She waited for me to name my price, a small smile tiptoeing across her mouth.
“I’ll keep calling you Millie if you call me Tag,” I said. “You callin’ me David makes me feel like you expect me to be someone I’m not. The people I care about the most call me Tag. That’s what fits.”
“I like calling you David. I think you’re classier than you give yourself credit for. And everyone calls you Tag. I want to be . . . different,” she admitted softly.
I felt a slice of pain and pleasure that had me holding back and leaning in simultaneously, but I pushed the feeling away with banter, the way I usually do.
“Oh, I’m very classy.” She laughed with me, the way I wanted her to. “But you bein’ special and different has nothing to do with what you call me, Millie. But you can call me any damn thing you want to.”
“Any damn thing doesn’t have the same ring as David, but okay,” she quipped.
“You’re a smart aleck, you know that, right?”
She nodded, grinning and gave my nickname a shot. “So, Tag.”
“Yeah, Millie?”
“Tomorrow’s Sunday. Do you go to church?”
“No. You?” I was guessing she did. Amelie was full of contradictions. It wouldn’t surprise me at all if she was a pole-dancing church-goer.
“In a manner of speaking. Church is hard for Henry. I could go alone. He’s fine at home by himself for a little while, obviously. But when I was younger, my mom would try and take us, and when Henry would get agitated or start making too much noise, she would take us out. That’s when I discovered one of my favorite sounds. You want to hear it?”
“Now?”
“No. Tomorrow. Eleven a.m.”
“At church?”
“At church.”
Well, damn. Maybe I should go to church. Work on saving my soul. “Okay.”
“Okay?” Her smile knocked me over, and I mentally kicked myself. I was spending too much time with her, and the more time I spent, the harder it was to keep my head on straight. Before I thought better of it I spoke. “We’re just friends, you and I, right Millie?”
The smile wobbled and Millie reached out for her gate, feeling for the latch as if she needed something to hold onto while I kicked her in the stomach.
“Yeah. Why would I ever presume to be more?” she asked, her voice light. The gate swung open and without turning toward me again, she walked toward the front door, barely using her stick.
FRIENDS OR NOT, I found myself in front of Amelie’s door at a quarter to eleven. I knocked and waited, wondering if Millie had changed her mind. The friend comment had been insulting—I knew it as soon as it left my lips—but I had to make sure I wasn’t leading her on until I knew where I was going. I was dressed in my navy blue suit jacket and a starched white shirt, but I’d left the tie at home and pressed my Wranglers instead of wearing slacks. I could dress up when I needed to, but I was hoping my pressed Wranglers and shiny boots were good enough. I’d slicked back my shaggy hair and told myself I didn’t need a haircut. I’d never been attached to my hair, I just never got around to taking care of it. But it made me look a little unkempt, so I wetted it, threw some goop in it, and slicked it back. I looked like one of those shirtless guys in a kilt on the cover of a romance novel, the kind my mom used to read and collect. It didn’t matter. Millie couldn’t see my long hair or the way it curled well over my collar. She couldn’t see my jeans for that matter, so I didn’t know why I cared.
The front door swung open and Henry stood there with wide eyes and a baseball bat.
“Hey, Henry.”
Henry stared. “You look weird, Tag.”
Said the guy with the bat and the hair that looked like a burning bush.
“I’m dressed up, Henry.”
“What did you do to your hair?” Henry hadn’t moved back to let me in.
“I combed it. What did you do to yours?” I asked, smirking.
Henry reached up and patted it. “I didn’t comb it.”
“Yeah. I can tell. It looks like a broom, Henry.”
We stared at each other for a few long seconds.
“They use brooms in the sport of curling,” Henry said.
I bit my lip to control the bubble of laughter in my throat. “True. But I’m thinking you would look more like a baseball player with less hair. That’s your favorite sport, right?”
Henry held up the bat in his hands, as if that were answer enough.
“I was thinking . . . I was thinking that you and I should maybe head over to my friend Leroy’s and get a trim tomorrow. Leroy owns a barbershop. Whaddaya say? Leroy is nice and there’s a smoothie shop next door. It’ll be a man date. A date for men.” I might as well kill two birds with one stone.
“A mandate?” Henry ran the words together.
“Yes. I am mandating that you get your hair cut. We’ll go to the gym afterwards, and I’ll show you some moves.”
“Not Amelie?”
“Do you want Amelie to come?”
“She’s not a man. It’s a man date.”
Amelie chose that moment to gently push Henry aside.
“I am definitely not a man, but Henry, you really should have invited Tag inside.”
Amelie was wearing tan boots and a snug khaki colored skirt that came to her knees, along with a fitted red sweater and a fuzzy scarf that had streaks of red and black and gold in the weave. I wondered how in the world she coordinated it all. Judging from Henry’s hair, he couldn’t be much help.