Flannel and Frost
Copyright© 2026 by Art Samms
Chapter 14
It was mid-morning the following day. Finally, Ryan’s shop smelled like an actual hardware store. Gone was the old musty, neglected odor that was an instant mood-killer. Now, there was a pervasive scent of sawdust and new beginnings—freshly wiped counters, stacks of unopened hardware shipments, and the peculiar tang of metal shelving that still hadn’t lost its factory gloss. The grand opening was two days away, and everything should have felt electric.
Instead, Ryan had been staring at the same display of multipurpose gloves for ten full minutes.
Moesha leaned against the counter, sipping an iced chai and watching him with the flat, unimpressed stare of someone who had already endured thirty minutes of brooding silence and refused to endure thirty-one.
“Okay,” she said finally, dragging the word out like she was hauling it uphill. “You’re rearranging those gloves for the third time, and I’m pretty sure the gloves didn’t offend you.”
Ryan grunted. A noncommittal sound that might have passed for acknowledgment if someone squinted hard enough.
“That’s what I thought.” Moesha took another slow sip. “This is a man-in-his-feelings grunt.”
He sighed, shoulders slumping. “I’m not—”
“Please don’t lie,” she said cheerfully. “You brood the way my dog stares at the door after I leave—big sad eyes and existential collapse.”
“That’s dramatic.”
“You are dramatic.”
Ryan pinched the bridge of his nose. “I just ... messed up, I guess.”
Moesha perked up. “Ah. So, we’re talking about Evelyn.”
He froze. “I never said—”
“You didn’t have to. You’ve been stomping around here like somebody canceled Christmas, and that’s usually girl-related.” She tilted her head. “Or possibly Caleb-related, but he’s fine today, so it’s not that.”
Ryan dropped the gloves on the shelf with more force than necessary. “We just ... had a weird moment last night at the campfire event.”
“Define ‘weird.’ On a scale from ‘mildly awkward’ to ‘you tripped and burned the café down.’”
“She misread something I said—or didn’t say.” He shoved his hands into his pockets. “And I didn’t explain it well.”
Moesha nodded slowly. “Okay. And instead of talking to her like an actual human being this morning, you decided to glare at innocent construction gloves. That tracks.”
He wanted to defend himself, but she wasn’t wrong.
“It felt like we were finally—” He paused, searching. “—getting along. And then suddenly we weren’t.”
Moesha softened just a little, enough that her sarcasm had a cushion. “People get touchy when they care, Ryan. Even if they pretend they don’t.”
He stared at the unfinished aisle, the faint hum of the overhead lights filling the space between them. “Maybe she just doesn’t want anything to do with me.”
“Oh my God,” Moesha muttered, pushing off the counter. “This again. You know, for a guy restoring a hardware store from the ground up, you really underestimate your ability to fix things.”
He gave a small, reluctant laugh. “That was terrible.”
“Thank you.” She grinned. “Now stop sulking. Either talk to Evelyn or distract yourself before you turn into a cautionary tale about emotional constipation.”
She clapped him on the shoulder and returned to unpacking a box of paintbrushes.
Ryan exhaled slowly. Two days until opening. Two days to get out of his own head.
Or—maybe—to stop pretending he didn’t know exactly who he wished would walk through those doors.
But getting into that mindset would prove to be a challenge. Another half hour passed. The glove display looked exactly the same—but Ryan had somehow managed to hover over it in three different poses of silent frustration. Arms crossed. Hands on hips. Leaning forward like the gloves might whisper the answers to all his life problems.
Moesha finally set down her box cutter with a decisive clack.
“Nope,” she said. “Absolutely not. We’re not doing another half-hour of broody hardware ghost.”
Ryan blinked over at her. “I’m not—”
“You are. If brooding were an Olympic sport, you’d have endorsement deals.”
She walked over, hip-bumping the glove display into stillness. He took a step back, unsure if she was about to lecture him or stage an intervention.
Turned out, both.
“You call Evelyn ‘distant.’ You say she’s ‘hard to read.’ You ask if she’s always like that with everyone or just you.” Her voice wasn’t mocking now—just calm, steady, deliberate.
Ryan looked away, the tips of his ears warming. “There are times when I just ... don’t get her.”
Moesha leaned her elbows on the counter beside him, like she was pulling up a chair to the real conversation.
“Maybe she doesn’t want to be gotten. Maybe she’s just tired of people looking at her like they’ve got the cheat codes and she’s the puzzle. She’s not a puzzle. She’s protecting something.”
He turned, slowly, caught off-guard by her clarity. “You’re wise for someone who still gets carded for cough syrup.”
She flashed him a grin. “It’s a gift.”
Silence settled between them—not the awkward kind Ryan kept stumbling into, but something gentler. Moesha reached for a pen on the counter and tapped it against her small spiral notebook, eyes thoughtful.
“You ever think maybe she’s got reasons for her armor?” she asked softly. “Same way you got yours?”
That one hit square in the chest. Ryan exhaled, rubbing the back of his neck as if trying to smooth away something that suddenly felt too raw. He thought of Evelyn’s sharp edges, her caution, the way she always seemed half a step away from bolting. He’d assumed it was about him—his bluntness, his clumsy timing, his mistakes.
But maybe it wasn’t personal. Maybe it was history. Hurt. Something he hadn’t earned the right to know yet.
“She might surprise you,” Moesha added. “But only if you stop expecting her to be cold just because she doesn’t fill the silences the way other people do.”
He looked at her for a long time. Twenty-one years old, and she had a startling ability to see right through to the root of things. He wasn’t sure anyone had spoken to him this plainly—and kindly—in years.
“Why are you working in retail again?” Ryan asked, attempting a smile.
She smirked, triumphant. “Because people pay me to talk sense, and you’re a slow learner.”
Ryan laughed—really laughed—for the first time all morning. And somewhere between that laugh and the quiet that followed, he started to reconsider the walls he’d kept around himself ... and the ones Evelyn might be carrying too.
For Evelyn, the memory opened like a door eased slowly on its hinges—soft light spilling into a dim hallway of the past. Omniscient, steady, unblinking.
She had been twenty-three, standing in the narrow kitchen of her childhood home with her sleeves rolled to the elbows. The air smelled of chamomile tea and antiseptic wipes. Outside, the crickets sang like they always had, filling the summer night with a soft buzz of life that never quite reached inside.
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