And there was High’s point.
“It would suck, what you got with Dot isn’t what I feel for Millie. What Millie gives back to me,” High said. “I’d want that for Dottie, to have something like that. She’s a damn fine woman. She deserves that beauty. I’ll tell it to you straight, when I saw Millie again, I had no idea the heartbreak my girl’s been dealin’ with for twenty years. What she sacrificed to give me all I got. But even if that shit wasn’t there, I wouldn’t care. The dance we danced when we hooked up again was fucked right the hell up. But it was a dance we had to dance. A dance that led us outta hell and back to beauty. Lotta folks work the hurt out a lotta ways. Even if Millie didn’t have the best reason in the world to get shot of me twenty years ago, I’d be back in her bed ’cause that’s what we got. That’s what we’ve always had. That’s what we been missin’. And older now, a fuckuva lot smarter, we know not to let it go.”
High stopped talking and Alan didn’t start.
So High kept going.
“Straight up, you got this kinda love for my girl, I dig that. But she’s walked through fire, man. That’s done for her. You don’t like my threats, don’t be a threat to what I gotta build for my woman.”
Alan held his gaze steady.
Then he looked to the fan belts.
High leveled his tone when he spoke again.
“Millie’s the kinda woman who deserves everything in life but life chose to fuck her and not give her the one thing she wanted most. Only way she can get even a little of that is through your kids and through mine.”
Alan looked back to him.
High went on, “I know you don’t like this now but we’re a team. We got a goal we gotta see to the rest of our lives. We both love Millie and we both got the job to find a way to give her what she deserves. You’re not with me on that, bud, that’s your problem. But I’m not gonna let you make it Millie’s. You don’t like me. Pretend. But I got a big job ahead of me. I’m not expendin’ a lot of effort on you.”
When Alan didn’t say anything, High decided he was done. So he made his way around the man and moved toward the front of the store.
He was five feet beyond him when Alan called, “Logan.”
High turned around.
“Millie calls me that. Dottie calls me that,” High stated. “I’m High to you. You don’t get that, man, I don’t give a fuck. Logan is theirs. It ain’t yours.”
Alan looked confused for a beat before he powered past it and focused, muttering, “Whatever.” Then, louder, like a command, “Be real.”
“I’m real,” High returned.
Alan again held his gaze steady and High could barely hear him when he repeated, “For Millie, for God’s sake, be real.”
He said nothing else and didn’t give High a chance to reply before he turned and walked away.
*??*??*
At five oh five that night, High found himself leaning against his truck again.
He was this way outside Deb’s work.
He’d called her and asked her for fifteen minutes after work to have a chat about Zadie.
When he’d done that, she’d replied, “Yeah. Figured Zade didn’t take this weekend too great.”
She said no more and agreed to meet.
High did not want to be there. It was the last place he wanted to be. The first place he wanted to be was at Millie’s waiting for her to come out in her sweater dress.
But their reservation wasn’t until seven.
He had time to do this and he had to do this.
So he was there, doing it.
He watched as Deb walked out, plastic lunch bag in her hand that she undoubtedly packed with carrot sticks, apple slices, and other shit that was good for you. Purse on her shoulder that he knew cost over five hundred dollars because he saw it on the credit card statement—handbags, dying her hair, and buying expensive makeup at department stores the only girl weaknesses she had.
Other than that, she was in jeans, a maroon button-down that had her company’s insignia over the breast pocket, her hair in a ponytail, her face made up like she did it for work: mascara, foundation, some blush, and done.
It’d help if she found a man. Zadie would begin to catch on if his ex also moved on.
He suspected she might go to a bar and hook up.
Other than that, she’d never bother.
“Hey,” she greeted as she got to him at his truck that was parked next to her car.
“Hey,” he replied. “Thanks for the time.”
She nodded.
“Won’t take a lot of it,” he told her. “But gotta share with you that Zadie was not good with meetin’ Millie.”
“I figured that,” she said. “She bitched about it a lot since you took them to pizza at Bonnie Brae.” She threw out a hand. “Sorry. I probably should have warned you about that.”
“She warned me at the time seein’ as she wasn’t pleased about it then and she’s Zadie. She had no problem communicatin’ that. I warned Millie but I didn’t know where she’d take what she was feelin’. Where it took her was pretty much dumpin’ her full Sprite in Millie’s lap even though we hadn’t even ordered dinner at the Spaghetti Factory.”
He watched Deb’s eyes get big and ticked.
“You’re kidding me,” she snapped.
“Wish I was,” he told her. “Consequences of that were we left without dinner. She hid the shit she did the next day and Millie didn’t share what it was. But got it outta her that Zadie said some things to her. Millie canceled plans because she thought the girls could use a break. She was right. I was pushin’ too fast, too soon. But I had a chat with them this mornin’, laid some things out about Millie and my history, and nothin’ sunk in with Zadie. She was a snot to Millie and she was a snot to me.”
Deb tipped her head to the side and asked with mild curiosity, “What’s your history with Millie?”
It struck him then he’d never given her that.