Wait for It

“I’ll be outside waiting for you, Josh!” I yelled that following morning when I noticed we had exactly five minutes before we needed to leave for school so the boys could make it in time.

“Okay!” he hollered back from the kitchen where he was finishing his cereal.

Louie stood right next to me with his backpack on and a toasted piece of bread with honey on it in his hand. I could already imagine the crusts stuffed into his seat or thrown on the floor of my car. “I’m ready,” he said, those blue eyes completely innocent, as if he wasn’t capable of doing anything remotely bad in his life.

I gave him a tired smile, and tilted my head toward the door. I was exhausted. After putting the boys to bed, I’d stayed awake, replaying every single conversation I’d had with Dallas since we’d met. And there had been a lot of them.

How many times had he told me that he was going to stay faithful to his wife until they got divorced? Every single time she was brought up?

How many times did he mention something about his imaginary future girlfriend having to wait for him?

He knew me. I know he knew me. And mostly, he wasn’t some asshole who might say a bunch of things and not mean a single one of them.

And then, I thought about Vanessa’s words and how she’d told me not to be a chicken. How she’d reminded me of who I was now. It had taken me a lot of years, but I knew who I was and I knew what I was willing to do for the people I loved and the things I wanted.

And that was everything. I would do everything and anything.

So where the hell did that leave me?

Busy thinking about all things Dallas-related, I turned around with my bag to head down the pathway when I spotted a motorcycle across the street in Dallas’s driveway.

It was Jackson’s.

It had been weeks since our confrontation at the barbecue. Weeks since I’d seen his bike on the street. Just the day before, while I’d been making dinner after practice, I asked Dallas if he’d seen or heard from his brother, and he’d said no. But it was his face when he answered that had really dug deep into my gut.

It was only with family that you could be so fucking angry, and yet still worry and love them. I understood. His brother was a piece of shit, but he was still his brother.

I sighed and glanced at Louie who was already heading toward the back passenger door of my car. “Goo, I’ll be right back. I think I see Dallas’s brother, and I want to ask him something. I’ll be back in a second.”

“Okay.”

Did I want to go across the street and talk with this motherfucker again? No, I didn’t. But this adulting thing was a lot harder and more complicated than anyone had ever warned me, and I had never known how to mind my own business. This whole loving-the-wrong-person thing also wasn’t easy either.

I jogged across the street, ready to say my two cents and hopefully not get smacked in the face in the process because I’d seen the urge in Jackson’s eyes at the barbecue.

Sure enough, standing beside the beefy motorcycle was the blond with the thick beard who was obviously not going to the tournament this weekend if the bags he had on the back of his bike said anything. As I came up to him, he looked up and blinked in a way I’d seen his brother do countless times by that point.

I came to a stop, leaving close to ten feet between us, and raised my hands in a peaceful gesture, watching that face that really did look older than Dallas’s. “Look, I just came to tell you that you shouldn’t punish Dallas for what I said and did to you, all right?”

He snickered and shook his head, moving around to tighten down a strap on the other side. “You’re not here to apologize?” he scoffed, so full of sarcasm I wanted to smack him in the face or throw some more Hawaiian Punch at him.

“Why would I? You deserved it.” I watched him to make sure he didn’t start to get all bent out of shape, but he didn’t even glance in my direction again. “I just don’t want my big mouth to make things worse than they already are between you two. That’s all.” I paused and watched him for a second before this tiny amount of dread filled my stomach. “Look, I’ll shut up after this and never say anything to you again, but if you disappear on him like this… he already feels guilty enough about what happened when you were kids—”

“I’m not disappearing,” he grumbled. “I can’t stay here when Nana Pearl is here. She already gave me enough shit in the five minutes I was—” Jackass Jackson let out a frustrated breath. “Forget it. I’m packing up my shit like he asked me to weeks ago.”

Weeks ago? As in at the barbecue?

He’d kicked his brother out?

I didn’t even think Louie or Josh had been this much of a pain in the ass at any point in their lives. This was cranky kid behavior, and my gut said it was pointless. I’d sensed the stubborn-ass in him the first time we’d met, and I could still sense the stubborn-ass in him right then.

Rolling my eyes, I took a step back and sighed. I almost told him good luck, but then again, this was the person who had called me a bitch and made rude comments about my brother after what I’d done for him. Ungrateful asshole.

Luckily, I hadn’t been expecting an apology because I sure as hell didn’t get one as I ran back across the street just as Josh came hustling out of the house, running down the steps of the deck before I pointed back at the door so he could lock it. By the time we pulled out of the driveway, we were running more than five minutes late.

And Jackson hadn’t left yet.

I wondered what would happen to him and Dallas, and part of me hoped they somehow managed to work it out. But who knew. Sometimes self-destructive people didn’t know how to ever turn that button off. My abuela had always said you can’t help people who don’t want to help themselves.

