Free Beauty and the Mustache by Penny Reid Page A

squeezed my eyes shut. “You
did?”
    “ Yes. Who do you think
left you bunches of wildflowers outside your door when Jethro or
the twins pissed you off?”
    My arms came around his
torso and I rested my head against his shoulder. “That was you? I
always thought that was Momma.”
    “ No, dummy, that was
me.”
    I sucked in an unsteady breath and hugged
him tighter. “Thank you.”
    “ You’re welcome.” He
kissed my hair then pushed me back a foot so he could look into my
eyes. “If you want to be miserable, there’s nothing I can do to
stop you. I’m miserable about losing her too, but I’m not going to
spend the next few weeks wringing my hands. I’m going to enjoy the
time she has left and live life like she always wanted us to do,
and that includes getting my flirt on with the scoop of chocolate
ice cream that just walked in the door.”
    I choked out a laugh and
hit his shoulder. “Watch out, or I’ll tell Marissa you just called
her a scoop of chocolate ice cream.”
    He shrugged. “That’s fine
with me. While you’re at it, find out what she thinks of
vanilla.”
    ***
    I knew Sandra and Elizabeth had arrived because I was awakened
from my nap by a sound, and it wasn’t one of those damn roosters
for once. It was a very specific kind of sound. It was the sound of
a man crying. And the sound woke me up.
    I’d been dozing, curled up
on the recliner in the den next to my momma’s hospital bed. Judging
by the light outside, it looked to be close to sunset. The day’s
events had left me all the various kinds of tired: physically,
mentally, emotionally, and knitterly.
    Knitterly tired is when
you’re too tired to knit. It’s a depressing and desperate place to
be.
    I stretched, blinked the
tired haze from my eyes, and glanced around the room. A male
nurse—who I guessed was Joe —was sitting in the other recliner. It
had been pushed back a distance from the bed. He seemed to be
reading a newspaper in the dwindling light of the window. He was
older, maybe in his fifties, and looked more like an orderly than a
nurse. His head was bald, his neck was thick, his shoulders were
wide, and he had a tattoo of a dragon on his forearm.
    Then, to my astonishment,
when I turned my head the other way, I found Drew sitting in a
wooden chair pulled up next to mine.
    I frowned at
him.
    He wasn’t looking at me.
He was looking at the book in his hands, which he was reading
aloud. I wondered for a split second that his voice hadn’t woken
me, but then I realized why. As much as I wanted everything about
him to be repugnant, his voice—especially while he read—was nice.
It was soothing, yet as I listened, I discovered it was also well
inflected. He enriched the text as he read.
    This was terribly
inconvenient, as I’d promised myself I would leave Tennessee with
no admiration for Drew Runous.
    “‘ Just that,’ said the
fox. ‘To me, you are still nothing more than a little boy who is
just like a hundred thousand other little boys. And I have no need
of you. And you, on your part, have no need of me. To you I am
nothing more than a fox like a hundred thousand other foxes.’ Drew
glanced up, his eyes immediately finding mine. They flickered over
my face, taking in my sleepy appearance. Then, with no visible
change in his expression, he returned his attention to the book.
“‘But if you tame me, then we shall need each other. To me, you
will be unique in all the world. To you, I shall be unique in all
the world.’”
    He stopped reading, his
eyes lingering on the page before he closed the book, though he
held his place with a finger. I studied him unabashedly, likely
because I was still half-asleep, and it didn’t occur to me that
staring at him was weird.
    Drew’s gaze lifted to
where Momma lay asleep in the bed. His expression was warm and
affectionate, and his voice gentle as he said, “Bethany, Ashley is
awake.”
    I started, blinked at him,
then looked at my mother just in time to see her open her