The Slow Burn ~ Kristen Ashley

by Ashley, Kristen

  “I think I’m going to up the price by a buck,” she declared. “They’re selling like crazy. The way they’re going, I’m not sure anyone would blink at an extra buck.”

  “Well, that’s cool,” I muttered.

  “Hey, Toby,” she said after she sifted through the designs.

  “Yo, Macy,” Toby responded.

  “Hey, little man,” she said to Brooklyn.

  “Bah, lee, go, sissis, Mama, Dodo,” Brooklyn replied, spilling all our family secrets.

  “Is that right?” Macy asked, not speaking Brooklyn.

  “Doo,” Brooklyn answered.

  Macy shot him a smile and looked at me. “You know, someone asked if the artist who did these did packs of notecards. I said I’d ask. If you threw some sets together, I could put them out. See how they did.”

  “I’ll get on that next week,” I told her.

  “Wonderful. You going to the Fair?” she asked.

  I nodded.

  She looked from Toby to me, Toby to me again, and finally Toby with his hands on the handle of Brooklyn’s stroller to Brooks to me.

  Then she smiled big.

  “Cool. Have fun,” she bid.

  “Thanks, Macy. Hope you have a busy day.”

  “Me too. Usually the Christmas Fair gets me through to March. I have high hopes,” she replied, lifting up a hand in a “fingers crossed” gesture.

  I gave her a smile, Tobe threw his arm around my shoulders, I slid mine around his waist, and with him having one hand and me having one on the stroller, we headed out.

  It was a tight squeeze through the door, but we managed it.

  “It’s pretty sweet your cards sold out,” Toby noted as we headed down the sidewalk toward the square.

  “Yeah, whatever,” I muttered, trying not to think about that and instead thinking that I hoped that vendor that had the chocolate, cashew, caramel clusters that Deanna told me about was there again this year, because the way she described those, I was gonna treat myself for the first time in months.

  I was also thinking that after the Fair, we were going to Toby’s to get his Xbox then home and making Christmas cookies then dinner. And after Brooks was down, we were bingeing on Christmas movies (he’d picked one: A Nightmare Before Christmas, and I’d picked one: Die Hard—we so totally had this together stuff tight).

  I hadn’t turned Izzy’s TV on since I canceled the cable, and I was a little surprised how absurdly excited I was to munch homemade Christmas cookies in front of the TV with Toby.

  We still hadn’t had our official “first date.” That was happening Thursday night at The Star.

  But I’d decided to consider tonight our official first date because it sounded awesome.

  “What does ‘yeah, whatever’ mean?”

  I looked up to Toby at his question.

  “Nothing.”

  “It wasn’t nothing.”

  “It was nothing, Toby.”

  He glanced at me then turned forward and muttered, “Shit, you’re getting close to the rag.”

  My body jerked, and I would have stopped us if Toby wasn’t taller, bigger and stronger than me and thus leading our charge.

  “I cannot believe you just said that,” I bit.

  He again looked down at me. “Are you getting close to the rag?”

  I was.

  Still!

  “How do you even know that?” I asked.

  “Babe, hello,” he called. “I’ve been into you since I first saw you. In other words, I noticed everything about you. Normally, you’re pretty laidback, but you get mildly pissy for no reason once a month. Two days, far’s I can tell. I didn’t know if it was when it was happening, or it was before it happened. Since I fucked you last night, and you hadn’t started, I now know it’s before it happens.”

  It really was infuriating I couldn’t be annoyed at Toby when he was being outrageously annoying, because he was simultaneously being sweet.

  “No one but men call it ‘the rag,’” I educated him, though that was probably a lie. I was just being snippy because I was about to go on the rag.

  “Did you know what I was talkin’ about?”

  “Yes,” I took my hand off Brooklyn’s stroller for a second to jab a finger in his face and order, “Don’t,” I put my hand back, “say it again. It’s crass.”

  He grinned down at me. “Margot’s wearing off on you.”

  Probably.

  But again . . . whatever.

  “Well, it’s not about me about to start my period,” I declared.

  “So it was something,” he stated.

