Complicated

by Kristen Ashley

Then she ripped his heart clean out of his chest, her big, beautiful, blue eyes staring right into his as she said, “She’s a complete fool.”

But he caught Greta’s eyes, tipped his head to the side, his lips up, and then without looking back, he walked out the front door. And he did it not having that first clue that, with a tip of his head and a small curl to his lips, he shifted the axis of Glossop, Nebraska in a way anyone who knew either of them, which was most, started to believe dreams could come true.

“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.”

And everybody knows, good drops itself in your lap you don’t shove it off and say, ‘Now’s not the right time. I’m

You snatch up that good and hold it close and process all that dealin’ while life reminds you, you survive the bad, good always comes slidin’ back in right after it.”

“Greta, sometimes to carve some good in your life, you gotta work for it and even fight for it.”

“It’s more complicated than that,” Hix informed him. “People say that when they’re trying not to see how simple stuff really is.”

Got four kids at home who fight more than my husband and I did before he pulled on his boots and took off, and that’s saying something. Quiet does me a lot of good.”

“It means you’re good at talking and you’re not real good at listening. I’ve never been interrupted so much in my whole damned life. But it’s not even that. It’s just all about you. You think you escaped narrowly, I’m clueing into the fact that maybe the one who escaped was me.”

“You’re gorgeous. You’re funny. You’re loving and kind and hardworking. You like to take care of me and I like that you do. You listen. You give honestly. You make great breakfasts. You’re fantastic with my kids. We’re combustible in bed. I love making love to you. I love fucking you. But you’re a shit loser and that’s awesome because I was beginning to get a complex thinking I’d found the perfect woman and I’d never live up to that.”

“It’s you. It was you from the first time you sat your ass across from me at that table at the Dew and you know it. I knew it. It freaked me and I bailed, that’s how strong your pull was. All the shit I jacked up between us was because I couldn’t deal. I couldn’t adjust that fast to being given a shot at something so fucking beautiful when my life had turned to such shit. I couldn’t believe in it. I wouldn’t let myself believe. But in the end I didn’t have to do dick because you turned out to be just as beautiful as you are and I had no choice but to let you make me believe.”

“I’m not breaking the first promise I made to your brother, Greta. Big shit is happening here but that’s important. I need him to know he can trust me and through that he can trust me with you, and I don’t know how he processes things. Something little you think he’ll understand might mean more to him than either of us know so I gotta handle that with care.

“She either believes in you and your dreams or she doesn’t. If she doesn’t, Shaw, honey, she’s not the one. She can be seventeen or she can be thirty-five. The woman you pick has to understand what you want out of life and she has to support that one hundred percent. It’s your job to give that back. What is not your job is to settle for anything less. You don’t make a man what he’s not. You find the man you want and stand beside him no matter what.”