The pièce de résistance is the beard.
It’s thicker than it should be after three days and covers everything. Neck, high up the cheeks, and almost under my ears. I hate it. It’s itchy and looks stupid. Jamie laughed her ass off while she painted about seventy-five hairs on my chin gray. So of course her laughing at me made it better. Just kidding, that sucked.
The girl behind the cash register is older than I am, but not by much.
“Excuse me, sir,” I hear behind me.
I spin around on my crutches and glare at Jamie. “You’re supposed to be outside.”
She holds up a box of Only Dudes hair dye. “I was wondering if you could help me?” She tries so hard not to laugh. “See, my dad is the same age as you, old as hell, and he’s turning gray and sagging into his shoes too. Do you have a preference when selecting cheap hair dye for old men—and by ‘old,’ I mean actually-pay-attention-to-boner-pill-commercials old—to pretend they’re still in the game?”
Jamie shimmies with glee. This whole beer excursion came from one long exploded dare with one another. “I’ll do it if you do it” became “Let’s do it.” Turns out we both always entertained the thought of getting blitzed but never had the opportunity. And now we do. Thanks, Mom!
“Young lady, you are quite a hoot.”
“Thank you, sir. I like to think so too.”
I check the clerk behind the counter. She’s not watching us, and I give Jamie’s shoulder a little bump. “Dork,” I whisper under my breath. I was excited about getting all this beer, but it turned out it’s just us doing what we do best, and that’s my favorite part.
“You look great!” she whispers back.
She gives me a shove. I give her a shove. She bumps me with her hip. I turn around and knock her with my butt. Jamie bounces into the teeth whitener. We glue our mouths shut because whoever laughs first loses, so we snort up a storm.
“You’re horrible,” she says.
“No, you’re horrible.”
“We’re both so incredibly horrible,” she says, and I’m like, oh hell yes, we are. Forever and always.
Jamie walks away and I tap her lifting heel with my crutch, making her trip. “Don’t blow your cover,” she shoots back with a huge grin.
“You started it,” I rumble back.
She situates herself by the sodas and I scan the store for people. We’re waiting for someone to check out and I’ll stand behind them, so it looks like I’m just another man buying beer and gum before going home to the wife and kids.
Some guy comes in and I’m relieved. He’s gotta be like eighteen or something, but I bet he’ll buy an energy drink and I’ll look crazy old by comparison. Then I lean against the beef jerky because I don’t like looking like this.
Having this thing on my face feels exactly like that time I got trapped under my grandma’s thick wool blanket when I was four: I can’t breathe. I can’t get out.
Stop. Focus. I breathe. It’s just a beard, not a death sentence.
I need something else to do in the store and decide on examining shoelaces. My choices are brown, black, and white in either twelve-or twenty-inch lengths. Twelve seems too short, but the twenty looks too long. One of the laces isn’t wrapped properly at the end, and the end is fraying. The store should offer it at a discount. A ruckus hits my ears.
The guy has Jamie pinned in a corner.
He’s in her space, her back against the wall, and picks up a lock of her hair. She smiles, a fake one, and twists her hair away as he laughs. I’m there before her hair hits her shoulder. “Leave her alone,” my voice booms above him.
The dude turns around and faces me. “What’s it to you?”
“Get what you need and go,” I say, stepping in between him and Jamie.
“What if I’m in the middle of getting her number, huh?”
I look at Jamie. Her head shimmies no, just enough for me to see. “Is he bothering you, miss?” I ask her.
She clamps her lips down. “I’m fine; you can go.”
“You heard her,” I tell the punk.
“No, you,” she says.
“What?”
Anger slips across the way from her to me. It’s so strong, I almost want to hold on to the shelves. “I’ll be fine. You don’t have to be here,” she says, as if she just found out I drowned all her new puppies in a sack. Then warmth comes over her and she smiles at this fuckfaced jerk. “Hey,” she says to the guy. “Thanks, but no thanks. And you, sir,” she says to me, suddenly cold again. “I’m good. Okay?”
“You heard the girl, bro,” the guy says to me. “Step off.”
“She told you the same thing. Take a hike.”
The guy shoves me with his pointy little fingertips. “You got something to say on this hike of yours, tell me outside. I always wanted to take on the Man.”
Hold on, I’m the Man?
I have been a bully. I don’t think I want to be the Man.