  It was something.

  “She sells a lot of my cards,” I told him.

  “Macy does good trade,” he told me.

  “Yeah, but she still sells a ton of my cards, Tobe. And they’re just cards. They’re pretty, but they’re just cards. So she sells so much because she tells folks I made them and people feel sorry for me.”

  He stopped, and since he was taller, bigger and leading our charge, Brooks and I stopped too.

  “It’s okay,” I said hurriedly when I noted his expression had turned to one that could be translated as getting ticked off. “If people feel bad about that poor woman who works at a grocery store that got her kid kidnapped, and it puts gas in my car, no skin off my nose.”

  “Johnny had to deal with some issue at the garage in Radcliff, and the deposit to save the date for their wedding flowers needed to be dropped so he asked me to do it. When I walked in there, she knew we were tight, she probably guessed I was into you, so even though I didn’t ask that shit, she told me if I was looking for stocking stuffer ideas for you, I should buy you those grocery bags. She told me you had your eye on them and she could tell you liked them. So when I went to get you groceries, I remembered that, swung by there and bought her out of them.”

  Whoa.

  That was so sweet.

  And he’d done it when he was angry at me.

  That was even sweeter.

  “I—”

  “Her mother wanted a flower shop,” Toby spoke over me. “So she sold that earn-yourself-a-pink-Cadillac makeup until she could open a flower shop and she named it after her daughter.”

  “Oh,” I said, not knowing why he was sharing Macy’s Flower Shop history with me.

  “Babe, you gotta sell a lot of makeup to open a business with the profits. They taught her salesmanship, and the mother taught her daughter. She shared about those bags because she wanted me to buy those bags. And a couple weeks after she told me about them, I bought eight of those fuckers.”

  “That was really sweet, Toby,” I said quietly. “I did have my eye on those bags. They’re great.”

  “I’m not tellin’ you that for you to tell me it’s sweet. I’m tellin’ you that because it’s her business to sell shit. She told me you made those cards when I was in because she jabbers and is friendly and shares shit like that in hopes people will buy stuff and make her money. What she’s not gonna do is tell someone to buy a four-dollar card made by a woman they should feel sorry for. That’ll bum people out. You don’t go to a gift shop with cutesy crap in it to be bummed out.”

  You actually didn’t.

  And it was interesting to have the mystery of how Toby knew about my cards solved.

  “And babe,” he kept at me, “we got folks who work in the city and live in Matlock because they think it’s country living and they feel better about their carbon footprint when they buy honey from Trapper’s hives at the farmer’s market to put in their designer yogurt, but they drive all the way to the city every day. Those folks buy a gorgeous handmade card for four dollars from Macy’s. The rest of Matlock is firmly blue collar and they wouldn’t buy a four-dollar card even if they felt sorry for you because they can’t afford that shit.”

  “It’s nice you’re explaining this, Toby, but I didn’t really care.”

  “You did.”

  “I really didn’t.”

  “I call bullshit, Addie, ’cau
se you did,” he returned. “Yeah, Brooks getting taken was extreme, but most folks were just relieved that had a happy ending and pissed as shit at Stu for bein’ his usual total asshole for pulling that goddamned lunacy. No one looks down on you and no one pities you. Half the folks you live around are you. They live paycheck to paycheck and save for a vacation on a beach in Florida at a shitty-ass motel, which is what they can afford. Only thing they think about you is that you’re a good mom and you got hustle, doin’ extra, makin’ cards to put gas in your car.”

  I thought about this.

  And I thought that was what I’d think if I saw a cute card at a place like Macy’s, the owner told me who made them, and I knew it was a single mom struggling to make ends meet.

  I’d think she had hustle.

  And I’d admire that.

  “You know, I ever met your fuckin’ father, I’d punch the asshole in the throat,” Toby rumbled in his pissed-off growl as he set us to moving again.

  “What’s that about?” I asked, looking at his angry profile as I walked beside him.

  “Because that shit’s about you doin’ without when you were a kid and people, probably bullies at school, givin’ you shit about it and that dug deep and planted roots, and now you gotta put the effort into plowing those motherfuckers out.”

