“Don’t cut too much.”
“That’s too much.”
“Could you go a little shorter?”
“My beautician doesn’t usually do it like that. Are you sure you know what you’re doing?”
I should have known after her first comment that the haircut wasn’t going to go as easily as I would have liked. There were two different types of customers in my profession: the kind that let you do whatever the hell you wanted, and the kind that nitpicked every single strand of hair. I used up all of my patience on the boys most of the time, so I loved the customers that genuinely didn’t care. I felt like I had a good idea with what worked best for people’s faces, and I would never give someone a haircut that needed a lot of maintenance if they didn’t have time for it, unless they begged.
But I kept my mouth shut and a smile on my face as I listened to my elderly neighbor and tried to cut her hair the way she wanted.
“Where do you usually get your hair done?” I asked as I worked my way around her, being extra careful around her paper-thin skin with the super-sharp edges of the shears. The last thing I wanted or needed was to accidentally cut her.
“Molly’s,” she replied.
On the floor a few feet away, Louie was lying on his belly with a notebook he was drawing in while Miss Pearl’s ancient cat sniffed his shoes, and Josh had a handheld game system in front of his face. He’d asked me again if he could stay home, and I’d told him the same thing I had originally. I wasn’t sure why he was in such a grumpy mood today, but I wasn’t going to worry about it too much. He had his days. I couldn’t blame him; I did too.
“Do you know where that’s at?” Miss Pearl asked after she rattled off side streets that weren’t familiar.
I shook my head. “No.”
“Oh? You’re not from here?”
My chest ached for a moment. An image of Rodrigo filled my head briefly, and I swallowed. “No. I’m from El Paso. I lived in Fort Worth for a few years and San Antonio for a little bit before moving here.”
“Divorced?” she blatantly asked.
And that was why I loved old people. They didn’t give a single shit about how their questions could make you feel. She had already asked if I had a husband last time; now she went in for clarification. “No.”
The “oh” out of her mouth was just about the most disapproving thing I’d ever heard, and it took me a minute to realize how she was going to take it.
But I didn’t care about what she was assuming. There was nothing wrong with being a single, unmarried mom. Or in my case, a single, unmarried aunt.
I wasn’t imagining the sneer that came over the elderly woman’s face. I also didn’t miss the apprehensive expression that Louie shot our way. That kid was the most emotionally intuitive person I’d ever met and always had been. Where Josh understood my moods like he had some kind of emo-location, it was only with me. Lou was something else.
“Well,” she hummed. “Me and my George were together for fifty-eight years before he kicked the bucket—”
I coughed.
“My sons knew what they were doin’, too. They married good girls. Their kids…” She literally went “harrumph” and rolled her eyes as she thought about her grandkids. “But my girls, neither one of them had a man for longer than a few years atta time. Not that I blame them. My girls are pains in the you-know-what. All I’m tryin’ to say is that you’re better off not having a man than having a lousy one. You got your own house with your boys, so you can’t be doin’ too bad.”
And just like that, I went back to snipping away. Maybe this lady wasn’t so bad after all. “You’re right. You are better off being alone than with someone who doesn’t make you happy.” I’d learned that shit the hard way.
“You got a pretty face. I’m sure you’ll find somebody someday that doesn’t mind you havin’ kids.”
And I retracted my statement on how she wasn’t so bad for a second or two.
She was really old, and she pretty much got a free pass for most things, but I wasn’t used to brutal honesty by someone so new in my life. My parents and best friend were usually honest with me about everything, regardless of whether it would hurt me or not, but they’d had years to reach that level of trust. Sure, I knew some men might run screaming the other way if they met someone with two kids, but it wasn’t like I wanted to date some twenty-one-year-old whose greatest commitment was paying for his own Netflix plan. My imaginary future boyfriend might have kids of his own, and that would be okay. I didn’t know if I would have the energy or patience to date someone who didn’t know how to act around two boys. As long as my imaginary boyfriend wasn’t in love with anyone else, I wouldn’t care he’d been in a long-term relationship before me. Better that than him having slept around with a thousand women.
