Chapter 4
CHAPTER FOUR
“Does the art thing have snacks?” I ask.
“Uh, maybe,” Lucy says. “I don’t know.”
“An art thing should have snacks,” I say, because: an art thing should have snacks.
“It’s also an animal thing so maybe not,” Nora adds. “You can adopt a pet and also look at art?”
“If there’s animals there’s probably no snacks,” I point out, since the two generally don’t mix well. Or they mix too well and it’s a situation best avoided.
“I’m not sure there’s animals,” Nora says, frowning at her phone. There is, technically, an app for Sprucevale Summer Nights since our small, charming town has finally entered the 2010s only about a decade too late, but the app isn’t quite as useful as, say, tin can telephones might be.
“Then there might be snacks,” I say, getting back to the point.
“It’s a fundraiser, right?” says Lucy. “So the snacks probably aren’t free.”
It’s Friday night, and I’m hungry thanks to a miscommunication: I thought we were getting dinner here, Nora and Lucy both thought we were eating separately beforehand, so now I need, at least, a snack. A drink would also be cool, but the snack is my real focus at the moment.
“I can pay for a snack,” I say. “Though, really, maybe I’ll just walk down to where the food trucks are while you guys go look at the art thing because the snacks there are probably just cookies or—”
“Shit,” Lucy says, and grabs my arm like she’s on the run from the law and she’s just spotted badges.
I turn my head from the direction of the food trucks and, of course, there’s Ash, fifteen feet away, eating ice cream and talking to a pretty, dark haired woman.
The woman is laughing and also eating chocolate ice cream, and even though she’s got on a white shirt she hasn’t spilled any on herself.
I don’t own any white clothing. There’s no point. Jealousy and a weird giddiness rumble in the pit of my stomach, temporarily displacing the hunger, and I definitely stare at them a little too long.
“Just ignore him,” I say, doing the exact opposite. “You have a truce, right?”
“That’s the girl he was having dinner with,” she says, glaring daggers. I consider putting my hand in front of her eyes just to stop her, but that seems… rude.
“Okay, then ignore them,” I correct.
“I should warn her.”
“You absolutely should not,” says Nora, who shoots me a look for good measure. My heartbeat jumps and skips, my brain all over the place.
“Let’s just go to the art thing and hope for snacks,” I say. “You can forget they’re here, no one’s night will be ruined—"
Lucy stands up a little straighter. Nora sighs. She does that a lot, probably because it’s hard to be the adult in the room all the time.
“They’re coming over here, aren’t they?” I ask no one in particular. Nora serves up another look.
They are. Lucy stands up straight and glares haughty daggers. Nora takes a long swig from her iced coffee. I wave like a dork and try really hard not to think about the last time I wore these shorts around Ash.
“Hey,” he says, and it’s directed very specifically to me.
“Hey,” I say. “How’s it going?”
I am extremely smooth.
“Good,” he says. “You know, I’ve never managed to come to one of these Summer Nights things before but they’re a total blast. This is Jenna, by the way.”
We all shake hands: Jenna is lovely, Nora says very normal things, and Lucy gets out a very curt hi.
When it’s my turn to shake Jenna’s hand, she says: “Oh, Bridget! Ash told me about you.”
I freeze. If a bolt of lightning struck me down right now, I would be cool with it.
“You guys went to Walter’s?” Nora asks, nodding at the ice cream they’re both holding.
“Yeah, it’s amazing!” says Jenna. “They guy behind the counter was telling me that they technically can’t enter any ice cream contests because the fat content is too high. Which is probably why it’s so good.”
“You should’ve tried it before they got the new machines,” Ash says. “The new ones are…”
He holds his hand flat in front of himself and wobbles it side-to-side, and I roll my eyes.
“It tastes exactly the same,” I tell him. We’ve had this argument before, though the last time we had it neither of us was wearing pants. “You just like saying that old things are better.”
“It does not,” he says, and holds up his ice cream dish like it’s proof. “The new machines don’t mix it as thoroughly, and the texture’s not quite as smooth.”
“The texture’s not smooth because it’s August in the south and it’s half-melted,” I say.
“I know how to account for melt,” he says. “That’s not the issue, the issue is the mix.”
“The issue is that everyone here hates change and thinks anything old is automatically good,” I shoot back, and now Ash is grinning like he’s about to start laughing, and fuck, so am I.
“You didn’t notice one single difference until the paper ran the exposé about Walter’s getting new soft-serve machines. ”
Yes, it’s true: our local paper ran an exposé about ice cream machines. It’s often a slow news day in Sprucevale.
“Oh, I knew something was wrong,” he counters. “I just didn’t say anything.”
“Liar,” I tease, and now we’re both laughing, and suddenly I realize that everyone else is watching us: Jenna and Nora look entertained, and Lucy looks…
suspicious. I take that moment to realize that I’m flirting with the guy I’m banging in front of his ex-girlfriend and maybe also his date—though the vibes are not really date—and this is not my favorite situation.
“Anyway,” I say, steamrolling right over myself. “I think we’re gonna go look at the animals and art and shit. Maybe we’ll run into you again!”
“Nice meeting you!” Jenna says, waving with her spoon. It doesn’t splash any chocolate on her shirt, so maybe she has magic powers.
