The Song of David (22 page)

“I wish I could touch Tag like that. I wish it was okay to ask for things like that. I mean, I’ve felt him smile . . . but I want to feel the rest of him.” Millie blurted, as if confessing something that had been bubbling over.

I bit my tongue to keep from gasping and wondered how in the hell I was going to get out of this situation without embarrassing everyone involved.

“Amelie! You naughty girl!” Robin squealed.

“I’m not trying to be, Robin. I know he has strong arms. I know he has dimples in his cheeks and a cleft in his chin. I know he has a slightly crooked nose. I know his body is hard and his lips are soft. And I know he has big, calloused hands.”

“Stop it! I’m getting turned on and depressed,” Robin groaned. “Amelie . . . I think Tag Taggert might be the kind of guy who likes women. Period. You know? And you’re beautiful . . . so obviously, he’s going to like you. But . . . that’s not the kind of guy who’s going to make you happy in the long run.”

“No.” Amelie shook her head, rejecting Robin’s opinion of me, as spot-on as it was. “No. There’s more to him than that. He’s special, and he makes me feel special. Sometimes I think there’s something between us. I can feel it in my chest, the way I can’t ever really catch my breath when he’s around. I feel it in my stomach too, the way it flips when he says my name. And mostly, I feel it when he talks to Henry. He’s gentle. And he’s sweet.”

Millie shrugged. “But then other times, I think he’s just the kind of guy who is really good at taking care of people, and Henry and I are . . . needy.”

We were facing each other, twenty feet apart, and Millie had no idea I was there, standing by the stairs at the shadowy end of the long basement, listening as she confessed her feelings for me. I considered sneaking back up the stairs, but the stairs were old, and I was guessing they creaked like an old man’s joints. I was frozen between wanting to hear Millie’s secrets and wanting to hide from them.

“I wonder if he enjoys touching as much as I do,” Millie mused. “I want him to touch me, and I want to touch him. But I want him to actually like me, the way I like him, and not just the beautiful parts of me. All of me. Blind eyes, knobby knees, big ears, pointy chin. All of me. So that when he does touch me, and I touch him, it will be wonderful and not weird.”

I wished more than anything that Robin was not standing between us at that moment. I wished I could walk over, wrap my arms around Millie and kiss that pointy chin and whisper assurances in the ears that
were
a little big, now that she mentioned it. I slid back around the corner and sat down on the bottom stair, resting my head in my hands.

She’d laid it out. And I’d been lucky enough, or unlucky enough, to hear it. I was lucky because Amelie Anderson was falling in love with me. I was unlucky because I couldn’t pretend that I didn’t know. I’d refused to listen to Moses when he’d called me out on Saturday. I’d refused to examine the kiss in the bathroom or the line I’d already crossed when I’d lain Millie across her white comforter, a comforter I still saw every time I closed my eyes.

But standing there, listening to Millie spell it out, I couldn’t ignore it any more. I couldn’t. I couldn’t pretend that I had more time to decide. Time was up, and I had to choose.

I didn’t question my feelings. The feelings had been there from day one. From day one. I’d seen her standing like a shepherdess in the night, her head tilted back, her tongue catching snowflakes, and I’d felt something shift. Three days in, and I’d looked down into her face and felt the ode, a feeling no other girl had ever inspired. And I’d known. Since that day, I had found myself saying things, feeling things, doing things that I’d never done before. Millie had become my favorite sight, my favorite smell, my favorite taste, my favorite sound. My favorite. But that was never what any of this was about.

It was about me.

Millie called it the night I’d cleaned the blood from her skin and kissed her silly. Silly Millie. She wasn’t silly at all. She knew the score. And she was waiting for me to decide if I was man enough to love a blind girl.

Kissing a blind girl is an unpardonable sin, she’d said, taunting me. But she was wrong about that. Kissing a blind girl wasn’t unpardonable. Loving her wasn’t unpardonable either. But loving her and letting her down . . . that was unpardonable to me. That was unforgiveable. That was the part I struggled with.

The music resumed, but this time the melody was slower, sadder—music for listening rather than dancing. It was a Damien Rice song called “The Blower’s Daughter” and it pleased me that Millie knew it too, the discovery making me feel hopeful in an ‘if-we-love-the-same-music-our-hearts-must-match’ kind of way. I rose, grateful for the noise to cover my ascent, but Robin rounded the corner before I could take a single step.

When she saw me she squeaked and jumped a foot in the air. I held a finger to my lips, shaking my head vigorously. Millie didn’t need to know what I’d heard.

I turned and climbed the stairs, hoping Robin was following me, hoping Millie wasn’t.

I walked into the laundry room with Robin at my heels. I shut the door carefully behind her and shoved my hands into my front pockets, meeting her wide-eyed gaze.

“I want you to yell down the stairs. Tell her that I’m here. Tell her I’m coming down,” I demanded.

“But . . . you . . . how long were you there?” she stuttered.

I waited, not answering, and Robin’s face twisted into a scowl.

“You’re right about me, you know,” I said, giving her an indirect answer. “I do like women. I like them a lot. Especially beautiful women. And I’ve never been interested in having just one. I’ve never even had a girlfriend. There’s never been a girl that’s kept my attention. Until now.”

Robin’s scowl evaporated instantly, and her pursed lips slid into a smile. Without another word, she turned, opened the door, and bellowed down the stairs.

“Amelie! You’ve got company!”

I slid past Robin, winking as I headed back down the way I’d just come.

