low as mid-chest, and a pair of stylish light brown and turquoise cowboy boots. She even had a group of three flair buttons on her skirt that I had to squint to read. Take a pitcher, it’ll last longer. My drinking club has a major book problem. The bigger the tipper, the quicker the liquor. I was going to go out on a limb and say she was a bartender.

  “Sarah!”

  She was already grinning back, heading over to meet me right beside the check-out counter, arms opened wide despite the large brown paper bag she held in her hand. “Girl!” she cried.

  “Oh, my God!” I immediately reached out to hug her, the two of us dancing back and forth on our toes. “You’re still her
e!”

  “Of course, I am. Where the hell have you been?”

  I pulled away in time to make a face and mutter eh. I looked over to the bag she placed on the counter. Its scents made their way to my nose, and my stomach growled in protest that I hadn’t already ripped through it. “You work at a restaurant?”

  “A pub, actually. The Donkey’s Tale. While I go to University. I bartend there, but your grandmother asked for me when she called in earlier and told me you were in town, so…here I am!”

  “Well, that’s cool.” I had always heard bartenders made decent money so long as they found the right place, but I had always just waitressed.

  “Listen, I have to get back.” She was already pointing her thumb towards the exit. I heard the tiniest groan in the back of my throat, but I tried not to drop my smile. “The girl covering for me hardly knows a margarita from a lemonade. Will you come by tonight and have a drink with me? Say eight?”

  “So long as that girl isn’t making my margarita, yeah.”

  Sarah laughed as she waved goodbye. I took the bag into the back where Nana had begun working on the birthday bouquet of pink-tipped white roses. By the ever-growing smile on her face, I knew that Sarah must’ve been my surprise.

  “I always liked that girl. She and her mother are such sweethearts.”

  “She wants me to stop by for a drink later.”

  “You should go! Catch up. Have fun.” Her shoulders suddenly danced up and down a few times, and with an amused tone, she added, “Find a man.”

  I groaned inwardly. “I don’t need to find a man, Nana. I’ve still got two more years of school left before I deal with that nonsense.”

  She waved me off, losing one of the petals on the rose she was holding. “There’s nothing wrong with dating. Just think of it as dancing. You’re going to have to twist your way around the dance floor enough as it is to find the partner worth keeping. Might as well get the first few out of the way now.”

  “Shouldn’t that analogy be spinning across the dance floor?”

  “No,” she replied firmly. “No spinning. Just twisting. Spinning is what your fool mother did. Got so damn dizzy she couldn’t tell the winners from the losers. She’s been confused ever since.”

  Wasn’t that the truth?

  I playfully crossed my arms. “Can I get an example of what this so-called twisting looks like, because I’m having a hard time imagining it.” Calling me on my bluff, Nana immediately began dancing to the music she had playing, making me cover my face from misplaced embarrassment, laughing so hard I cried. Her moves were cute, I’d give her that. Wiping the moisture from beneath my left eye, I said, “Well, don’t hold your breath on me twisting into any guys while I’m here. I’m just going tonight to reminisce with an old girlfriend.”

  “If you say so,” she sang teasingly.

  I refused to let her bait me. Lifting the bag, I asked, “So are you going to join me for lunch or am I eating alone today?”

  With a twisted half smile, she simply replied, “Only wallflowers eat alone, dear.”

  Yep. I totally spun myself into that one…

  Sarah wasn’t kidding. The pub was actually called The Donkey’s Tale, and literally had the backside of a gray donkey front and center in the logo, its head turned around to the side, and a roll of parchment for a tail that had indecipherable squiggles all the way down.

  The pub was dim, warmed from drop-down copper pendant lights and neon signs of foreign beers I was unfamiliar with. It made it difficult to scan the faces looking for the only familiar one in the bunch, but I finally spotted her behind the bar.

  “Are you still working?”

  “Nope,” she replied, pulling her ponytail free of its hair band and fluffing it out. “I’m just getting a few things together.” Then she made her way out with a serving tray filled with two large pitchers of beer and so many frosted glasses I couldn’t get an accurate count. She motioned for me to follow her to a large circular table in the back corner that had a reserved card on it, where she unloaded it all.

  Seven. There were seven beer glasses when I only expected two. Was this for us?

  “Uh, Sarah? I’m not that thirsty.”

  Her grin was devilish as she handed me my glass. The handle was so cold it burned. As I rubbed my hand against my jeans to warm it back up, she replied, “The guys’ll be here in a few.”

  “What guys?” I asked cautiously. I just got here. Although I gave Nana a hard time earlier, I wasn’t that against the idea of finding a summer fling…I just wasn’t looking to be set up by my second night in town.

