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“All right,” she said, and she stepped by him to get her clippers. As she moved back, she decided not to hold her tongue the way she might have in the past. “And Ty, it’s not that Ionlywant us to be friends. But I would like tostartthere, because honestly?”
She waited for him to open his eyes and focus on her. “It feels like a lot of pressure to me to jump right into dating. That’s all.”
He didn’t grin like he’d known it all along. He didn’t dismiss what she’d said. He looked at her, and after a few seconds, he nodded. “All right,” he drawled out in that South Carolina way he had. Sometimes he hid the twang, but she’d heard it a few times, like right now. “Then I’ll come pick up you and Gypsy, and we’ll go to Nightingale’s on the way to the park.”
“Five then?” she asked. “It’s a fast-casual place. I don’t think they’ll be busy that early.”
“Not in February,” he said, and she wondered what it would be like to live so much of her life by what month it was. She sort of did, because she saw clients on a really regular basis, but she hadn’t considered the month in her prediction that the French dip restaurant wouldn’t be busy tonight. Just the fact that most people didn’t eat dinner at five p.m.
“Maybe we’ll get the early-bird discount,” she joked. “Or a senior deal.”
He grinned and made a small shake with his head. “Come on. We’ll not that old yet.”
“Not yet,” she agreed, and then she finished up his hair. She couldn’t sit with him for longer than normal, because she had dye to wash out and then another cut and style to do before she could sit down.
She did walk him up front like she’d done for Dave, and she had Morgan rebook him for a few weeks. Then she waved to him and went back to work. By the time she got a half-hour to sit and eat, she had a dozen more texts from her friends.
A new place to live is just what you need, Bessie said, and Sage smiled softly at her phone. Out of all of them, she was probably the closest to Bessie. She also didn’t speak up at everything, and they’d made the decision to leave the Coastal Bend of Texas in their rearview mirrors and move here after Joy had started dating her now-husband, Scott.
I’d love to come look at places with you, Bessie had texted privately.Wyn and I obviously need a different situation as well.
You won’t move in with Oliver?Sage surprise carried her through the next message.I thought he had a nice place.
Yeah, but Wyn can’t really afford this house.
Maybe Thelma could take it…Sage just let the words flow from her fingers.
Oh, that’s a great idea!Bessie said.Let’s get together and talk through some things.
Anytime but tonight,Sage said, feeling brave and scared all at the same time.I’m taking Gypsy to that Furry Friends event, and Ty and I are trying that French dip place you told me about.
Her phone rang, and Sage laughed as she answered it. “You’re going out with Ty?” Bessie asked.
“Sort of,” Sage said as she lifted her package of trail mix to her mouth. “It’s a doggy awareness thing, and we’re stopping for food on the way.” Bessie might lose her mind if she knew about last night’s chili and sandwich on the boardwalk. “I’ve told him I don’t want the pressure of diving right into like, a relationship.”
Bessie sat there for a moment, and Sage could admit she didn’t make sense. “I said I wanted to be friends.”
“You told him that?” Bessie didn’t have to sound like she’d seen a three-legged hippo.
“I want my partner to be my friend,” Sage said.
“Yeah, but, Sage, you want so much more than that.” Bessie had erased all the shock from her voice now. She spoke with a quiet reverence, in fact, and Sage couldn’t—wouldn’t even try to—argue with her.
“Yes,” Sage said matter-of-factly. “So we’ll see where this goes. Right now, I don’t have to feel so much pressure that—that we have to have everything in common, and that we have to see each other every single day, and that—I don’t even know what else.”
“That you have to put on makeup,” Bessie said with plenty of teasing in her voice.
“Yes, that,” Sage said, seizing onto it. “Or that I need to model five different outfits for Thelma before I can leave the house.” She waved her hand as another stylist came back into the break room. “I’m done with all that pressure. I just want to see if this fizzy, foamy feeling inside me when I see him can become something electric and passionate, and maybe a little naughty.”
Bessie burst out laughing, and Sage’s face heated as her co-worker turned toward her. Deanna couldn’t be older than thirty, and she surely wouldn’t understand that Sage had lived twenty-six years with a man who didn’t love her.
Still, she ducked her head and lowered her voice. “So it’s not really a date. We’re getting some food and taking our dogs to the park. Gypsy is ambivalent about other canines, and I’d like him to be more social. The end.”
If she happened to get a delicious free meal out of it, wonderful. If she happened to show up with the hottest man on the island, also fantastic.
But Sage didn’t want to carry the pressure of either of those things, and this way, she didn’t have to.
“So will you kiss him tonight?” Bessie asked. “I mean, if we’re going all the way to naughty.”