* * *

I made it all the way through my first two appointments before I realized that Dallas’s appointment was that evening.

It was no big deal.

It was no big deal that the more I thought about our situation—with him kissing me and writing notes that he hadn’t given me and telling me “as you wish”—the more I wanted it—him. I wanted something with Dallas if he did, and I was pretty sure that was the case.

So I knew what I was going to do, and I wasn’t going to back down.

When my appointment right before his ran late because the client showed up twenty minutes after she was supposed to—and she was one of my regulars who showed up religiously for her roots to get redone—I might have been rushing to finish. Just a little.

I’d caught his eyes in the reflection as I drew the straightener through my client’s hair and took in an eyeful of his slow smile as he paced around the waiting room with his attention on his phone.

“What’s American History X doing here?” my client sneered. We joked around with each other, that was nothing new, but in this case, I froze.

“What’d you say?” I asked playfully, thinking I’d heard wrong.

“The skinhead. Since when do y’all do fades?” She kind of laughed at the end of her question.

I cleared my throat and clamped her hair between the ceramic. “We’ll do anyone’s hair,” I answered her slowly, reaching for another piece of hair even as I felt my neck get hot.

She made a dismissive noise in her throat, but as the minutes rolled by, I got angrier and angrier. Who was she to judge Dallas? And to assume he was a skinhead? American History X? Really?

I stared at her head as she walked in front of me toward the front desk, and I was gritting my teeth as I swiped her card. My head started hurting in the five minutes it took to do all of that, and when she asked, “When can you schedule me in for four weeks from now?” in a cheery voice, I just about lost it.

Dallas had gotten off his phone and was sitting on one of the chairs, looking at me. I let out a shaky breath as I took in those beautiful hazel eyes that had done so much for me. Then I glanced back at my client. “Trish, I don’t think I can schedule you in for a month from now. Sean’s gotten pretty good with doing color. He can definitely do what you need. I’ll put you with him if you want to keep coming back here, but it’s completely up to you.”

The expression on her face melted off in a split second. “I don’t understand. What do you mean you can’t schedule me in?”

“I can’t schedule you in. Thanks for coming to me for so long now, but I don’t feel comfortable with it anymore.”

Her face paled. “Did I do something wrong?”

“The ‘skinhead,’”—I used my fingers as quotation marks—“is my really good friend.” I dropped my hands. “Actually, I think he’s going to marry me one day.”

I said it. I owned it.

And she, my client, went pink from the roots of her hair down her chest.

“You can call in to schedule an appointment if you want to come back, I don’t mind. I’d ask for Sean though.”

She cleared her throat, nodded, and ducked her head. Then she spun on her heel and, with her attention still on the ground, rushed out of the salon. I could sense my own face getting hot and uncomfortable, but I knew it was either that or living with that layer of guilt that would saturate my thoughts and bones for days if I didn’t do something. It wasn’t until after you had a major regret that you understood the importance of not putting things off or being scared to do something about your problems. I could live with my client thinking I was a dick for saying something. I could live with never coloring or cutting her hair again.

What I couldn’t live with was not standing up for someone who was so much more than his looks and his skin color and his fucking haircut. Someone who was worth so much more than two hundred dollars a month.

“You ready?” I called out as I went around the front desk, my head still pounding with my not-really altercation.

He already had those amazing eyes narrowed on me as he stood up, making me think of how he’d pressed his boner into my stomach the night before. Shit.

“Yeah.” He took me in again and raised his chin. “What’s wrong?”

“Stupid people. They’re what’s wrong with me,” I answered him honestly, too frustrated about what had just happened to be thinking about other things. Things like kissing.

His grin was a wary one. “Stupid people will do that to anybody,” he replied.

I nodded and blew out a breath, willing myself to chill out and forget about Trish. “Come on. You don’t look like you need a haircut, but I can take my time so you think you’re getting your money’s worth.”

The smile crept over his features slowly and easily, like he didn’t have a single worry in the world, like this thing between us didn’t make him lose any sleep at all. God, he was handsome. “Do what you did to my neck last time, and I’ll pay you double.”

I snickered and gestured toward my station. “Stop.”

Dallas walked ahead of me saying, “Or right at the spot where my hair and ear meet. Triple.”

That had me laughing like everything was fine and there hadn’t been any kisses between us. “Get in the chair. I don’t promise those kind of happy endings.”

He chuckled as he sank into the chair, his forearms resting on the arms. I shook out a cape and draped it over his chest when he asked, “What kind of places are you going to that give people happy endings, huh?”

“The same kind of places you do, since you know what I’m talking about.” I couldn’t help but laugh.

