13. ashton
thirteen
ashton
. . .
Starlight - Taylor Swift
Two weeks after Brooks’s box of lip balm and other goodies appeared on my porch, I drive Ruth and Talia to Houston.
As the shortest member of our party, Ruth volunteered to sit in the back, so Talia is riding shotgun in Dad’s truck.
I glance at her as we roll down the interstate.
Her golden skin is glowing, subtle champagne-coloured shimmer highlighting her strong cheekbones.
Her wide, almond-shaped eyes are hidden behind bedazzled, heart-shaped sunglasses.
A matching pair shields my eyes from the sun, and one more sits on top of Ruth’s head.
Ruth roped me into a crafting session a few nights ago.
We glued plastic gems to the sunglasses while we shared an enormous bag of chips and a bowl of her homemade queso, and watched both Legally Blonde movies, back-to-back.
Everett told me a while ago that Legally Blonde is Ruth’s favorite movie.
But he’s watched it with her at least three times already this summer, so he spent the evening sat out on the porch with Brooks and Jody, drinking beer and playing cornhole while Ruth and I drank plenty of tequila and played with hot glue.
Some girls like to go out dancing, but a night with friends, tequila, and crafts on my family’s ranch really is my perfect kind of night.
Mercifully, traffic doesn’t pick up too much until we reach the outskirts of Houston, and with the show being such a momentous event and bringing so many people into the city, I don’t even need my GPS—I simply follow the long line of cars all the way to the stadium and park where the attendant directs me.
I snap a picture of the nearest sign so I don’t lose the truck later.
We’re plenty early, so we’re inside the stadium, we make the unanimous decision to head for the nearest bar for a pre-show drink. Talia buys the first round whilst Ruth beelines for an empty tall table along the back wall.
“So, we all know more than enough about Ruth’s love life.
Whirlwind romance with my brother made Julianne’s top headline three weeks in a row.
” Ruth furrows her brow as I speak, and Talia snickers into her beer.
Jules Tell’s podcast is the Gossip Girl of the Tri-towns.
I became a top story, too; she spun me coming home into some kind of triumphant return like I’d been backpacking through rainforests, not studying in a city a four-hour flight away.
Sometime, we’re gonna have to introduce Ruth to the podcast, though.
It’s wholesome as hell, and Julianne is a sweetie, although she does love to stir some shit every once in a while.
Like that time she accidentally ruined the surprise of Tony Patterson’s 70th birthday party.
“But what about you, Tal? How’s your love life going? ”
“Love life?” She scoffs. “What’s one of those? I sell dresses and boots, and I sleep. I don’t have time for this fabled love life y’all are talking about.”
Talia curls her fingers to make air quotes as she says the words love life.
“Come on,” I press, emphasising the N. “What about Henry? Y’all’ve been tight forever.”
“And we’re still tight. Just… a lot more by text these days is all. Hallie moved back, you know? Not long after you left, actually. So he has her living with him now. She’s fifteen, and, you remember fifteen, right? She needs him a little less but also somehow more.”
“Y’all better figure it out for yourselves soon ‘fore someone snaps him up and you miss your chance.”
“Yeah, yeah.” Talia runs her finger around the edge of her beer bottle, lost in thought for a moment before looking up at me. “What about you, Ash? I hear Brooks Hart is lookin’ mighty fine these days.”
I splutter as a mouthful of Sprite goes down the wrong hole.
Talia smirks as she passes me a napkin and Ruth slaps me lightly between my shoulder blades.
I feel my face redden. Is the resurgence of my teenage crush really that obvious—to someone I’ve only seen once or twice since coming home, no less?
“Brooks?” Ruth’s eyes are wide as she processes the snippets and rumors Talia is throwing around. The last thing I need is for my brother to hear a rumor about his little sister and his best friend. Somehow, I can’t imagine that going down well. However nicely I think Brooks would go down.
Jesus, Ash. Horny, much?
“What about him?”
“Y’all tryin’a tell me you ain’t had eyes for him your whole life?”
“I grew up with him. He’s like a brother to me, Tal.”
“Oh, my sweet summer girl!” Talia cries. “We don’t kiss our brothers here. This is Texas, honey. It ain’t Alabama.”
Ruth’s eyes widen even further and she leans forward, eyes bright and full of questions. Before I can defend myself, she speaks: “I knew he had a crush on you, but I had no idea it was reciprocated! You kissed him?! Ashton, you’d better start talking.”
“It’s not,” I insist. It wasn’t, anyway. “It’s not like that. I kissed him once. At a party. Years ago. Drank too much. He was my first kiss.”
“And I was your second, right, Ash?” Talia’s eyes sparkle with mischief as she swallows down her last mouthful of beer and sits back in her seat with a smug smile.
Ruth’s eyes widen even further still. I’ve no doubt she knows about my brother’s sexual preferences, and probably about his summer fling with Brad Boone a few years back too, but she’s about to learn how queer our small Texas town really is.
I’m about to crack a joke about it when I replay Ruth’s words in my head.
Brooks has a crush on me? I’m about ready to grab Ruth’s margarita and down it myself.
I push down all of those feelings into a little box and focus on Talia’s words instead.
“Sure. I was a dirty little kissing slut that night.”
The memory of Talia’s lips on mine is one I’ll never forget.
If anything, it was an even more earth-shattering moment than kissing Brooks, and that was a pretty groundbreaking, life-affirming moment for seventeen-year-old Ashton.
I always thought Talia was beautiful, but in the firelight under the stars that night, with a whiskey shooter in one hand and a beer in the other, she looked like a goddess.
Before I knew it, the apple pie moonshine I’d been drinking—from a water bottle, lest anyone realize I was drinking underage—took over and her lips were pressed against mine.
