Flannel and Frost
Copyright© 2026 by Art Samms
Chapter 16
The morning light slanted through the front windows of the hardware store, bright enough to pick up the lingering sawdust Ryan kept meaning to sweep. Moesha was stuffing the last of her things into an old backpack—stickers peeling, a keychain shaped like a cartoon cat dangling off the zipper. Her energy, normally a bright aura around the shop, felt muted today.
“Your bus leaves in twenty minutes,” Ryan said, leaning against the counter in what he hoped looked casual and not ... weirdly sentimental.
She eyed him. “You say that like you aren’t already planning to sprint here the second I’m gone so you can rearrange everything to your liking.”
“I don’t rearrange,” he said.
“You alphabetized the bolts.”
“I improved efficiency.”
“You’re deflecting.”
He scowled. She grinned. Balance restored.
June had hugged Moesha goodbye earlier; Caleb had insisted on driving her to the station. But Moesha had refused. She wanted to walk. Said it felt more “cinematic.”
Now she stood in front of him, shifting her backpack higher on her shoulders. “You gonna miss me?”
Ryan snorted, aiming for light. “I’ll ... miss having someone around who knows which box the spare drill bits are in.”
Moesha raised an eyebrow. “So, yes.”
He opened his mouth to deny it, but one look from her—sharp, knowing, and too mature for someone who still bought cosmic glitter lip gloss—cut him off.
His silence told the truth for him.
She softened. “I’ll be back in a couple weeks. School break isn’t that long.”
“I know.”
But he didn’t know what the store would feel like without her steady chatter, her quick reads on people, or the way she held him accountable without ever pushing too hard. The shop would be quieter—back to the kind of silence he’d once preferred.
Now, he dreaded it.
Moesha swung the door open. The bell chimed—cheerful, unaware. “Don’t get all tragic on me,” she teased. “You’re not a Victorian widow.”
“That’s ... not even remotely—”
“Bye, Ryan.”
She left with a bright, quick wave and her usual head-high stride, vanishing down the sidewalk before he found a proper goodbye.
He stayed where he was for a long moment. Then he saw the envelope on the counter. White. Folded neatly. His name in her looping handwriting.
He stared at it—half afraid, half amused—before finally tearing it open.
She’d written three short paragraphs containing a string of truths he wasn’t prepared for.
People aren’t doors. They’re windows. Stop waiting for permission to look through.
Ryan blinked. He turned over the words in his mind. Doors he could manage—clear boundaries, obvious cues, easy to avoid. But windows? That implied openness. Seeing in. Letting others see out.
He swallowed. There was more.
Don’t wait for someone to unlock you. Be brave enough to hand them the key.
The note was blunt in the way Moesha always was—no softness, no cushioning, just insight wrapped in snark.
He read it twice. Then a third time.
His pulse thudded in his ears, not from panic but from recognition—painful, reluctant recognition. Again, Moesha had seen straight through him, past the practiced neutrality and quiet detachment, to the truth he kept barricaded behind old habits.
He set the note down carefully, smoothing the creases as if the words might break.
“More open,” he muttered. “Less guarded.”
It sounded impossible. It also sounded ... necessary. Ryan felt something new—like a hinge loosening on a door he’d kept shut for years.
Or maybe, he thought, glancing at the note again... Not a door at all. A window I need to stop pretending isn’t there.
The following evening, after he’d locked up the store and headed back home, Ryan sat at his kitchen table long after sunset, the small overhead light casting a pale circle across the worn wood. The apartment was quiet—eerily so without Moesha’s commentary echoing faintly in his mind. He’d opened all the windows earlier, hoping the cool air would clear his head, but the night breeze only made the silence sharper.
In front of him lay a blank sheet of stationery he’d bought weeks ago, back when he told himself he might reach out eventually. He’d assumed “eventually” meant a few years from now.
Moesha’s note sat beside it, folded neatly, heavy in its own small way.
He picked up his pen. Put it down. Picked it up again.
The first line resisted him like a door he couldn’t bring himself to push.
Mark, he wrote.
The name alone made him feel tense and uncertain. His handwriting looked unsure, like it wanted to erase itself. He waited for the next words to come, but the page stayed mostly empty, the way things between them had stayed empty for far too long.
He tried again.
I don’t really know how to start this.
No. He crossed it out. Too weak.
It’s been a while.
Crossed out again. Too obvious.
He sat back in his chair, rubbing at his forehead. His throat felt thick, a familiar burn crawling up the back of his eyes. He pushed it down. Not tonight. Not now.
He picked up the pen a third time, tapping it lightly against the paper.
Finally, a line surfaced—simple, unguarded, something he could imagine saying out loud if Mark were sitting across from him instead of living a whole separate life hundreds of miles away.
I miss you.
The words landed with a quiet finality, like truth settling into dust. It was the kind of sentence you couldn’t take back, and he didn’t even want to.
He kept writing, slowly at first, then with a steadier rhythm. He wrote about Willow Creek. About the shop. About how he wasn’t okay for a long time and hadn’t known how to be honest about it. He avoided grand statements or emotional theatrics—just small truths, one after another, building something real.
A bridge, maybe. A starting point.
When he reached the bottom of the page, his hand cramped, and he realized he’d been holding his breath.
He didn’t sign it yet.
He wasn’t ready to seal it, to commit it fully to the world. But it was there—ink on paper, something he’d avoided for the longest time.
He folded the letter carefully, placed it inside an unsealed envelope, and set it on the table beside Moesha’s note.
For now at least, just writing it felt like the smallest—yet bravest—step he’d taken in a long time.
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