Then again, I wasn’t planning on dating any time soon. I was doing fine on my own. My hand kept me company just fine, and I’d swapped out my shower sprayer for a handheld one. I was never without company unless I wanted to be, which was the case more often than not lately when I was tired, aka all the time.
I happened to look up and see Josh sitting in the living room staring over at us, his face way too interested. These guys were so nosey. I made sure his gaze met mine, and I gave him a wide-eyed look so that he wouldn’t be so obvious about eavesdropping.
“Your babies’ daddy, is he in the picture?” the older woman blatantly asked.
I told her the truth. “No.”
The “huh” that came out of her mouth was a little too suspicious, and I really didn’t feel like bringing up my brother since she already assumed Josh and Lou had ripped through my birth canal. “I’m just about done. Do you want to look at your hair in the mirror?”
One pale hand went up at her side. “There’s a little mirror in my bathroom. Will you bring it? It’ll take me half the day to get in there and back.”
I squeezed my lips together so that I wouldn’t smile. “Sure. Where’s your bathroom?”
Miss Pearl pointed at the hall connecting to the kitchen. “First door.”
I gently touched her shoulder as I walked around and headed down the hall. The walls were painted a pale, pale pink and were lined near the ceiling with a strip of flowered wallpaper. I caught a few pictures frames mounted to the wall, but I didn’t want to be nosey since I knew she could see me. I ducked into the doorway, finding a small full bathroom with an elevated toilet seat decked out with handles and a clean looking bathtub with a long metal bar bracketed to the wall. Sure enough, over the toilet with a shelf behind it was a fairly large handheld mirror like the one I had at work.
I was only slightly nervous when I handed her the mirror and let her take in the front of her haircut. She moved her chin from side to side and handed it back to me. “Half an inch too short, but you did better than the grumpy bat who’s been cutting my hair. That darn woman tried giving me a mullet,” she claimed.
“I think you dodged a bullet with the mullet,” I joked.
She let out a tiny snort. “You’re telling me. How much do I owe you?”
Like every time I dealt with someone much older than me, an image of my grandmother flashed through my head for a brief moment. I sighed and smiled, resigned. “You don’t owe me anything.” Chances were, she was probably on social security. There was no way she was getting very much money, and she was my neighbor. There was also no way her hair grew fast enough for it to be a burden on my schedule. There were only a certain number of people whose hair I cut that got it for free, and one more wouldn’t be the difference between arthritis and… not arthritis. “It’s a neighborly discount,” I let her know.
Her eyes narrowed in a way that was pretty creepy. “Don’t insult me. I can give you the twelve dollars I usually pay,” she argued.
Her offer only made me want to give her a hug. “Please don’t insult me,” I said gently, trying to sound playful. “I’m not going to charge you anything.”
She let out this exaggerated, long si
gh that told me I’d won.
“Point me in the direction of your broom, please.”
She did, and five minutes later, I had managed to sweep up the hair and use her handheld vacuum to pick up the fine clippings left behind. Noticing that I was wrapping up the haircut, Josh and Louie were standing in the living room… staring at the old woman. And the old woman was staring back at them. I was 99 percent sure none of them blinked.
“I’m hungry,” Louie finally said, keeping that blue-eyed gaze on our neighbor.
Packing my shears back into their case, I picked up my keys and raised my eyebrows at him, but he still had his attention on the woman. “We can start on dinner in a minute.” I walked toward them and smiled at our neighbor, who had, at least, stopped staring back. “We should get going before you can start hearing their stomachs grumbling. Let me know if you need anything, okay, Miss Pearl?”
She nodded, her eyes meeting mine before shifting back to Louie for a moment. “I will. Thank you for the ‘do.”
“You’re welcome.”