  Holy crap.

  He was right.

  “How do you know so much?”

  “Because I was a kid with my own issues and I wasn’t bullied, but I watched those dicks at work, so I know how they played nasty.”

  “Did you put a stop to it?”

  He looked down at me.

  He put a stop to it.

  We both faced forward.

  “What were your issues?” I asked as he halted us at an intersection across from the square.

  He looked to the light, then to me.

  “Nighttime talk. Not we’re-about-to-eat-ourselves-sick-at-the-Matlock-Christmas-Fair talk.”

  “Okay,” I mumbled, glancing at the light.

  His arm around me squeezed, so I tipped my head to look up at him again.

  “I was a second son with an older brother who was perfect. Got all As and Bs. Total gearhead, workin’ side-by-side with Gramps and Dad and Dave at the garage from the minute he could lift a wrench. Captain of the football team, dating the homecoming queen. And all I remember of my mom was a sense she was pretty, anyone wears her perfume and I get a whiff, I immediately think of her and the fact she destroyed my father. We had so many ‘Aunt Whoevers’ growin’ up, I couldn’t even name them all. So that’s just a taste.”

  “Oh,” I whispered, giving him a squeeze with the arm I had around him. “Definitely nighttime talk.”

  “Yeah,” he muttered, glanced at the light and set us moving again.

  I looked to the big town square that was two blocks long, one block wide and was now covered in colorful tents.

  “Game plan,” I declared. “We find those chocolate nut clusters that Deanna was talking about and then we can meander.”

  “I’m down with that,” Toby agreed.

  “I think Deanna and Charlie might be here. Hang tight. I’ll text her and see if she’s located them yet.”

  We’d made it to the square, so Toby guided us off the thoroughfare and I reached down to get my phone out of Brooks’s bag. I texted and shoved it into the back pocket of my jeans.

  And it was then I realized I was feeling fine.

  No.

  I was feeling me.

  To tell the truth, I’d actually forgotten who me was.

  In fact, I didn’t think I was certain I knew who me was.

  Until right then.

  As crazy as this might sound, this centered around it being a vintage embroidered jacket day.

  I wore one over a sage thermal Henley, the buttons at the collar I’d unbuttoned down to hint at cleavage and a thin rock ’n’ roll scarf that had fringed ends that hung to my thighs but was still warm since it was wool and long enough I could wrap it around twice. Also, my black stone-washed jeans, black cowboy boots, and I’d dug out my black oversized beret that made me look like a hippie, gypsy, Stevie Nicks rock ’n’ roll queen.

  For his part, Toby was in his usual. Faded jeans. Boots. Long-sleeved vintage Eagles tee. Beat-up leather jacket. And he had on one of those awesome extra-large beanies that drooped at the back and made him look badass and dope.

  And Brooklyn was no slouch. Over baby long johns he had baby jeans with some rips in them, a flannel shirt, a baby army jacket, and a beanie a lot like Toby’s that was orange and fit a lot snugger to his skull. On his feet, those yellow-tan baby work boots, and mittens that went with his hat were on his hands. All of this an awesome yard sale score I’d found at the home of one of those Matlock residents Toby was talking about. One who worked in the city.

  We fit. We matched. We had it going on.

  Feel me?

  We so totally had it tight.

  All of us.

  And I felt just that, when Toby guided us back into the thoroughfare.

  We fit.

  We matched.

  We had it going on.

  We did not watch Miracle on 34th Street.

  We watched A Nightmare Before Christmas.

  We pushed Brooklyn’s stroller together holding on to each other like we practiced that at home.

  If Toby saw my dad, he’d punch him in the throat.

  If I saw my dad, I’d kick him in the balls.

  We were meant to be.

  I was feeling this goodness when my ass chimed.

  Still moving, I took it out, read the text from Deanna and told Toby, “Northeast corner, two stalls up. She and Charlie are gonna meet us there.”

  “Gotcha,” Tobe said, and since we were heading southeast, he flipped us around.

  And we nearly ran into Lora.

  “Hey! I thought that was you!” she exclaimed.

