LITMIR.BIZ

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top floor’s the loft.”

      “What’s in the loft?”

      “Me,” he said. “I sleep up there. Heat rises. Warmest room in the house at night. Plus it’s the only room where you can see the top of the mountain in the morning. Very good view.”

      Ian paused, hoping she’d say something, anything, about wanting to see that view. But no, not a word.

      “Um, all the furniture is made in Oregon,” he said, pointing at the wood-framed couch, the rustic dining table and the cane-back rocking chair. “There’s a hot tub outside.”

      “Oh, my.”

      “You like hot tubs?” he asked, a very pleasant image appearing unbidden in his mind, one that involved him and her and his hot tub and absolutely no clothing.

      “Nope.”

      “Let me guess—you also hate puppies, kittens and chocolate.”

      “Yup.”

      “Liar,” he said. She nodded, but that’s all she did. No flirting, no teasing, no winking, no nothing.

      “Okay, the fireplace is in the sitting room. Want to see it?”

      “Please,” she said. “That’s why I’m here.”

      Luckily she was behind him and couldn’t see him wince when she said that. All his hopes were fizzling like a wet firecracker. Why did he think he could make things right with her just by bringing her out to his house, getting her alone with him, hashing things out? Flash had already made her decision about him. If he were a gladiator and she the empress of Rome, she would have looked down on his beaten, bloodied and bruised body in the ring and given him a thumbs-down.

      He led her through the living room to the rustic sitting room—oak bookcases, pine coffee table and his stone-and-iron fireplace, which was about to fall apart.

      Ian pointed to a weak spot in the old irons screen.

      “You can see that some of the joints are broken, and there’s some rust.” He grabbed a bar of the decorative iron grate and shook it so she could see how the central part of the design had come loose from the joints. “What do you think?”

      Flash didn’t say anything at first. She knelt onto the wood floor and ran her hands over the iron scrollwork.

      “Ian...” she breathed. “It’s beautiful.”

      He grinned again, like an idiot again, but this time he didn’t chide himself for it.

      “It’s ivy,” he said. “The whole thing is iron ivy. I thought you’d like it. It looks like the sort of thing you’d make.”

      “I would.” Her eyes were alight with happiness and wonder as she ran her fingers all over the twisting and looping iron bars. “A real craftsman made this. Or craftswoman. This is art. Real folk art.”

      “It sold me on the house.”

      “It would have sold me, too,” she said. “Wow.”

      “Oh, my God, did I hear Flash Redding say ‘wow’ to something? I never thought I’d live to see the day.”

      “I am not a hipster,” she said. “I’m an artist with high standards. There’s a difference. Hipsters pretend they aren’t impressed by stuff. I’m genuinely not impressed by stuff. But this...this is wow. You done good. You have better eyes than I gave you credit for.”

      “I have a good eye for beauty,” he said. She looked up at him and said nothing. But he could have sworn he saw a ghost of a smile dance across her lips before it disappeared into the hard line of her mouth again.

      “I’ll fix it,” she said. “An artist needs to fix this, not just any welder. This is delicate work.”

      “Flash is on the job,” he said. “Thank you.”

      “Flash again? Not Veronica?” she asked.

      “You want me to call you Veronica?”

      “No.”

      “Then I’ll call you Flash. Why, I don’t know. I assume you flashed someone at some point in the past and the name stuck?”

      She shook her head in obvious disgust at his ignorance.

      “Poor Ian. You’ve never seen Flashdance, have you?”

      “Flashdance? The dance movie?”

      “Yes, Flashdance is a dance movie.”

      “No, I haven’t seen it. Why?”

      “The main character in it is a woman who works as a welder by day and an exotic dancer by night. When I started welding in high school, one of my friends started calling me Flashdance. But I don’t dance so it got shortened to Flash. I’ve been Flash ever since.”

      “Should I rent the movie?” They were having a good conversation. This was progress. This was an improvement. This was giving him hope.

      “If you like to watch sexy girls dancing, maybe. And welding.”

      “I’m more into the welding than the dancing. I feel like I’ve missed out on something,” he said as he knelt on the floor next to her and watched her test all the connections to see which ones were loose and needed to be rewelded. “Before my time, I guess.”

      “Before mine, too. But my mom did her job and showed me all her favorite movies when I was a kid.”

      “You have a mother?”

      “Did you think I didn’t?” she asked.

      “Don’t take it personally, I just assumed you were forged in the fires of Mordor.”

      She laughed softly. Yes...a laugh. Ten points for Asher.

      “No, I have a mom. A cool mom. Everyone has a mom.”

      “I don’t.”

      “Were you forged in the fires of Mordor?”

      “I had a mom,” he said. “But she died when I was a baby.”

      Flash looked at him and he looked away.

      “I’m sorry. I didn’t know. I’m an asshole.”

      “No, you aren’t. You couldn’t have known. She was hit by a drunk driver.”

      “Oh, my God, that’s awful. I thought your parents were divorced. I didn’t know your mom had been killed.”

      “They were separated when the accident happened. Dad’s always felt bad about that. They’d eloped when she got pregnant with me and both families went to war. Her family hated him. His family hated her...”

      “Romeo and Juliet.”

      “Sort of, yeah. If Romeo was Catholic and Juliet was Jewish.”

      “You’re Jewish?”

      “Mom was.”

      “Then you are, too. Judaism is passed through the mother’s line, not the father’s. Mazel tov, Ian.” She patted him on the head. He would have preferred a kiss but he’d take a head pat. At least she’d touched him.

      “Are you Jewish?” he asked.

      “I’m nothing,” she said. “I just know about it because of a friend of mine.”

      “Boyfriend?”

      “No, a friend-friend. You feel any different? Sudden craving for bagels? Suddenly annoyed at me for making a joke about Jewish people liking bagels?”

      “I feel...I don’t know how I feel,” he said, trying to wrap his mind around this new information. It didn’t make much of a dent on his soul, but still, it was good to know he had some sort of spiritual connection to his mother. “Dad never told me that. He never told me

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