“Bye!” I shout, already moving away and very studiously ignoring the way my two best friends are looking at me.
* * *
“We could set up a tortoise enclosure,” Nora’s saying.
“We really couldn’t,” I tell her, taking another bite of brownie.
“Sure we could. We don’t need our whole kitchen.”
“Nora,” I say. “Our kitchen is, like, ten feet by three feet. There’s no part of the kitchen not in heavy use.”
“I know,” she says, mournful. “But look at her.”
The three of us gaze at a beautiful, black-and-white portrait of Heloise, a desert tortoise who currently resides at the Burley County Animal Shelter.
According to her info sheet, she was found munching on some azaleas outside the shelter’s front door, where presumably someone left her on the doorstep and she wandered a bit.
No one has any idea how a desert tortoise got to Virginia, who gave her up, or how old she is.
“If we had a backyard,” I tell Nora, just as my phone buzzes in my pocket. I shove the rest of the brownie in my mouth and reach for it. “Sorry, one sec.”
I have a suspicion, so I take a step back before I read my text.
Ash: can we talk?
My heart thumps a little harder, and not in a good way. Is there a worse sentence in the English language than can we talk?
Me: I can come over tomorrow?
Ash: What about tonight?
Me: um, sure
Ash: by the food trucks in ten?
Me: sounds good
It doesn’t actually sound good. It sounds nerve wracking, and my palms are sweaty, because I can think of a lot of things that Ash might say and none of them are going to be hey, sit on my face.
I accept my fate and go back to the portrait of Heloise.
“She’s only fourteen pounds,” Nora is saying. “Look, this says she loves strawberries.”
“Are you prepared to provide for a reptile in your will?” Lucy asks. “They don’t even know how old she is.”
“Heloise would be a wonderful inheritance,” Nora says, and I glance at the time on my phone.
* * *
When I get to the food trucks eleven minutes later, Jenna’s nowhere to be seen. It’s just Ash, leaning against the brick wall of an antique store, looking at his phone and waiting. When he sees me, he slides the phone into his pocket.
“Thanks,” he says.
I just nod, sort of glancing around.
“Is Jenna…?”
“She’s looking at knickknacks in Ye Olde Country Store,” he says.
“Right,” I say. “So, you and her are…”
“Friends from college,” he says, and rubs his hands over his face. “But I hadn’t seen her in a while, so the other night we had a few drinks too many, and—”
I swallow hard and don’t breathe.
“—I kinda told her about you, except I didn’t tell her the part where it’s big secret and now I think Lucy knows something is up because Jenna had to go and embarrass me,” he finishes. I exhale.
He looks up.
“You okay?” he asks.
“Yeah, fine,” I say. “I just wasn’t sure what your deal was with her and thought maybe you were about to tell me that you got drunk and rekindled your romance or something and were breaking the news to me now.”
Ash is laughing before I finish that sentence, so I reach out and smack him in the shoulder.
“Not funny,” I tell him, even though I’m smiling too.
“I’m sorry,” he says. “We’ve been friends, like, forever. That didn’t even occur to me.”
I just grumble, and then there’s silence for a little while.
“I think she did kinda let the cat out of the bag, though,” Ash says, and he runs a hand through his hair, like he’s nervous. “But maybe that’s good. What if we just told Lucy and dealt with that and, I don’t know, went on dates?”
My brain gets stuck between tell Lucy and go on dates with Ash.
“I think we might be dating,” he says, this cute little smile on his face, and I can’t help but laugh. “What? There are TV shows I’m not allowed to watch without you, you’ve got a toothbrush at my place, and the se—”
He stops himself as his eyes flick to a family with two small kids standing about five feet away, then clears his throat.
“The other stuff is also good,” he finishes.
I just nod, my face basically on fire.
“I’d like going on dates,” he says. “I like you.”
I am, somehow, blushing harder.
“I’d like that too,” I say, and then we look at each other for a long moment, and I feel like something moderately romantic is supposed to happen now—rose petals everywhere? Orchestral music?—but it’s just the two of us and the scent of tacos, wafting gently on the breeze. “I’ll tell her.”
He nods and can’t keep the smile off his face.
“You want help?”
“Not from you,” I say, honestly. Someone waves down the street: Jenna. I wave back because I’m that kind of dork.
“Yeah, I don’t think I’d actually help,” he says. “I tried apologizing to her a bunch of times, but I guess I never did it right.”
“It’s not really you, I think,” I tell him as Jenna walks up. “It’s—complicated.”
“Hey,” she says. “I got my mom the tackiest bird feeder I’ve seen in my whole life. Also, uh, sorry I opened my big mouth, Ash didn’t bother to tell me the whole situation.”
“Why is everything my fault?” he says.
“You really could’ve included that one detail after you managed to remember so many others,” she says, and turns to me again. “You know he thinks you’re his—”
“Okay! Okay, thank you, Jenna, we gotta go… assemble your bird feeder or whatever,” Ash says, shoving her in the shoulder before turning to me. “This week?”
“Gross,” says Jenna.
“I’ll text you,” I say, and despite my impending doom, I feel light as a cloud for a minute.