“I have your number on my freezer,” she let me know as if I hadn’t seen it when I’d first gone into her kitchen. “Y’all ever need something, you let me know.”
“That’s really nice of you, thank you. Same goes for you.” I nudged Josh who had moved to stand next to me. Oh dear God, his mouth was cracked, his eyes narrowed as he took in the woman who was older than his grandparents. “It was nice seeing you.” I poked at Josh again.
“Bye, miss,” he kind of mumbled, still dazzled and lost in his trance.
I made my eyes go wide at Louie who had at least managed to catch on to us leaving. “Bye, lady,” he added, shyly.
Lady. God.
I smiled at Miss Pearl and waved the boys toward the door, trying to ask myself where I’d gone wrong with them. Staring. Calling our neighbor “lady.” My mom would be horrified. We filed out, and I made sure to lock the bottom lock on the door before closing it behind me. We made it to the street before Louie did it. “How old is she? A hundred?” he asked, completely curious, without the smallest hint of smart-ass in his tone.
If he hadn’t been holding my dominant hand, I would have smacked myself in the forehead. “Louie!”
“Don’t be dumb. She’s like ninety-five, right, Aunt Di?” Josh butted in.
Oh my God. “I don’t know. Probably, but you’re not supposed to ask that kind of stuff, guys. Jes—Sheesh.”
“Why?” they both asked at the same time.
We made it to the other side of the street before I answered, “Because… it’s not very nice to say she’s ninety-five or a hundred.”
“But why?” That was Louie working alone that time.
I hated when they asked me things I really didn’t know how to answer. I didn’t want to lie either, which just made it that much more complicated. “Because… I don’t know. It’s just not. Some people are sensitive about their age.”
Louie’s little shoulders shrugged up against my leg as he pulled me along the lawn… the lawn that needed to have gotten mowed weeks ago. I had to quit putting it off. “But that’s good she’s old,” he explained his reasoning. “She’s lasted longer than all her other friends. She said her Georgie died. She won.”
It never ceased to amaze me how much they both really absorbed. And it scared me. And reminded me why I had to watch everything I said around them. “Outliving your friends isn’t a competition, you little turds,” I said to them as we walked up the steps toward the front door.
“It’s not?”
Why did they sound so surprised? “No. It’s sad. I mean, it’s good she’s lived for so long, but just….” It was times like these I wished I had Rodrigo around so I could make him deal with answering these kinds of things. What the hell was I supposed to say to them? “Look, it just isn’t nice to say she’s a hundred, or that it’s good all of her friends aren’t around anymore.” Before they could make another comment I had no idea how to respond to, I asked, “Whose turn is it to help me with dinner?”
All the silence needed was crickets in the background.
Mac barked from inside the house like he was volunteering.
I ruffled their hair. “Both of you are going to help? It’s my lucky day.”
It was right then that the loud grumble of a truck warned us of its approach coming down the street. All three of us turned to spot a deep red monster of a Ford pickup making its way closer. I could spy two ladders mounted to a frame around it. In the driver seat was my real, actual neighbor—the hunky one with manners. I raised my palm when he passed by, giving us a view of ladders, equipment, and tools I wasn’t familiar with in the bed of the truck. I was pretty sure he lifted a few fingers in our direction as he pulled into the garage.
What I also noticed in that moment was that red car from the day before was parked on the street in front of my neighbor’s house again. What I also saw was the driver side door opening as we continued making our way toward the house.
Lou went up on his tiptoes, craning his neck toward the house. “Is that the man who was fighting?”
I didn’t lie to him. “No.”
“Who?”
I glanced down at Josh’s tone. “It happened last week. Lou heard someone fighting, and it was the neighbor’s brother,” I had to explain.
The ten-year-old turned his head to pin me with this expression that was beyond his years, like he knew what I was trying to hide. Or maybe he could guess what I had done.