My fingers were on the nape of his neck, attaching the separate pieces of Velcro together to hold the cape to him when he tipped his head back just enough for me to mostly see his eyes. “I don’t go to those kinds of places.”

Dear Jesus. I coughed. “Oh?”

He was still watching me as he whispered just loud enough for me to hear, “My hand is just as good as any other.”

God help me. God help me. God help me. God help me.

He’d just said what I thought he’d said. His hand. On him. Once the mental image of Dallas naked on his bed with his hand on himself—long and thick, because I’d felt that thing against me and there had been no mistaking it for anything except what it was—filled my head, picturing him stroking over and over again, up and down, a twist here and there, squeezing and pulling… there was no going back. There was absolutely no going back. Not now, not ever.

There was no way that my thoughts weren’t written all over my face. I could feel it go hot. I could feel myself get all bent out of shape into so many loops and spirals there was no straightening me out.

Dallas jerking was going to be in my head tonight and every night for a really long time.

Or always, a little voice in my head warned.

A big hand reached out to wrap its fingers around my wrist, and he pulled on it gently. “How can I miss you so much when I just saw you yesterday?”

I sucked in a breath and darted my eyes up to his face to find him watching me carefully, that gentle, soft smile of his aimed right at me with so much honesty and openness I forgot how to think.

But the second I was able to, I remembered Vanessa’s words. And I remembered what I had stayed up all night thinking about. And I remembered what I had decided.

Life could be brutally short, and happiness was never guaranteed.

There were so many things I wish I could have told my brother before he died—how much he’d meant to me, how much I loved him, and how I would try to be someone he could be proud of. I had made plenty of mistakes in my life; I just didn’t want to continue making choices that would lead to regrets.

And it was with that knowledge—with thinking about Rodrigo’s short and brilliant life and how much he had loved me and his sons—that I went for it. I asked him, “Do you like me?”

It sounded just as middle school as it should have, but I didn’t give a single shit. How the hell else could I have asked?

Dallas blinked and his teeth went to bite his bottom lip. His eyebrows went up a millimeter, and he let out a slow breath through his mouth. “I wouldn’t call it ‘like.’” The fingers he had around my wrist loosened and trailed down to my hand. Spreading those fingers apart, he linked those long, strong digits through mine.

Dallas was holding my hand.

He was holding my hand as he said, “You told me you were a little in love with me, do you remember?”

How could I forget?

“But I wouldn’t use ‘little’ to describe what I feel for you, Diana. I think you know that already.”

It was my turn to blink. I squeezed our palms together. “So I’m not imagining it?” I pretty much whispered.

“No, baby, you’re not.” Dallas squeezed my fingers between his.

I dropped about four F-bombs in my head as I stood there, not trusting my words. Or his.

And he must have known that because he didn’t wait for me to open my mouth. “I’m your poor bastard and you know it.” He kept tugging on my arm until I stood in front of him, the front of one of my thighs touching his kneecap.

There went another dozen S-bombs and M-bombs as every nerve in my spine lit up like a pinball machine.

Without thinking about what would be the best thing to say next, I made my gaze meet his, like I had every other time we discussed things, and I asked, “Are you sure?”

Dallas was the most constant man I had ever met in my life. His patience, steadfastness, and determination covered every inch of his entire being as he smiled at me. “Positive.” His eyes went from one of mine to the other, even and patient. “Of all the houses you could’ve bought, you got the one across the street from me. Of all the sports Josh might have played, it was baseball and I happened to coach his age group. You were meant to be in my life.”

Those hazel irises went so tender my heart hurt. His whisper didn’t help any. “I know you love me.”

It was one thing to admit it to myself but a completely different thing to say the words out loud. But I said them anyway. “Yeah, I do.” I breathed. “But—”

“No buts.”

I couldn’t help but smile a little even though it felt like my entire future—my life—depended on what happened right now. But I couldn’t stop as I looked over Dallas’s weathered, serious face. “Yes buts. You can love me, but that doesn’t have to mean anything, Dallas. What do you want from me?”

“Everything.”

I sucked in a breath and blinked. Out of all the ways he could have answered, that wasn’t what I was expecting. I thought it would be more of a “let’s date” or “be my girlfriend” or… something.

In that way that was all him, like he knew what I was thinking and feeling, the corners of his mouth came up. But he didn’t say anything.

“Everything. All right. Okay.”

The corners of his mouth curled slightly, and I’d swear on my life he looked just a little nervous. Just a little. “I want you. I want your smile. Your hugs. Your love. I want your happiness.” He paused. “Every single thing.”

Was this what being shot in the heart was supposed to feel like?

I looked right into his eyes and I asked him, “Are you sure you know what you’re getting yourself into?”

His mouth stayed in the same smirking smile and he nodded. “One hundred percent.”

“You know I’m crazy.”

“You’re my best friend. I know you’re crazy.”

