* * *

“Don’t cut too much.”

“That’s too much.”

“Could you go a little shorter?”

“My beautician doesn’t usually do it like that. Are you sure you know what you’re doing?”

I should have known after her first comment that the haircut wasn’t going to go as easily as I would have liked. There were two different types of customers in my profession: the kind that let you do whatever the hell you wanted, and the kind that nitpicked every single strand of hair. I used up all of my patience on the boys most of the time, so I loved the customers that genuinely didn’t care. I felt like I had a good idea with what worked best for people’s faces, and I would never give someone a haircut that needed a lot of maintenance if they didn’t have time for it, unless they begged.

But I kept my mouth shut and a smile on my face as I listened to my elderly neighbor and tried to cut her hair the way she wanted.

“Where do you usually get your hair done?” I asked as I worked my way around her, being extra careful around her paper-thin skin with the super-sharp edges of the shears. The last thing I wanted or needed was to accidentally cut her.

“Molly’s,” she replied.

On the floor a few feet away, Louie was lying on his belly with a notebook he was drawing in while Miss Pearl’s ancient cat sniffed his shoes, and Josh had a handheld game system in front of his face. He’d asked me again if he could stay home, and I’d told him the same thing I had originally. I wasn’t sure why he was in such a grumpy mood today, but I wasn’t going to worry about it too much. He had his days. I couldn’t blame him; I did too.

“Do you know where that’s at?” Miss Pearl asked after she rattled off side streets that weren’t familiar.

I shook my head. “No.”

“Oh? You’re not from here?”

My chest ached for a moment. An image of Rodrigo filled my head briefly, and I swallowed. “No. I’m from El Paso. I lived in Fort Worth for a few years and San Antonio for a little bit before moving here.”

“Divorced?” she blatantly asked.

And that was why I loved old people. They didn’t give a single shit about how their questions could make you feel. She had already asked if I had a husband last time; now she went in for clarification. “No.”

The “oh” out of her mouth was just about the most disapproving thing I’d ever heard, and it took me a minute to realize how she was going to take it.

But I didn’t care about what she was assuming. There was nothing wrong with being a single, unmarried mom. Or in my case, a single, unmarried aunt.

I wasn’t imagining the sneer that came over the elderly woman’s face. I also didn’t miss the apprehensive expression that Louie shot our way. That kid was the most emotionally intuitive person I’d ever met and always had been. Where Josh understood my moods like he had some kind of emo-location, it was only with me. Lou was something else.

“Well,” she hummed. “Me and my George were together for fifty-eight years before he kicked the bucket—”

I coughed.

“My sons knew what they were doin’, too. They married good girls. Their kids…” She literally went “harrumph” and rolled her eyes as she thought about her grandkids. “But my girls, neither one of them had a man for longer than a few years atta time. Not that I blame them. My girls are pains in the you-know-what. All I’m tryin’ to say is that you’re better off not having a man than having a lousy one. You got your own house with your boys, so you can’t be doin’ too bad.”

And just like that, I went back to snipping away. Maybe this lady wasn’t so bad after all. “You’re right. You are better off being alone than with someone who doesn’t make you happy.” I’d learned that shit the hard way.

“You got a pretty face. I’m sure you’ll find somebody someday that doesn’t mind you havin’ kids.”

And I retracted my statement on how she wasn’t so bad for a second or two.

She was really old, and she pretty much got a free pass for most things, but I wasn’t used to brutal honesty by someone so new in my life. My parents and best friend were usually honest with me about everything, regardless of whether it would hurt me or not, but they’d had years to reach that level of trust. Sure, I knew some men might run screaming the other way if they met someone with two kids, but it wasn’t like I wanted to date some twenty-one-year-old whose greatest commitment was paying for his own Netflix plan. My imaginary future boyfriend might have kids of his own, and that would be okay. I didn’t know if I would have the energy or patience to date someone who didn’t know how to act around two boys. As long as my imaginary boyfriend wasn’t in love with anyone else, I wouldn’t care he’d been in a long-term relationship before me. Better that than him having slept around with a thousand women.

Then again, I wasn’t planning on dating any time soon. I was doing fine on my own. My hand kept me company just fine, and I’d swapped out my shower sprayer for a handheld one. I was never without company unless I wanted to be, which was the case more often than not lately when I was tired, aka all the time.

I happened to look up and see Josh sitting in the living room staring over at us, his face way too interested. These guys were so nosey. I made sure his gaze met mine, and I gave him a wide-eyed look so that he wouldn’t be so obvious about eavesdropping.

“Your babies’ daddy, is he in the picture?” the older woman blatantly asked.

I told her the truth. “No.”

The “huh” that came out of her mouth was a little too suspicious, and I really didn’t feel like bringing up my brother since she already assumed Josh and Lou had ripped through my birth canal. “I’m just about done. Do you want to look at your hair in the mirror?”

One pale hand went up at her side. “There’s a little mirror in my bathroom. Will you bring it? It’ll take me half the day to get in there and back.”

I squeezed my lips together so that I wouldn’t smile. “Sure. Where’s your bathroom?”

Miss Pearl pointed at the hall connecting to the kitchen. “First door.”

I gently touched her shoulder as I walked around and headed down the hall. The walls were painted a pale, pale pink and were lined near the ceiling with a strip of flowered wallpaper. I caught a few pictures frames mounted to the wall, but I didn’t want to be nosey since I knew she could see me. I ducked into the doorway, finding a small full bathroom with an elevated toilet seat decked out with handles and a clean looking bathtub with a long metal bar bracketed to the wall. Sure enough, over the toilet with a shelf behind it was a fairly large handheld mirror like the one I had at work.

I was only slightly nervous when I handed her the mirror and let her take in the front of her haircut. She moved her chin from side to side and handed it back to me. “Half an inch too short, but you did better than the grumpy bat who’s been cutting my hair. That darn woman tried giving me a mullet,” she claimed.

“I think you dodged a bullet with the mullet,” I joked.

She let out a tiny snort. “You’re telling me. How much do I owe you?”

Like every time I dealt with someone much older than me, an image of my grandmother flashed through my head for a brief moment. I sighed and smiled, resigned. “You don’t owe me anything.” Chances were, she was probably on social security. There was no way she was getting very much money, and she was my neighbor. There was also no way her hair grew fast enough for it to be a burden on my schedule. There were only a certain number of people whose hair I cut that got it for free, and one more wouldn’t be the difference between arthritis and… not arthritis. “It’s a neighborly discount,” I let her know.