Frankie
It’s going to be fine.
Or at least, that’s what I keep telling myself.
Sure, I slept with Ash Merit (multiple times).
And yeah, I even let him stay the night, and made him breakfast the next morning, after which we somehow fell into bed together
again (technically, it was the dining room table).
And okay, I don’t know where this relationship is going. Maybe it will only last the weekend. We don’t have anything in common
except a mutual love of West Harbor real estate, good food, cats, and sex.
Ash lives in the city. I live in the country. Ash likes trucks. I prefer compact electric vehicles. Ash believes in outdoor
speakers and the supernatural. I believe in silence and that everything has a rational and scientific explanation.
But when I’m with him, I feel . . . happy. Really happy.
I know that the more time you spend with the object of your attraction, the more oxytocin your body produces. The more oxytocin you produce, the more you’re attracted to your partner. It’s a vicious cycle that makes it even more painful when the inevitable breakup occurs.
And yet, despite knowing all this, I seem to be paralyzed in its grip. And I’m not the only one.
Ash is a hit with everyone in my family, too—though obviously not due to sex hormones, or even because he’s the first guy
I’ve brought to Sunday Gravy since Richard and I broke up.
No, Ash really does have a way with people. It’s evident the second we drive up to my mother’s house. We took Ash’s truck
because he insisted we were going to buy so much stuff at the farmers market, it would not fit in the back of my Prius. I
realized at once this was a ploy so he could show me how cool it is to drive around in a vintage truck.
And it was kind of fun. But the truck still gets less than twenty miles per gallon and is extremely loud.
Mark, who is in the front yard with our nieces, turns to stare as soon as he hears the PUTT PUTT PUTT of our approach. Everyone turns to stare at the approach of Ash’s truck, everywhere he goes.
“I know,” he says to me as he throws on the brake. My mother’s neighbors are out in their yard, raking what few leaves have
already fallen and staring at the truck. “I know, okay?”
I smile but say nothing as we climb from the vehicle and are greeted by my ecstatic nieces—who are always excited to see me—and
a smiling Mark.
“Hey, you came!” he calls cheerfully.
It’s plain to me as his older sibling that Mark’s enthusiastic “you came” has nothing to do with excitement that we’ve arrived:
he can tell I finally got laid and is happy for me.
But Ash, who has no siblings and so has never experienced the merciless teasing that can come from them, has no idea that this is the case.
“Yeah!” he cries, as he climbs from the truck. “Happy to be here.”
“I bet you are.” Mark’s grin widens as he winks at me. I’ll get even with him sometime in the future, but in the meantime,
I’m hugging my nieces, who are both clinging to my legs.
“Did you see my back handspring?” Portia cries.
“I did. You two are getting better every day.”
“That is some truck,” Mark says to Ash as we walk up the brick path to my mother’s front porch, the two little girls trailing
excitedly after us.
“You think so?” Ash glances at the Chevy parked on the road behind us. “I’m considering selling it. I’m thinking about something . . .
quieter.” I suppress a quick smile as Ash turns toward Mark. “Would you be interested?”
Mark loses all semblance of cool. “What? Are you serious? Yeah, I want it. How much?”
“Oh, I think we could figure out something that works for both of us.” Now Ash is the one giving me a wink as I open the door
to Mom’s house.
He’s going to sell the truck. He’s going to sell the truck because I said I hate it. I feel another surge of joy at this but
quickly suppress it, since I know it’s only the dopamine talking.
Isn’t it?
The first thing Ash does when he steps into my mom’s house is hand her a gift from the farmers market.
“Sweets to the sweet,” he says to my mother, after presenting her with a jar of honey.
But not just any honey.
“West Harbor honey?” Mom cries, genuinely delighted. She’s beaming at Ash like he’s just presented her with the key to New York City. “But I love West Harbor honey, and I can never find it because they’re always sold out! How did you know?”
Ash shrugs modestly. “It’s a gift.”
Except . . . he isn’t joking. I genuinely have no idea how he knew about the honey.
I didn’t even know he’d bought it. From the second we arrived at the farmers market, Ash was swarmed with vendors who recognized
him from previous visits. They all waved goods in his face while volunteering the information that they had not heard anything
new about Emma Bridle.
But they were all eager to tell him other things, like how annoying the influx of leaf peepers from the city are, now that
fall is finally here, because all they want to do is pull over to the side of the road—in the middle of traffic!—and take
selfies by the one or two trees whose leaves have turned, but none of them ever buy anything.
Or about the discovery of Meg Boucher, not realizing that Ash was the one who’d rescued her.