Why that felt like the best compliment I’d ever been given, I had no idea. But I gave him a serious look. “I’m a jealous bitch, Dallas. Do you understand that? I’m not saying you can’t talk to women or other parents on the team or anything, but if you cheated on me—why are you smiling?”

“If I cheated on you, you and Josh would kill me and bury the body somewhere no one would ever find.” He kept my story going, smiling so wide, his face had to hurt.

I blinked at him and shrugged. “Pretty much.”

“I would never cheat on you. We live across the street from each other, so you’d never have to get jealous wondering where the hell I am or who I’m with. Coaching Josh, we’d get to spend our weekends together. See? That sounds perfect to me.”

I was dying, slowly. Why did it feel like I was picking at threads that didn’t exist?

His mouth perked up even more, so much he was practically beaming.

“I have the boys, Dallas—”

“So?”

I hated when he used my words and tactics against me. He said the word like it was nothing. Like my worry about Josh and Lou wasn’t even a consideration into our relationship or whatever it was he wanted to have with me, and that unsettled me more than anything else he’d said before.

As I took a step back, he let my wrist go and I turned my back to him, reaching for the clippers in one of the drawers. This was happening. This was really happening.

“You told me you trusted me,” he reminded me.

I was sure my face was pink as I turned to him, the device in my hand. It wasn’t until I was right in front of him again that he spoke up once more, his fingers reaching out to touch a spot just above my knee.

“You can tell me anything.”

That was what scared me. It was the truth. I’d always felt like I could tell him anything. Now more than ever that seemed terrifying.

Like it could make me or break me.

So I told him, looking him in the eye before I took a step that brought me so close his breath hit my forearm as I leaned over him. I started with the clippers, going over the rounded surface of his head. “You just got divorced. I know you already said you wouldn’t cheat on me and that you know exactly what you’re doing, but… I don’t… this is serious to me. I don’t like or love just anyone, Dallas. I know you can’t promise you won’t break my heart someday, but—”

“This is serious to me too. I won’t break your heart, Diana. I’ve never been scared to work for things or wait for them. I know you, and I know that you’re it. I just had to wait to get divorced so I could do this right for you. Life is so fucking short, Peach, and I’m too old to not know and go for what I want. And you know what I want. What I’ve wanted. For a long, long time.” He paused. “You.”

Shit, shit, shit. There was only one more thing I needed to tell him before I forgot. And it was the most important one. “Okay. I want to get married someday. I’m not saying tomorrow or six months from now, all right? And I’m not sure I want to have kids anytime soon. Can you deal with that?”

Something nudged at my thigh. I could see the back of his hand, feel him rub his knuckles up and down. His hand drifted up another inch. He wedged his hand in more so that his palm gripped the back of my thigh. Those eyes I was more than a little in love with burned my retinas. “I’d be happy with just two boys.”

Was I tearing up? Was that why my eyes were watery? I blinked and the tears didn’t go anywhere.

And Dallas’s sweet expression didn’t help any. “You are the toughest person I’ve ever met, Diana, but you’re also the most vulnerable, and that drives me fucking crazy,” he said to me. He squeezed my thigh, his voice low and almost feverish. “I know you can take care of yourself, but I want to be there to help you out. I need you more than you need me, and that’s okay,” he told me.

This man was going to be the death of me. For the seventh or eighth time in my life, I had no idea what to say or even where to start.

That big hand squeezed. “Just like I tell the boys, we don’t play for one single run, we play to win the whole game. And I’m in it to win it.”

I clenched my hand around the clippers. “But there’re so many other teams to play against.”

The corners of his mouth curled, and one of the fingers on my thigh did a caressing little line. “The only team I’m ever going to worry about is the best one. I’ve never been so sure of anything in my life.”

* * *

It wasn’t until closing time, after Sean and I had cleaned up, while he was busy counting out the register at the end of the night because he claimed he was faster than me at it, that I went to my tip jar. But it wasn’t the bills in the blue Mason jar that caught my eye. It was what looked like a few folded pieces of paper inside that had me reaching for it.

If someone had left me an IOU or a business card, I was going to scream.

Turning the jar upside down, everything came out. There were dozens of papers inside, each about three inches long and one inch wide, I opened one genuinely wondering what the hell someone had put in there.

But I knew the instant I unfolded the first one who had done it.

Everything about you makes me smile. -Uncle Fester.

I laughed out loud and picked up another one the instant I read the last letter of the first. Uncle Fester. Fucking Dallas. Fucking Dallas. He had no idea what he did to me. I only made it through another three before I started tearing up.

Really. I love you. Love, Professor Xavier Before He Lost His Hair

In all the ways that matter, you can be my #1 – (infinity). Deal? Love always, your poor bastard

I love you. —Your born-again virgin Catholic convert, Dallas