I didn’t need or want him worrying, so I kicked him in the butt, immediately shoving my neighbor’s business aside. “Come on. Let’s get started on dinner before we have to put Mac on the grill.”
“Gross!” Lou gagged.
I swear I loved messing with him. There was something about being young and innocent and gullible that I loved, and to be fair, I used to do the same thing to Josh before he’d gotten old enough to realize I was usually full of shit. The boys had just gone inside the house when my phone started ringing. It was my best friend, Van.
“Diana” was the first thing out of her mouth. “I’m dying,” the too familiar voice on the other end moaned.
I snorted, locking the front door behind me as I held the phone up to my face with my shoulder. “You’re pregnant. You’re not dying.”
“But it feels like I am,” the person who rarely ever complained whined. We’d been best friends our entire lives, and I could only count on one hand the number of times I’d heard her grumble about something that wasn’t her family. I’d had the title of being the whiner in our epic love affair that had survived more shit than I was willing to remember right then.
I held up a finger when Louie tipped his head toward the kitchen as if asking if I was going to get started on dinner or not. “Well, nobody told you to get pregnant with the Hulk’s baby. What did you expect? He’s probably going to come out the size of a toddler.”
The laugh that burst out of her made me laugh too. This fierce feeling of missing her reminded me it had been months since we’d last seen each other. “Shut up.”
“You can’t avoid the truth forever.” Her husband was huge. I didn’t understand why she wouldn’t expect her unborn baby to be a giant too.
“Ugh.” A long sigh came through the receiver in resignation. “I don’t know what I was thinking—”
“You weren’t thinking.”
She ignored me. “We’re never having another one. I can’t sleep. I have to pee every two minutes. I’m the size of Mars—”
“The last time I saw you”—which had been two months ago—“you were the size of Mars. The baby is probably the size of Mars now. I’d probably say you’re about the size of Uranus.”
She ignored me again. “Everything makes me cry and I itch. I itch so bad.”
“Do I… want to know where you’re itching?”
“Nasty. My stomach. Aiden’s been rubbing coconut oil on me every hour he’s here.”
I tried to imagine her six-foot-five-inch,
Hercules-sized husband doing that to Van, but my imagination wasn’t that great. “Is he doing okay?” I asked, knowing off our past conversations that while he’d been over the moon with her pregnancy, he’d also turned into mother hen supreme. It made me feel better knowing that she wasn’t living in a different state all by herself with no one else for support. Some people in life got lucky and found someone great, the rest of us either took a long time… or not ever.
“He’s worried I’m going to fall down the stairs when he isn’t around, and he’s talking about getting a one-story house so that I can put him out of his misery.”
“You know you can come stay with us if you want.”
She made a noise.
“I’m just offering, bitch. If you don’t want to be alone when he starts traveling more for games, you can stay here as long as you need. Louie doesn’t sleep in his room half the time anyway, and we have a one-story house. You could sleep with me if you really wanted to. It’ll be like we’re fourteen all over again.”
She sighed. “I would. I really would, but I couldn’t leave Aiden.”
And I couldn’t leave the boys for longer than a couple of weeks, but she knew that. Well, she also knew I couldn’t not work for that long, too.
“Maybe you can get one of those I’ve-fallen-and-I-can’t-get-up—”
Vanessa let out another loud laugh. “You jerk.”
“What? You could.”
There was a pause. “I don’t even know why I bother with you half the time.”
“Because you love me?”
“I don’t know why.”
“Tia,” Louie hissed, rubbing his belly like he was seriously starving.
“Hey, Lou and Josh are making it seem like they haven’t eaten all day. I’m scared they might start nibbling on my hand soon. Let me feed them, and I’ll call you back, okay?”
Van didn’t miss a beat. “Sure, Di. Give them a hug from me and call me back whenever. I’m on the couch, and I’m not going anywhere except the bathroom.”
“Okay. I won’t call Parks and Wildlife to let them know there’s a beached whale—”
“Goddammit, Diana—”
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