Still, he thanked every last one of them as earnestly as if he had never heard any of this information before. Then he asked
after the health of their families. He knew the names of all their dogs and kids, and accepted every free sample that was
offered to him—which were many.
“So I guess you come here a lot,” I’d said after we walked away from the Cottage Witch Cheese Shoppe (just a table with a
canopy over it owned by two very friendly women who insisted Ash couldn’t leave without trying their new sheep’s milk gouda).
“I love it.” He’d reached out and grabbed my hand. “We’re outside in the sunshine and crisp autumn air, surrounded by people who love good food and good conversation. What could be better?”
What could be better indeed? Except, apparently, using one’s special ability to find “lost things” to pick out the perfect
hostess gift for my mother, who expresses her gratitude for the gesture by thrusting grilled prosciutto and arugula pizzettas,
along with tagliere di salumi, into our hands.
“Mrs. Giovanni, these are unbelievable,” Ash is saying as he downs approximately half his daily net allowance of carbs in
one bite.
“I’m so glad you like them!” Mom is beaming. “But please, call me Mama. Wait until you see what we’re having for dinner!”
My mother is an inveterate flirt, but that’s okay, because so is Ash. “Really? What is it?”
“I said you’ll have to wait and see!”
Mom is in her element, even if two of her children are missing. Cat has some kind of deadline—the same one that kept her from
last night’s engagement party—and Angie is off on a mysterious hair-related emergency, though she phoned to say she’ll be
arriving soon.
“They work too hard, your sisters,” Mom confides to me. “They always have.”
I’ve never noticed this about Cat, but I let the statement pass since it’s definitely true in Angie’s case.
“Here,” I say to my mom. “I got you a little something from the farmers market, too.”
Then I hand my mother what I purchased: a hand-carved refrigerator magnet featuring the Three Little Kittens—the ones who lost their mittens in the nursery rhyme, only instead of mittens, these particular kittens are wearing witch hats because they were made by a local artist right here in West Harbor.
“These are your new grandchildren,” I joke with Mom. She collects kitschy refrigerator magnets as well as aprons (like the
Don’t Get Upsetti one she gifted to me). “I finally caught the stray cat that’s been hanging around my house all summer, and she had kittens
last night.”
“Congratulazioni!” Mom cries and kisses my cheek as she takes the magnet. “I’m a nonna again!”
“Kittens!” scream my nieces, who, along with Mark, have followed us inside. “Can we have one, Zia Frankie? Please?”
“I don’t know.” I wink at their father, who has just walked into the dining room with a bottle of beer in one hand and a plate
of stuffed mushrooms in the other. “First you’ll have to complete an adoption application, listing all the ways in which you
would care for a kitten—”
“But Zia Frankie,” Bianca cries, urgently pulling on my cardigan. “I can’t read!”
“Well, hopefully your sister will help you, then. You’ll both also need to come over for supervised visitation so I can observe
your kitten etiquette. And I’ll need a written statement from both your parents saying it’s okay.”
Both girls turn immediately toward their father. “It’s okay with you, isn’t it, Dad?” Portia asks.
“Please, Dad,” Bianca lisps. “I’ve wanted a kitten my whole life.”
Ash is grinning down at the two girls. “Your whole life? How old are you?”
Bianca holds up five pudgy fingers.
“That’s a long time,” Ash says with adorable solemnity.
“Please, Dad?” Portia begs.
“We’ll see what your mother says.” Troy is grinning at me over the tops of his kids’ heads. “Maybe if you’re very, very good, she’ll say yes. Have you washed your hands for dinner?”
The girls nearly run over one another in their haste to comply with their father’s wishes, while Troy sets down the stuffed
mushrooms, then looks up with a huge smile on his face. But the smile is for Ash, not me. It’s the same knowing smile Mark
had been wearing outside. Even Troy knows what Ash and I did last night. And probably even what we did this morning, too.
“So you must be liking West Harbor to spend this much time here,” Troy says conversationally to Ash. “Place is starting to
grow on you, huh?”
Ash grins back, but his gaze is on me. “The place is growing on me, all right. The place and . . . other things.”
“Other things, huh?”
Fortunately Troy’s plan to interrogate Ash about our sex life is ruined by Mark, who saunters back into the dining room from
the den.
“So, Ash,” Mark asks. “Are you a Jets or a Giants fan?”
There is only one right answer to this question in my family. Fortunately Ash gets it. “Aw, Jets all the way,” he says, earning
both slaps on the back and commiseration from Mark and Troy.