STEPHANIE:

      Ash seems kind of surprised when I tell him that I won't sell him the piece he's looking at, and I rack my brain trying to come up with a plausible reason, other than the real one. Damn, if I'd known he was coming, I would've put it away.

      "Is it because it's not finished? Because if that's it, I'll be glad to put down a deposit and wait for it," he tells me. "Or has somebody already bought it?"

      Realizing that I'm going to have to tell him the truth, I sigh, and say, "No, that's not it. I won't sell it to you because it's already yours. This was supposed to be your birthday present, but you sort of mucked up the surprise."

      His eyes widen as he looks at me, and then back at the unfinished piece that has captured his interest. I've been listening to some of the things he's mentioned being interested in, and decided to combine some of them in a good-sized sculpture, which will also double as a lamp. It looks sort of like a tall, three-sided vase, about seven inches across each face and fifteen inches tall, with relief carvings of one of his major interests on each side. The first side shows a cowboy standing by a rail fence, with his horse extending its head over his shoulder, the second shows a meteor streaking across a sky full of stars, and the third is ocean waves, with a sailboat in the distance. I've glazed the star side, and I'm about half-finished with the ocean side, leaving only the Western scene untouched.

      "Are you serious?" he asks, looking at me incredulously. "Steph, this is totally fucking awesome, I don't even care that it's not a surprise!"

      "Well, in that case, since you already know what you're getting, and I haven't finished the glazing yet, do you have a preference for what color I paint the horse?"

      He pulls out his phone and plays with it for a minute before holding it up to show a picture of him riding a reddish-brown colored horse. "That's mine right there, his name is Arrow. Do you have anything close to that color?"

      "Sure, that's not a problem. Can I get a copy of the picture, so I can make sure I get the markings right?"

      He sends the picture to my phone, then finally tears himself away from his gift and starts walking around to look at other pieces. He moves past the shelves, making occasional comments on various sculptures, pieces of dishware, and wall hangings, until he gets to the table where my most recent finished project is sitting. Making a circle around the table, he inquires, "What the hell are these things?"

      "Dude, take a look at what they're sitting on," I chuckle. "Are you telling me you've never seen a chess board before?"

      "No, that I recognize," he responds. "I've just never seen chess pieces that look like this before." Pointing at one in particular, he says, "And I repeat, what the hell is that?"

      I giggle again as I reach under the table and pick up a book from the shelf underneath, flipping through it until I find what I'm looking for. Pointing to a drawing of a large floating sphere, with one huge eye in the center, above a mouth filled with jagged teeth, and what look like small tentacles on top of the sphere, I tell him, "This is apparently called a beholder, and I personally wouldn't want to find it floating through my backyard."

      "Or anywhere else, for that matter," he mutters.

      "True. But someone messaged me on my website, and wanted to know if I could do something like this as an anniversary gift for her boyfriend. Apparently the chessboard used to belong to his father, but most of the pieces were either lost or broken. And I guess he's a gamer, so..."

      He reaches out and moves the book, so he can see the cover. "Yeah, I guess so, if the girlfriend is having you use the 'Dungeons and Dragons Monster Manual' to model the pieces. I'm assuming that the dragons must be the kings, then?" He leans in to get a closer look, and lets out a whistle. "Damn, how do you get that kind of detail in something this small? You must have some tiny fuckin' tools, that's for sure!"

      I show him some of my work tools, and give him a quick demonstration of the basic process before he finally decides that he needs to get home and go through his mail and stuff, to make sure that he hasn't missed anything important. He gives me a hug, and a peck on the forehead, thanking me again for the food and confirming that I'm definitely planning to come with Lylah on Thursday, then heads out to his car. I watch him walk down the driveway, and can't keep myself from admiring the way his jeans cling to his legs and rear. "Damn, you could bounce quarters off of that ass," I whisper as he gets into his car.

      I then mentally bitch-slap myself and walk back into the workshop. "No, you are not going there," I mumble to the empty room. "Yeah, he's hot, he always has been. Any idiot with eyes can see that, but he's just a friend. So get a grip on your mouth and don't say anything like that where he can hear you. Because you may be friends, but Ash is definitely not hanging out with you because of your smokin'-hot body and bodacious ta-ta's. You've known that since you were sixteen, so pull your head out of your ass, Stephanie Grace."

      I decide that I'm not even going to try to work on Ash's gift anymore tonight, because right now I'm so irritated with myself that I'd probably screw something up. So I get everything cleaned up, grab my can of popcorn, and head back to the house, where Macy and Lylah are having a debate over what we should have for dinner. We've got a metric fuck-ton of stuff in the freezer, but somehow there doesn't seem to be anything that sounds terribly interesting to any of us right now, so we decide to just drive into town and go to Steak 'n' Shake.

      Then, since we're in town, we cruise the mall for a bit, then go to the theater to watch "Rogue One", since we're all big "Star Wars" fans. It's not as good as the original trilogy, but pretty decent, so we at least didn't completely waste our money. Then we go back home, and I decide to hang out and read a bit, but Macy and Lylah head to bed, supposedly because they both have to work in the morning, but from the way they were acting during the movie, I'm pretty sure they're not planning to go right to sleep. 

      I can't make myself focus on my book, so I decide to just take a shower and crash, but that doesn't quite work out as planned, because different images of Ash keep popping up in my head, and by the time I shut off the water, I'm a bit too keyed up to sleep. So, I decide that I'm going to need a Plan B. 

      "Okay, it's not really anything to get freaked about," I mumble to myself as I dig through the boxes on my closet shelf. "It makes perfect sense, actually. He's the first attractive, unattached guy I've come across since Philip, so it's perfectly normal to... have thoughts. I just have to remember that I can't act on them. Hah, there it is!"

      I finally find what I've been looking for, and after checking the bright-pink silicone toy to make sure the batteries still work, I carry it back to the bathroom for a good cleaning. Then I turn on the TV, to make sure Macy and Lylah don't hear anything, and crawl into bed. "Not quite the same as having a flesh and blood man to snuggle up to," I think, as I flip the switch. "But definitely more entertaining than a sleeping pill."