  “Hey back,” I replied on a smile.

  She did a funny little jerk, looked to Toby, me, Toby, me, then Toby, Brooklyn and finished on me.

  After that, she got a big smile on her face, nodded her head slowly, and said, “Sister, you two finally got it on.”

  Toby chuckled.

  “Well, uh . . . yeah,” I confirmed.

  I semi-disengaged from Toby, this being I took my arm from him and he took his arm from me only to go up under my jacket to hook a finger in a back beltloop.

  I flipped a hand toward Toby and did my next to be polite, and for Tobe since I already knew she at least knew him.

  “Lora, do you know Toby?”

  “Was two years behind you in class, but yeah. Hey. Lora Merriman,” she reminded him.

  “Remember you, Lora, how you been?” Toby asked.

  “Can’t complain, mostly.” She did an eye sweep of Brooks and me before she said to Toby, “Think you’ve been doin’ better.”

  “You’d have that right.”

  “Gah! Dodo!” Brooklyn yelled.

  Lora bent over, tucking her hands palms together between her knees and saying, “Yo, little dude. Whassup?”

  “Mama, kahkah, Dodo, Dada, leepy, sissis,” Brooklyn shared.

  “No joke?” Lora asked. “Well, wow. That’s cool.”

  “Leepy!” Brooklyn yelled.

  “Right on,” Lora said and took one hand from between her knees to put it palm out to Brooklyn to give him a high five.

  He went for it, but his little hand slid off the apple of her palm.

  She caught it up and smacked them together a couple of times.

  Brooks giggled.

  “We’re heading for caramel nut clusters,” I told her. “You wanna come?”

  She straightened and replied, “Grrrrrl, no. I already hit that tent. I told myself the two pounds I bought were to portion out and wrap up for stocking stuffers, but that whole thing will be in my belly by next Saturday. I’m hightailing it to Grover’s Ice Cream Parlour. Meeting a friend for a quick coffee before we do the Fair. But thanks.”


  This kinda sucked. I liked her. It would be cool to hang with her for a while.

  I did not share this.

  I said, “Okay.”

  “Though, we’re heading to Home after we decimate the Fair.” She glanced down at Brooks. “You probably can’t hit it later.”

  I shook my head. “No, we have Christmas cookie plans later.”

  She gave me a slow smile and lied, “Sucks to be you.”

  “Yeah,” I lied back.

  She laughed then bid, “You guys hit the chocolate tent. We’ll make plans some other time. Groovy?”

  “Totally. Cool to see you,” I replied.

  “You too.” To Toby, “Later, Toby.”

  “Later, Lora.”

  She gave us a wave, a wiggle of her fingers to Brooklyn, then she took off.

  Toby again claimed me.

  “How do you know her?” he asked after he set us on our way again.

  “Customer at the store.”

  “You friends?”

  “She asked me to hang with her posse, but I haven’t had time to do that yet.”

  “Far’s I know, good people,” he murmured.

  Well, that was cool to know.

  “Babe, caramel nut clusters?’ he said.

  I looked up at him. “Did I forget to mention the caramel?”

  He was grinning down at me. “Uh . . . yeah.”

  “Did I share the nuts were cashews?”

  “I would definitely remember that. So . . . no.”

  “Are we gonna run the rest of the way?”

  He pulled me close to his side. “I’ll control myself.”

  He did but mostly because we didn’t have a choice.

  This was because, apparently Toby knew everyone in town. He said, “Hey,” “Yo,” or jerked up his chin constantly as we made our way, and twice we had to stop when someone engaged us in conversation.

  Toby introduced me and Brooks and didn’t chat forever with folks I’d seen at the store but hadn’t formally met, but he chatted.

  Through this, I realized two things.

  One, I’d made the right decision, not working half a shift that day, and not just doing that for Toby, but for me and Brooks.

  The place was crowded. The vibe was rad. I was looking forward to perusing (or consuming) the wares in the tents. And if I’d worked, I might not have had this or I would have been tired, and I wouldn’t have had the time to get all gussied up and go out feeling fine.