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He scares me. Like I’m a deer and he’s a wolf, except in this case, the thing at stake is not my life but… okay, never mind. It is my life. If I let him get too close, I might not be able to handle myself. I round the table to make sure I’m away from him.
“Where should we start?” Ash asks, hands in his pockets.
“I think décor details is going to be the most tedious thing,” I say, opening up the binder to the décor tab. “They’ve sent over a lot of decisions we have to make about colors of linens and table arrangement.”
Ash picks up one of the papers on the table and looks at it skeptically. “You mean, like seating arrangement?”
“No, no. Like how the tables are arranged. See, they gave us overhead visuals so we can decide if we want it in the round or like concentric circles or… ” As I’m saying it, I realize how ridiculous it sounds. I hand Ash a stack of rendered images of tables and he takes them from me, his long fingers extending onto the page. He’s got dark hair lightly trailing up the back of his hand. I hold my breath. He’s all man.
As he thumbs through the pictures, he laughs. “Wow. This is intense, huh?”
“Weddings are no joke,” I say with a tired smile.
“Right. Of course. I just… I’m a little out of my element,” Ash says and then hands the stack back to me.
I frown. “What do you mean?”
“Well, the big things, I can discern what’s good and what’s bad, right? You know, lemon cake and disco bands.”
“Sounds like a bad porno when you say it like that,” I giggle.
For the briefest moment, his eyes glint, ready to pounce on the joke. He decides against it. “Yeah, well, these small things… I just really haven’t conceptualized how much goes into all of it.” I don’t mean to urge him with my look, but my confusion is evident enough for him to clarify. “Rose… my wife… you know, she and I got married in her parents’ backyard and Jarred—he was just a baby—he couldn’t stop crying so she held him the whole ceremony.”
I laugh, endeared to the memory. I had no idea that things with him and his wife had been unconventional that way. “That’s really sweet.”
“It worked out. Not all eighteen-year-olds who get married are ready for it, but it worked out for us,” he says, his eyes landing on the table. “Mostly.” Ash looks back at me and puts on a big, closed-lipped smile, cutting the memory of his wife’s passing.
“We don’t have to talk about it if you don’t—”
“No, no, I don’t mind at all. It’s nice to remember her. I sometimes get too afraid to talk about her out loud like that will make it harder, but it always feels nice,” he says. “It’s like going to the gym.”
I can’t help but burst into laughter. “Grief gym.”
“Exactly.”
“I’m familiar.”
The smile on his face fades. “Right. Yeah, of course.” His eyes narrow. “Is this—is this hard?”
I frown in confusion. Being around him? Trying to not have a crush on him after thirteen years? “Sorry?”
“Your dad getting remarried.”
“Oh.”I’m a dumbass.
“I mean, you’ve always seemed to have a positive attitude about it. I just imagine that must be tough for you. After losing your mom.”
I get the sense he’s less asking so he can know how I’m doing, but to know how he can justify moving on. As far as I know, Ash hasn’t had any relationships after his wife passed away. Over ten years. That’s… a long time. “I love Giselle,” I say with a smile of wonder. “I didn’t think it was possible. When my dad told me met someone, I was scared that it would be some Cinderella story and I’d be stuck with an evil stepmother and stepsisters.”
“Media isn’t kind to the mixed family dynamic, isn’t it?”
“At least not in Grimms’ Fairytales.”
Ash laughs. Every smile and laugh I get is like a little gift. I will cherish each one, especially since the first few times we saw one another, he was icy as the arctic. “Totally.”
“Giselle, though, just fit right in. They got along so well and that made it easy to get along with her too. Neither of them forced me to like her, just let me come to it in my own time...” I pause and glance out the window. The lake is more obscured by darkness now. “I think it helped that she also knew loss. You know, they met in group therapy and—”
“Yes, I suggested he go.”