  “Oh, you remember. Brady and Owen McCoy.”

  “Oh. Wow.” Images immediately flooded my head of two brothers around my age I used to know because their mother helped out at Nana’s shop. It had been so long since I’d thought about them, even though a huge part of my childhood summers were spent hanging out with them. “They’re still around?”

  “Of course. But I’ll let them tell their stories. Brady’s bringing his friend Matt, but I don’t think he moved here until after you stopped coming around. Total hottie. And Owen has surely got Lis taggin’ along.” She rolled her eyes and stuck the tip of her finger in her mouth so she could emphasize the necessary gagging motion.

  “Uh-oh,” I teased, “are we not a fan of…Lis?”

  “Yeah, Lis.” She gave me another funky expression. “Her name’s really Melissa, but heaven forbid she should actually go by that. Think she was trying to be hip when she started demanding people call her Lis around ninth grade. Whatever. I don’t really care for the bitch. But Owen’s been dating her on and off for a few years, so I try to at least be nice to her face. But you can make your own judgment call when you meet her, if you can stand talking to her long enough to find out.”

  Yeah, that sounded encouraging. “Okay. That makes six. Who’s the seventh?”

  With a real smile this time, she replied, “Rory. She works here too and when she’s not working the shift, she usually comes to shoot the shit.” Sarah leaned the tray against the wall and sat down beside me. I poured half a glass of beer with one pitcher as she practically overflowed hers with the other. “Sorry, guess I should’ve told you that you’d be catching up with more than just me tonight. We get together every Thursday here at eight if you’d like to keep coming.”

  “Maybe,” I casually answered, not ready to commit myself just yet. Though I figured if I was going to spend a few months here, I saw no harm in kicking back and relaxing with them weekly.

  Sarah belted out a short scream. My arm jumped high enough to splash the beer over the rim of my glass, which was saying something since it wasn’t anywhere near the top. Someone completely wrapped themselves around Sarah from behind, leaving me nothing but their back to stare at as she began to giggle over their secretive whispers. I had just sopped up the beer with my napkin when the guy released her and turned to me.

  “Sorry. Who’s this?”

  The first thing I noticed was his smile. Warm with a gentle upward curve to the lips. His eyes were mossy green, but he had dark brown hair cut short and fair skin that didn’t spend too much time in the sun. His five o’clock shadow had been around for days and he was rubbing at it now as he looked me over. I was half-tempted to gaze at his body as it still bent over to match our line of sight, but I managed to restrain the urge.

  “This is Tessa,” Sarah explained, just as another guy stepped up behind him. That one I recognized. “She used to spend summers here when we were all younger. Tessa, this is Matt. And you already know the dumbass behind him.”

  “I prefer Brady,” he replied nonchalantly, eyes staring me down. He still looked like the Brady I knew back then, except his face had matured and carried a slight scuff of hair like his friend’s, and his body had filled out a little more. And in a nice way too, I thought sinfully when I gazed to check him out. He was still tall and lean, but had strength in all the right muscles to fill out his jeans and untucked t-shirt.

&nb
sp; “And holy crap I remember you!” he exclaimed, eyes suddenly coming to life. “You’re Louise’s granddaughter, right?”

  “Who is?” another male voice asked, though I couldn’t spot its maker. I whipped my head to the opposite side and a third guy was looking down at me. Owen, the other brother, and the only one out of the bunch clean-shaven.

  “I am.” I lifted my hand and offered a wave and a smile. “If you actually remember, I’m Tessa.”

  Another sweet smile, and his eyes lit up a little when he said, “Of course I remember. How’ve you been doing?”

  “Really good.” For once… “You?”

  He shrugged and buried his hands inside his jeans pockets. “Can’t complain.”

  To this day, Brady and Owen looked as different as night and day. And if I was remembering correctly, Brady favored his dad and Owen his mother. Brady had the darker brown hair of the two, while Owen was light and sandy. Brady had brown eyes while Owen had hazel. And Owen had a little more of a tan to his skin and a little more bulk in the muscle department. But those differences aside, there was still a subtle merge of genes that made their facial features seem familial. The only thing they seemed to have truly in common was their height, which was several inches over six feet. And a pair of smiles that probably charmed their way into a lot of women’s hearts.

  “I didn’t know you were coming into town.” The way Owen said that kind of threw me. Like he still talked to Nana often enough that he would’ve known if I had given her more of a heads-up that I was coming. I was about to ask when Brady gave Owen a slight push to the side. His hands still in his pockets, he didn’t have a chance to block it. “Dude. Let the single guy get dibs. You’ve already got a girl.”