“You shouldn’t have asked that. But I’ll tell her you stopped by.” She sighed, patting something, maybe his arm.
A few seconds later, she knocked.
“Yeah?” I strained, still holding in the sneeze.
She popped inside, as put-together as ever. “How’s the love triangle going?”
“I’m not in a love triangle,” I fumed, tossing aside the knotted wires. I wasn’t in love. Hell, neither was he. Maybe not even with Janice.
Ash propped the door open with her hip. “What’d you come in here for?”
“Cables.” I crossed my arms. Okay, I wasn’t a great liar, but that was a good thing. “He said something about…me.”
“Mean or sweet?” She arched her brow.
I shook my head, then gave her the short version of our argument. “I don’t know. Maybe I shouldn’t have said anything. Maybe I should just let him be happy.”
“He will be. He creates joy wherever he can. Maybe that’s why he’s stayed with her for so long.” Ash glanced at the entrance. “They started out as friends.”
Why would she tell me that? “It doesn’t seem like it,” I said.
She shrugged. “I think they could be friends again.” She leveled me with a gaze. “If they could be direct about their feelings, there’d be no reason they couldn’t make amends.”
Well, shit. I wrapped a cord around my fingers. “It might make everything messier.”
“Sometimes, that’s a risk worth taking.” She flashed me a sideways smile, then closed the door behind her.
Working with her was better than therapy. I eyed the phone cases stacked on a nearby shelf. Maybe I did need to tell him something.
14
Showcase
It took me until closing to wave the white flag, or in this case, the white bag.
Ash taped the gift receipt to the box, then slipped it inside. “Are you sure about this?”
“Unfortunately, yes.” I hurried over to Geppetto’s Workshop before he could drag down the gates.
He was desperately trying to do something on his computer, so he didn’t look up at the sound of my footsteps. “Hey, welcome,” he said. “Just a warning, we’re almost closed. Normally, I’d be happy to stay open, but I’m taking my girlfriend to her birthday celebration tonight and–” He glanced up and tensed. “Oh. Are you here to kidnap me so I won’t go?”
I shook my head. “I thought her birthday was tomorrow.”
He turned his attention to the computer. “It is. So, we’re having a late dinner, then sleeping over so I can get her special coffee tomorrow.”
“Before she meets up with her family and friends,” I filled in.
“Yes.” He sighed, gesturing vaguely. “Do you always have a problem with people having more than one close relationship?”
“No.” I understood why he’d think that, though. The only couples I’d commented on were my brother and his girlfriend, who bordered onobsessive, and Sal and Janice, who seemed all too content to spend time with friends, instead. But love was a spectrum. And I loved them, not in a romantic sense, so I needed to nurture our relationships outside their partners.
Still, I wasn’t sure I could launch a present at Sal and call us good.
Turkey Tom stared at me from his shelf. ‘You need to make this right,’ the reflection his black button eyes conveyed.
Yeah, I knew that. I picked him up, then used him to prop my upper body on the counter, waiting for genius to strike or Sal to look at me again. A few framed photos of an old version of the workshop decorated the nearby walls, and Sal had even taped up a picture of presumably his grandfather to his computer screen. He was an old man with laugh lines and a white mustache and goatee. Dimples, too. The family resemblance was uncanny. Sal would probably be a happy, handsome man in his seventies too. But would Janice be beside him, digging her nails in?
I hugged the turkey, and its head popped up a little. ‘Be honest with him,’ Tom would probably say.