“Don’t screw this up!” she hissed. “She’s had too much shit in her life, and she doesn’t need more, Tag Taggert. Sunshine. Roses. Kisses. Adoration. That’s your job! No shit allowed!”

I couldn’t promise a future with no shit. I couldn’t even promise I wouldn’t cause some. I couldn’t alter my DNA, and I was sure I had strands that were soaked in the stuff. But I was bound and determined to shelter Millie from as much as I could. I shot a look over my shoulder and nodded once at Millie’s protective cousin, an acknowledgement that I’d heard her, and Robin closed the door, giving us the privacy I hadn’t afforded them.

Millie stood waiting, obviously not sure who her company was. She’d pulled her ponytail free, and her hair tumbled around her shoulders in rumpled disarray, but she didn’t smooth it down or tug at her clothes. She was regal and composed in her stillness, confident enough in herself that she didn’t fuss over what she couldn’t fix. Damien Rice was singing about not being able to “take his eyes off of you” and I could only nod in agreement as I approached her.

“David?” she ventured softly. The fact that she knew it was me made me light-headed all over again.

“Am I the only guy who makes that much noise coming down the steps?” I’d purposely made plenty of noise the second time around.

“Nah. You should hear Henry. You’re just the . . . only guy,” she admitted sweetly. Then her cheeks grew rosy and my chest got hot.

I felt a huge flood of relief. I was the only guy. Thank God.

I stopped a foot from her and reached out, taking one of her hands in mine. “Do you like this song?” I asked. Obviously she did and obviously I was stupid.

“I love this song.”

“Me too,” I whispered. I reached for her other hand.

“
Accidental Babies
.”

“What?” I tugged her hands gently, and she took a step. I was so close now that the top of her head provided a shelf for my chin, and Damien’s song was being drowned out by the sound of my heart.

“It’s another one of his songs. . . and I think I love it even more,” she whispered back.

“But that song is so sad,” I breathed, and laid my cheek against her hair.

“That’s what makes it beautiful. It’s devastating. I love it when a song devastates me.” Her voice was thready as if she was struggling to breathe.

“Ah, the sweet kind of suffering.” I dropped her hands and wrapped my arms around her.

“The best kind.” Her voice hitched as our bodies aligned.

“I’ve been suffering for a while now, Millie.”

“You have?” she asked, clearly amazed.

“Since the moment I saw you. It devastated me. And I love when a girl devastates me.” I was using her definition of the word, but the truth was, my sister was the only girl who had ever devastated me, and it hadn’t been sweet agony.

“I’ve never devastated anyone before,” Millie said faintly, shock and pleasure coloring her words. She still stood with her arms at her sides, almost like she couldn’t believe what was happening. But her lips hovered close to my jaw, as if she was enjoying the tension between almost and not quite.

“I’m guessing you’ve left a wake of destruction,” I whispered. “You just don’t know.”

“Can’t see my own mess. Perks of being a blind girl.” I could hear the smile in her voice. But I couldn’t laugh now. I was on fire, and the flames were growing uncomfortable.

Finally, as if she couldn’t resist any longer, she raised her hands to my waist. Trembling fingers and flat palms slid across my abdomen, up my chest, past my shoulders, progressing slowly as if she memorized as she moved. Then she touched my face and her thumbs found the cleft in my chin, the way they’d done the first time she’d traced my smile. Hesitantly, she urged my face down toward hers. A heartbeat before our mouths touched she spoke, and the soft words fluttered against my lips.

“Are you going to devastate me, David?” she asked.

“God, I hope not,” I prayed aloud.

Anticipation dissolved the lingering space between us, and I pressed needy lips to her seeking mouth. And then we melded together, hands clinging, bodies surging, music moaning, dancing in the wreckage. Sweet, sweet, devastation.

“Too late . . .” I thought I heard her whisper.

Moses

I SAT OUT on Millie’s front porch with Kathleen and rocked in a wrought iron swing that had probably been there since the house was built more than a century before. I had abandoned listening to the cassettes altogether. Tag wasn’t holding anything back. Every detail, every thought, every feeling hanging out. Naked. And I didn’t like naked men. So I was letting Georgia listen with Millie, and Kathleen and I were bonding on the porch, Kathleen bundled up in a fuzzy hat and a fuzzier blanket, asleep on my chest, a buffer against the cool spring air, soaking up some daddy time so that she would grow to look like me and know she was mine, just like Henry said.

Henry had retreated to his room. It was late, and we were all tired. But Millie couldn’t stop listening, and I couldn’t blame her. The drum beat was quickening, and as much as I wanted to just skip ahead, just stick the last tape in the player, I had no right. And knowing Tag, it wouldn’t be that easy.

And then Georgia opened a window, the window nearest my head, as if the emotions in the room had become stifling, and suddenly sitting there on the front porch, I could hear every word once more, and I listened as my friend struggled to put into words that which I could only ever describe with paint.

I’d told Georgia once that if I could paint her I would use every color. Blues and golds and whites and reds. Peach and cream and bronze and black. Black for me, because I wanted to leave my mark on her. My stamp on her. And I had, though not ever in the way I intended. My mind drifted to my son—who had looked a great deal like me, though I wouldn’t tell Henry. I hadn’t spent a single day of his life with him. And still, he looked like me.

“Hey, little man,” I whispered, wondering if he could hear me. “I miss you.” I tasted the same bittersweet tang on my tongue that always came with saying his name, but I said it all the same. “Keep an eye out for Tag, Eli. He acts tough, but I’m guessing he’s running scared.”