“Well, I’ll be damned,” I said, surprised. “I do remember him.”
Amelie nodded. “We think that’s why Henry became so fixated on sports. He was only five when my dad split. You know how players study game film? Well, Henry does that. My mom had discs made up of all the video, all the recordings of my dad’s games, as much as she could get her hands on. Henry would sit and watch, endlessly. He still does. He can quote entire innings. It’s crazy.”
“So why do you dance?” I hadn’t meant to ask. It just came out, the way most things usually did. If I felt something, it eventually worked its way from my gut to my throat and out my lips.
“Why do you hit people?” she asked. I didn’t bother to defend the sport. I did hit people. That was a big part of it, and it was silly to argue about it.
“I’ve spent my whole life fighting.”
“Your whole life?” Amelie asked doubtfully.
“Since I was eleven,” I amended. “I was the happy-go-lucky fat kid on the playground that was fun to laugh at and easy to mock. The kid that other kids taunted. And I would laugh it off, until one day I’d had enough, and my happy-go-lucky slipped and became happy-don’t-likey.”
Amelie giggled softly and I continued. “That day, I used my fists and the anger that had been building for five, long years since Lyle Coulson had said I was too fat to fit in the little kindergarten desks. It didn’t matter that he was right. I was too fat to fit in the little desks, but that only made me angrier. The fight wasn’t pretty. I only won because I laid on Lyle and trapped his skinny arms beneath me and wailed on his mean, red face. I got sent to the principal’s office for the first time ever, and then I was suspended for fighting. But Lyle Coulson never bothered me again. I learned I like to fight. And I’m good at it.”
“Well, there you go.” She shrugged. “We’re not so different. I like to dance. And I’m good at it.”
“I don’t like you dancing at the bar.”
She laughed—a sudden, sparkling eruption that created a white plume in the frigid air and had me staring down at her upturned face, marveling, even though I knew I was about to take some heat. It was my bar, after all. I was her employer. It was my freaking pole, for hell’s sake.
“What don’t you like? David Taggert, are you a hypocrite? You aren’t. I know you aren’t.” She was smiling, but not up at me, like other women did. She was smiling straight forward, at no one and nothing, and I felt an ache in my chest, a warning note. She would never smile at me like other women did. Was I okay with that? Because if I wasn’t, I needed to back the hell off. I was getting personal.
“Nah. You know what I mean. Why do you dance in a smoky bar, spinning around a pole, wearing next to nothing, for money that isn’t all that good? You’re a classy girl, Amelie, and pole-dancing just isn’t very classy.” Backing off wasn’t my style.
Her smile was gone, but she didn’t look angry. She stopped walking, her stick extended like she was strolling with an imaginary pet. Then she pulled the stick upright and tapped it sharply on the sidewalk.
“See this stick?”
I nodded and then remembered she couldn’t see me. “Yeah.”
She pushed it toward me and it knocked against my shoulder. “Being blind comes with a stick. Not a cute golden retriever. A stick. But this stick means I can walk down the street by myself. I can make my way to the store. It means I can go to school, walk to work, go to the movies, go out to eat. All by myself. This stick represents freedom to me.” She took a deep breath and I held mine.
“I guess I just replaced the stick with a pole—and when I dance, for a few hours, several nights a week, I’m living my dream. Even though it may not look that way to you. My mom wouldn’t have liked it. You’re right about that. But she isn’t here. And I have to make my own choices.”
Amelie stopped talking and waited, possibly to see if I was going to argue. When I didn’t, she continued.
“I used to dance and do gymnastics. I used to leap and turn. I could do it all. And I didn’t need a pole. Just like I used to walk down the street and chase my friends and live my life without my stick. But that isn’t an option anymore. That pole means I can still dance. I don’t need to see to dance in that cage. If that means I’m not a classy girl, so be it. It’s a tiny piece of a dream that I had to give up. And I’d rather have a piece of a dream than no dream at all.”
Well, shit. That made perfect sense. I felt myself nodding again, but punctuated it with words. “Okay. Okay, Millie. I sure as hell can’t argue with that.”
“So now I’m Millie?”
“Well, we’ve just established that you aren’t a classy girl,” I teased, and her laughter rang out again, echoing in the quiet street like a faraway church bell. “Amelie sounds like an aristocrat, Millie sounds a little more down home. A girl called Millie can be friends with a guy named Tag.”
“David?”
“Yeah?”
“I have a new favorite sound.”
“What’s that?”
“The way you say Millie. It shot straight to the top of my list. Promise me you’ll never call me Amelie again.”
Damn if my heart wasn’t pounding in my chest. She wasn’t flirting, was she? I couldn’t tell. All I knew was that I wanted to call her Millie again. And again. And again. Just because she asked me to.
“I promise . . . on one condition.”