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“She does,” I agreed. “I’m sorry for your loss.”
“Well.” Lindsey leaned away from the uncomfortable topic by spinning me in my chair so I could evaluate her work.
It looked good. I thanked Lindsey and waited for her to remove the bib and brush my shoulders off before I stood and went to the reception desk. Tammy looked up from her computer, her smile warming my soul.
“It looks good,” she said.
“Thanks,” I responded. “Your boss knows her stuff.”
Tammy lowered her voice to whisper. “She’s a pretty good boss too, so far.”
I leaned forward conspiratorially. “Let me know if that changes.”
“I will,” she promised. “That’ll be fourteen dollars.”
I added a six-dollar tip and gave Tammy a twenty. “Keep the change.”
She smiled and fit the cash into her till drawer. She looked up at me, seeming to expect something more. Was she waiting for a handshake or for a kiss? Did she expect me to ask her out again or to say something witty? We hung there for a moment, locked into each other’s eyes, hesitating on the brink of something more.
“Well, thank you,” I said, cutting the tension with the most mundane phrase I could think of.
“See you around,” she said. It was almost exactly the same conversation we had when I dropped her off at her cousin’s place.
I stepped outside and went to my truck. I got all the way to the driver’s seat, with my key in the ignition, before courage and logic won out. So what if she had said that she was only interested in one night? We had fun together. She was beautiful, smart, and funny, and I wanted to see her again. The worst thing she could possibly do was say no, and I could live with that. At least I wouldn’t be kicking myself over and over about not asking her like I had been for the past two weeks. If we were both sticking around in this town for the foreseeable future, then all I can do is try and keep trying.
I climbed out of the truck, slammed the door, and walked back into the salon. “Can I have your phone number?” I declared before she had a chance to look up.
“Yes.” She smiled, showing rows of perfect white teeth beneath lips I knew to be soft and fragrant.
She waited for me to pull out my phone and then gave me her number without any hesitation. There was no awkward discussion of boundaries or attempts to avoid something potentially serious. It was as if she had been waiting for me to ask, like maybe she had changed her mind about the nature of our relationship.
“Thanks,” I said, not sticking around to celebrate my victory. I got right back in my truck and drove away, feeling high off the whole encounter.
Now that I had her number, I could call her whenever I wanted. If I wanted. I could text her the traditional booty-call message “u up?” in the middle of the night. It was a lifeline to a future that I was becoming more comfortable imagining. Maybe I would get tickets to a concert and offer to take her or come up with some better reason for asking her out. Maybe we could just talk, like teenagers do when they’re going steady.
I resolved not to touch the contact until I knew what I wanted. I owed her that much. Now that there was a possibility of something more, I wasn’t sure whether I wanted to pursue it. Had the magic existed just because it was fleeting, or did we have a chance at happily ever after? I ruminated all the way home, feeling the conflict fester in my rib cage. Something had changed, though. While I still couldn’t get her out of my mind, now there was a tiny spark of hope. I had asked her if we could stay in touch, and she hadn’t said no. I was in a much better mood, so when my mom asked me to take a drug test again I didn’t even throw a fit. I even kissed her on the cheek when I was done.
10
TAMMY
Ihad mailed out all the promotional postcards that we sent to new customers, returned all the voicemail messages, and helped Lindsey sweep the floor. One o’clock was my lunch break, and I was still too poor to eat out. Instead, I took a peanut butter sandwich I had made at Macy’s house into the back. Lindsey gave us all free bottled water from a fridge in the office, so I grabbed one and sat down.
I was scrolling my phone when the screen lit up with a phone call. The caller ID was unknown, but the number was a local Tennessee area code. I wondered who could be calling me. Macy’s number was in my contacts, and I didn’t know anyone else in town. A sudden ray of hope shot through me, confirmed when I answered the call.
“Hello?” I answered.
“Hello, Tammy?” Mike asked.
“Mike.” I cheered silently, throwing a little party inside my head.
When he’d asked for my number, I was overjoyed. At the time that we met, all I had been looking for was one night of passion, but it had become clear to me that I needed more. Even after two weeks, Mike was my first thought in the morning and my last thought before bed. I was dying of curiosity. I wanted to know everything about him—why he stayed in Singer’s Ridge, what he did at the lumberyard, what he was looking for in a girlfriend. I wanted to know what he did on Friday nights and what kind of music he liked. I wanted to know if he thought of me like I thought of him, and I guessed he had some feelings when he had stormed back into the salon to demand my number.
Now here he was on the phone, and I was thrilled.
“Did I catch your lunch break?” he asked.
“Yeah,” I said, trying to sound normal. “What about you, are you on lunch?”
