Page 18 of Sunsets & Other Dangerous Things

Esther continued eating her soup without the sour cream, and dinner was blissfully silent, aside from spoons scraping bowls. Ashley typed out a few notes on her phone but didn’t ask any more questions. Which was perfectly fine with Esther. This dinner was a reminder that people made her life difficult, and the sooner it was over, the sooner she could return to her peaceful solitude.

When Esther had scraped the last bit from her bowl, she stood, her chair screeching against the wood floor. “I’m finished. Can I take anyone else’s bowl?”

Jason passed her his, and she hurried off to the kitchen. She turned the sink to scalding and let the heat and menial task of rinsing dishes wash away the stress of the moment and the memory of her embarrassing outburst. The truth was Esther didn’t give bad advice—it was just that when she was presented with two options, a voice in her head rooted for the one that made the most waves. But she’d learned her lesson over and over again. The problem with picking the more exciting option was that it rarely worked out the way she might hope and people got hurt in the process. People she cared about. And they wouldn’t let her forget.

As she lowered the bowl to put it in the dishwasher, it was scooped up, and another dirty bowl was placed in her hand. Ashley had joined her, wordlessly loading the dishwasher while Esther rinsed the dishes.

“Hey,” Uncle Pete said.

Esther turned to find her uncle hanging in the doorway of the kitchen.

“Let me and Jason finish that up. You girls head upstairs and work on that project.”

“Are you sure, Uncle Pete?” Ashley was faster to answer, placing the last bowl in the dishwasher as Uncle Pete carried in the pot with the last of the soup. “It’s no trouble.”

“We are highly capable men, who happen to know our way around a kitchen. Isn’t that right, Jason?”

Leftover containers clattered to the floor as Jason climbed through the Tupperware cupboard.

“Well, holler if you need backup.” Ashley toweled off her hands and waited expectantly by the door.

A second passed before Esther registered it was her Ashley was waiting for. She toweled off and followed Ashley out of the kitchen. Esther wasn’t sure where they were going or if Ashley was leaving. Surely, she would say something. But Ashley continued putting one determined step in front of the other as she passed the front entryway and returned to the living room on the far end of the house. When she reached the exact center of the room, she turned on her heel to face Esther and placed her hands on her hips. The whole move was snappy and neat like she’d performed it hundreds of times. Her golden hair flew like a flag as it flipped over her shoulder and landed in the most delicate and perfect position, half of it trailing over the opposite shoulder and an artful tendril shadowing one eye.

“I don’t want to impose on you or anything,” Ashley said, “but if you wanted to show me around or just hang out, I don’t have anywhere to be.”

Something about that tendril of hair was distracting and making Esther’s thoughts go all fuzzy. Was it the nearness to Ashley’s eye? It was dangerous and precarious, and she wanted to brush it away to somewhere safer.

Esther’s fingers twitched at her side. She couldn’t touch her classmate’s hair. What if she accidentally swiped a finger across Ashley’s face, her cheek that rounded when she smiled. She wondered how soft it would be, how warm. She stepped forward, her feet betraying the warning signal going off in her mind, bringing her closer and closer like a moth to a flame until they were only an arm’s length apart.

Ashley’s smile dimmed as Esther drew nearer, her breaths growing slower and shallower, and as the smile faded, a spark in her eye grew brighter. A sea of fathomless sapphire, depths Esther could only imagine opened, as though her smile was nothing but a shield and, without it, a deeper and darker Ashley shone forth.

Esther craved this Ashley, the open and real one. But how to make her stay? Ashley’s lips parted, and Esther stared, transfixed, waiting for whatever would come out of them.

A pot clanged from the kitchen, followed by the long chiming of church bells. Right. Uncle Pete had put on his favorite AC/DC album.

“Did you want to go upstairs?” Esther asked as electric guitar accompanied the chiming ofHells Bells.

“Yes,” Ashley whispered then coughed and shook her head. “Yeah, sure. That sounds great.” Her smile was back in place.

7

Ashley

Esther had looked at her mouth. That was a classic romance move. It’d been a few years, but Ashley read romance. She knew that was a move. And now they were walking up the stairs—where bedrooms were kept—Esther’s cute ass right there in front of her, rocking those black jeans, and Ashley had to wonder, was this night shifting into date territory? Sure, Uncle Pete was down there mucking up the atmosphere but also pushing them upstairs to some privacy.

No, she was getting carried away by the moment. What would twenty-year-old Ashley do? Ashley spun around, pointing like a compass at the three doors at the top of the stairs. “Which one is yours?”

“Oh, these are Uncle Pete, Jason, and the bathroom.” Esther pointed at each door, eliminating them one by one.

Ashley stopped her spinning. Did Esther not have a room? She knew Esther didn’t live here permanently, but she assumed they were headed to Esther’s room. Ashley’s pondering was interrupted by the squeaking of old springs. Esther had pulleda cord from the ceiling, opening a hatch and unfolding a ladder staircase.

“I’m up here.” Esther climbed the steps, disappearing into the empty, black rectangle.

Ashley grabbed the ladder, waiting until a yellow glow illuminated the hatch before starting up. A waft of cool, stale air and dust molecules flowed down to her as she climbed. As though the space hadn’t been properly aired out in a while.

“Sorry, it’s a bit of a mess. It’s technically only half-finished. But rent is free, and it’s close to campus, so I can’t complain.”

Ashley reached the top, her hand resting on the rough plywood floor as she pulled herself up the rest of the way. The space in front of her was a mess. On top of the bare plywood was a tightly packed maze of boxes and stuffed trash bags. In the far corner was a fully assembled Christmas tree. And over all of it, the sloping ceiling showed bare beams filled with puffy insulation, trimmed professionally in brown paper as though waiting to be properly covered in drywall and made into a real room if only someone had the time. Ashley scanned the boxes of old toys and out-of-season clothing, wondering where Esther could possibly fit.

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