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“See?” she says, laughing. “Even that was erotic to the right person.”
“Maybe we should record ourselves and sell it as some kind of audio porn,” I say, shoving the rest of the cupcake in my mouth. With my mouth full, I mumble, “Does this sound sexy, baby?”
We giggle and make equally stupid jokes for the rest of the drive back to Shelby’s house. When we get there, the construction crew is packing up for the day. “Those guys work really late,” I say, pulling to the far right of their driveway so I’m out of their way.
“And they start at the butt-crack of dawn each morning. It is unbelievably annoying. I am so sick of the hammering.”
“There’s another line for our audio porn,” I say.
She shoves me in the shoulder. “Okay, we have to stop talking about this! One of us needs to be a good Christian girl here, Hana.”
I smile. “And that’s why I love you.”
The first thing Ash did with his massive sponsorship check from Team Yamaha was make a down payment for a new house. He and his family had always lived here in a rickety mobile home on their land. Since his dad’s small engine repair shop is located at the front of the lot, and the family has no desire to leave the area, Ash thought building a new home here would be a great gift to give to his parents as a thank you for supporting him all of these years. I’d thought it was horribly romantic at the time, that I was dating a guy who was so selfless and caring that he spent all his money on his family.
Ash plans to live in it too, since he’s only nineteen and racing will take up most of his time for the next several years. Back when we were still together, we’d made a few light-hearted jokes about maybe building our own house next to theirs in the future. The Carter’s certainly had enough land.
It’s been a few months since Ash first chose a contractor with his parents and let them pick out the floor plan. It’ll be a two-story house with five bedrooms and a stone fireplace in the middle of the living room. I’d been there for some of those decisions, and it was always fun sitting around looking through a bunch of home building catalogues with his family.
Now the land to the left of the mobile home has been cleared, the foundation poured and the skeleton walls put up. I take the remainder of our cupcakes, which are packaged in a pretty mint green box with Nana’s logo on top of it, and we head toward Shelby’s old house.
“It looks like they put up some drywall,” I say, looking at the progress that had been made since I’d last seen it.
Shelby’s eyes brighten. “Wanna go look around? I haven’t been over there in a while.”
“But if we’re looking at the house,” I say all dramatically, “Then who will be eating our cupcakes?”
“Good call,” she says, opening the box while I hold it. “Let’s eat and look.”
“We are multi-tasking geniuses,” I say, taking a cupcake that looks like it’s cookies and cream flavored.
Despite the lightness of our conversation and our eagerness to check the progress on the house, I suddenly sense an uncomfortable shift in Shelby’s mood, and I’m not sure why. I look over at her and raise an eyebrow. “What is it?”
“Well, I’ve been kind of waiting for you to talk all day,” she says, peeling off the paper liner from her cupcake. “And you still haven’t said anything.”
“What exactly am I supposed to talk about?” I may be playing dumb, but my stomach knows the truth because it twists into a knot the moment I speak.
“Well . . . you know,” she says, busying herself by looking down at her careful steps as we walk between rows of rebar lining the future sidewalk that leads to the door. “How have you been lately? You haven’t cried on my shoulder in a while.”
“Shelby, I love you and you know that, but it’s really hard talking to you about Ash. It was painful all those other times we did talk, and I only did because I had no one else.”
“I know, I know. I’m just worried, and I hope that maybe your silence means you’re starting to feel better. Are you?”
I step into the house, my flip-flop smacking on the concrete foundation. “I’m feeling as good as I can feel, I guess.”
“I’m really sorry about the way this has turned out,” she says, trailing along behind me.
There’s still half of a cupcake in my hand and I shove it back into the box. My appetite is gone, replaced with the painful memory that Ash is no longer mine and I am lost without him. “I’m sorry, too.” We walk into the living room area and the framework for the massive fireplace is already set up. “So this is the living room,” I say, looking around and hoping like hell that she’ll just change the subject with me.
“So, are you thinking about moving on?” she asks, reaching up and touching the fireplace framework.
“No, why? Has Ash moved on?” I look up quickly, my throat dry. “I mean—don’t answer that. I don’t wanna know.”
Shelby’s pink lips twist into a sad smile. It hurts so bad to look at her in times like these. She has his eyes. That same off-center smile. His golden brown hair. How the hell am I supposed to get over someone when his twin is my best friend?
“Hana, I’m not sure he’ll ever move on.” Her shoulders lift and she lets them fall slowly as we walk throughout the frame of a house, the smell of drywall and spackle getting stronger in the kitchen. “But I guess I don’t really know anything anymore. We don’t talk much about that kind of stuff. Maybe he has moved on, who knows?”
I don’t want him to be sad, not exactly. But the thought of Ash being happy with another girl makes me want to run my forehead straight into the exposed nail on the two by four in front of me. I groan. “New subject, please.”
