“Ah, Henry. You’ve gone and done it now.” I laughed, and my laughter surprised me. So did my relative non-reaction to the ‘M’ word. When girls started dropping hints about any type of commitment, it was always the last time I asked them out. Always. I was great at playing tag. No one ever caught me.
I guess I’d always thought I would marry someday. When I was eighty. Yet Henry was proposing, and it didn’t alarm me in the slightest. In fact, the thought of marrying Millie made my pulse quicken. It made my palms tingle. It made my heart smile so big I could feel the edges of the grin poking me in the ribs. That, or I was starting to feel the hurt from the Santos fight.
“Because they both lost so many players to WWII military service, the Pittsburgh Steelers and Philadelphia Eagles combined to become the Steagles during the 1943 season,” Henry recited.
“What? The Steagles?” My eyes were on Henry, but I needed to chase Millie down.
Henry nodded, straight-faced. “We could do that. We could combine. We could be the Taggersons.”
“That’s a very interesting idea, Henry.” I nodded, biting my lip so I wouldn’t laugh. “But I need to convince Millie. I’m not sure she wants to be a Taggerson just yet.”
“Andert?” Henry offered another combination, wrinkling his nose, and then shaking his head, as if it didn’t have the same ring.
“Give me a minute to see what Millie thinks. Okay?”
Henry gave me a solemn thumbs up and sat down on the bottom stair to wait for the verdict.
I ran out the door and down the walk to the street, looking right and left down the sidewalk, hoping Millie hadn’t gone beyond where I could easily find her. I spotted her about half a block down.
“Millie!” She looked like she was headed for the church, and I loped to catch up, calling after her, feeling every single blow I’d taken that night as I chased her down.
“Millie! Wait, sweetheart. You’re killing me.” She stopped but didn’t turn around. She held herself stiffly, holding her stick vertically the way she’d held it the very first time I saw her outside the bar, the silent shepherdess once more.
“Millie.” I slowed to a walk and approached her, wrapping my hands around hers so we both clung to her stick, like two people on a subway, sharing the same pole. Then I pulled gently, taking the stick from her hands, so she would hold onto me instead.
“Why you runnin’ away?”
“The question is, why aren’t you?” she asked, biting her lip.
“Do you want to be a Taggerson, Millie?” I whispered, freeing her lip with my teeth and kissing it better.
“A what?” she breathed.
“Or maybe an Andert?” I brushed my mouth over hers again, and her lips opened slightly, waiting for me to apply a little pressure.
“Henry seems to think we should merge our names,” I explained.
Millie groaned, and I could feel the embarrassment coming off her in waves.
“Henry really needs to quit asking grown men to marry him,” she complained.
“Yeah . . . he’s a little young for that kind of commitment.” I pressed another kiss on her upper lip, then one on her lower lip, soothing her, reassuring her, and for several long minutes there was no conversation at all.
“David?” she whispered when I finally let her breathe.
“Yeah?” I sank back into her, not able to help myself. She tasted like cold water and warm wishes, and I was drowning and basking, my fight forgotten, the swelling on my cheekbone and the tenderness in my ribs completely non-existent.
“I’m in love with you,” Millie confessed softly. I felt her words on my lips and the shape of them in my head, and we both stood completely still, letting them whirl around us. The air was suddenly blooming, alive, a riotous explosion of color and sound. The world was magic, and I was king.
“I’m in love with you too,” I said, no hesitation whatsoever. The words slid out of my mouth with the absolute ease of total truth.
Holy shit.
I was in love with Amelie Anderson. I was in love with a blind girl, and everything was in sharp focus.
Millie drew back and smiled, a big, dazzling grin that had me smiling too.
“Does this mean you’ll wear my T-shirt?” I asked.
“Proudly,” she answered.
Standing in the middle of the sidewalk, the streetlight creating a pool of soft white around us, I kissed Millie with every intention of never letting her go. Ever.
I walked her back home and there was no more talk of Taggersons or Anderts that night. Millie sternly informed Henry that he was too young for marriage, and he would just have to be happy with the T-shirt. He’d seemed a bit irritated by that, and I shrugged at him, like it wasn’t my decision. I made sure he had a T-shirt for every day of the week, and one for Ayumi too, and that seemed to appease him slightly.
But the seed had been planted.
I’d only known Millie for two months, yet I was surer of her than I’d ever been of anything in my life. I was halfway down the aisle and just waiting for her to catch up with me.
IN THE DAYS that followed the Santos fight, things got more hectic, not less, and the frenzy had me running on empty. I was tired for the first time in my life. It was kind of a strange sensation. I found that I really just wanted to be with Millie and Henry, and I spent more time at their place than my own. In fact, it started to feel like home. So much so that I fell asleep on the couch one night watching a game with Henry, and woke up to music.
Millie sat on the floor in the middle of the living room, her back to me, and her guitar cradled in the well of her folded legs. The game was clearly over, and Henry had obviously given up on me and gone to bed. I would have to make it up to him, though I didn’t mind missing the game. I’d never been much of a spectator anyway. I preferred to play.