Complicated

by Kristen Ashley

“Gotta go.” The mood of the room changed. The sluggish, warm feel of post-really-freaking-great-coitus shimmered to nothing as something heavier started seeping in. “Go?” she asked. God, she could unravel him with a syllable. So, yeah. That was right. Go. He had to go. And do it before he smelled more of her. Heard more of that voice any way it came at him—the way it was before and for certain the way it sounded just then with hurt trembling through it.

Ouch

“It was great, Greta,” he repeated the truth in a tone that, this time, it couldn’t be missed he meant it. “Yeah, Hixon. Brilliant.” Her words were clipped, and even though he knew without a doubt she agreed with what he’d said, her tone didn’t share his sentiment.

To say I was relieved that the salon hadn’t been firebombed after word got out the Princess of Glossop’s ex-husband had slept with its resident easy-trick hairdresser-slash-lounge singer (that being me) might be a high-drama understatement, but it was true. To say that relief was tempered by the fact I’d learned Hixon Drake was a good guy, he just was never going to be the guy for me, was just an understatement, but a sad one.

“That’s it,” Joyce stated. “She strolls in here and does any of that, it’s gonna be me goin’ to your momma’s house and dragging her out to take her to one of Pastor Keller’s revivals. He’ll dip her in the river and hold her down until she sees Jesus. And if she doesn’t, he’ll hold her down until she sees Jesus

😂

“Hope Drake is gonna be a lot less than his favorite person when someone stops keepin’ their mouth shut, waiting to see how it’ll play out between them, now that those papers have been filed. Someone is gonna share that the reason she put him through that wringer is because she wanted him to use the inheritance he got from that uncle of his to buy her a twenty-five thousand dollar twentieth anniversary ring instead of what he wanted to do with his inheritance.”

😳

I’d become a mother at fourteen to a child I didn’t carry, and I didn’t mind because I’d fallen in love with Andy the minute I laid eyes on him. He was something to love and I’d never had that, not in all my short life, and I gave him all the love I had bottled up and all the love he had coming.

“You’re watching Smokey and the Bandit?” Shaw asked. Hix grinned up at him. “Your sister reminded me I haven’t seen it in a while.” Shaw grinned back. “You should start using your middle initial like Sheriff Buford T. Justice. You can be Sheriff Hixon T. Drake.” “Actually has a ring to it,” Hix joked.

“Don’t care there’s no crime in this town, Greta, lock this behind me.” “Ten-four, good buddy.” He busted out laughing, hooking her waist again with his arm and pulling her to him for a kiss. When he ended it, he lifted away just an inch and said, “You’re really fuckin’ great, Greta.” “Thanks, Hix. You are too.”

💜

“Dare. It’s Dare.” Greta Dare. He liked it. “Bonus, my middle name is Kate,”

“I wanna know all about you, Greta,” he said in a voice that sounded like velvet and felt that way too. “So I’ll give you time to think about it. And after you have that time, I hope you give me that privilege,

I was singing words about a woman who wanted to swim in her man’s eyes. And I wanted that. I wanted my shot at that. I wanted my shot to swim in the blue of Hix’s eyes for the rest of my life.

I’d finally found it. Something worth fighting for. And if I had to, I was going to fight for it. Because I was falling in love with complicated.

Greta