Sliding together, tongues sweeping and tasting and learning every inch of each other’s mouths.
She tasted like aged bourbon and summer nights, and every time I smell a bonfire, I’m right back in that field, shaking everything Mama gave me to some Luke Bryan classic.
“We’ve all had nights like that,” Ruth says wryly, and my interest is immediately piqued. Ruth is older than me, older than my brother, and maybe Talia too. I can only imagine she has a veritable treasure trove of stories to tell. “A story for another time, maybe.” Talia nods in agreement.
“So, Ruth.” Talia leans forward, resting her elbows on the table. “Ev mentioned you tried to get tickets in London with your friends. They Swifties too?”
“They like her enough, I guess…” Ruth sighs, fiddling with the beer mat that had been under Talia’s now-empty bottle.
Her mood has shifted. “But we always do everything together. They’re like my sisters, you know?
My best friends. But now we all have partners, and it’s different. Our lives are all changing.”
“Well, you have us now,” I say kindly. And I mean it.
I like Ruth a lot. She’s good for my brother.
She’s pretty and she’s kind, but she’s also a great woman—strong and smart, funny, and not afraid of helping out on the ranch, either.
She’s someone I’d be proud to call a friend.
Someone I look up to with more than a little awe in my eyes.
She squeezes my hand as Talia beams across the table at me, and I think maybe I should be making more of an effort while I’m back in Texas.
I’ve hung out with some people while I’ve been here, but most of my friends from school were the superficial kind—we hung out because we were there, and there was no one else.
It was what we were supposed to do at the time.
Most of them left the Tri-towns as soon as they turned eighteen, and I haven’t really heard from any of them since.
But the people who stayed—the people who surround me now, who have always been in my life—deserve more effort from me.
Brooks, Jody, Talia, Ellison. Savannah the florist too, has shown me more kindness this month than anyone in New York.
Even though she used to date Jody, and she’s always been suspicious of how close he and I are.
Even Harriet, who was almost more of a mother figure sometimes than a friend or a big sister.
Maybe I’ll give her a call during the week, invite her for coffee.
I’ve been nursing this hurting heart in the city for so long now, it almost feels normal.
Like pain is a baseline. But being back in Texas—on the ranch, in Skillett, even driving out to Farrow and Heath—it feels healing.
Like a little slice of how normal is supposed to feel.
The way my soul feels lifted by the smiles of these sweet, beautiful women sitting with me, and the way my heart simply feels at peace when my brother’s laugh rolls through the trees, and when he calls me kid.
When I climb up onto Mayo’s back and he lengthens his stride, transitioning from a trot to a gallop.
When I hear Jody’s dirt bike buzzing between our ranches.
When Brooks pulls faces at me over hay bales.
Pizza, wings, and my favorite movie, wrapped in a blanket with Brooks’s arm across the back of the sofa. His fingers just barely brushing against my skin.
Maybe coming home wasn’t such a bad idea, after all.
Taylor’s show is primarily her newer music—not my favorite—but there’s an interlude in the middle which features some of her old classics, and Talia and I dance our hearts out like we’re teenagers again.
It’s hardly the three-and-a-half-hour epic Taylor toured with a few years ago, but throughout the entire show, the smile doesn’t leave Ruth’s face as she sings along to every word.
The more time I spend with her, the more I fall a little in love with her, too.
I’m so happy to have her as a sister. But my god, the woman can’t sing. I hope my brother has earplugs.
Once the show is over, the three of us tumble out of the stadium, hand in hand.
Between the evening’s humidity and the eighty thousand-strong crowd, Ruth and Talia have both sweated out their respective drinks, but all three of us are buzzed on adrenaline as we head for the truck, singing at the top of our lungs.
Not for the first time, the idea of coming back to Texas for good niggles at me as I buckle myself into the driver’s seat and join the queue to leave the parking lot.
As I drive, Talia scrolls on her phone, then passes it back to Ruth.
“What do you think of these?” she asks. In the rearview mirror, I see Ruth’s face illuminated by Talia’s screen as she inspects the image.
“I like them,” Ruth says. “I’d wear them.”
“New boots for fall,” Talia explains to me as Ruth hands the phone back. “Annual sale starts this week, if you wanna splash some cash.”
“Maybe,” I hum. My closet is already full to bursting, and while a lot of Talia’s dresses are cute as hell, I exist almost entirely in denim and tees, and I’d be buying the dresses simply to have them and never wear them.
Her boot selection is always fantastic, though.
Fashionable and functional for the ranch.
“If you got some boots in the sale, I could be tempted.”
“For you? Always. I have some shorts I think you’d love, too. They ain’t gonna be on sale just yet, but I’ll do a sale price for you if you like them.”
I contemplate the offer for a moment while Ruth and Talia continue discussing the contents of Talia’s sale rack.
“Do you still have that red dress?” Ruth asks. “The one with the lace detail on the bodice?”
“With the A-line skirt?” Talia asks. She twists in her seat to face Ruth, who nods. “Yeah, still got a couple. Think there’s one in your size. Yours if you want it, I’ll put it aside in the morning.”
“Pleasure doing business with you,” Ruth says with a giggle and a grin.
I have a brunch date planned with Ellison, who is, apparently, planning on making me taste-test some new scone flavors, and I can’t help but think I might stop by Talia’s boutique while I’m in town, too.
Hell, maybe I’ll make a day of it, stop by and visit Savannah.
Take some cookies to the Tavern for Julianne and her family.
Stop in and say hello to Miss Celia and Old Man Alan.
Yep, I think to myself as I signal and merge onto the freeway. Being home is healing what the city broke in me.