“I thought when I made love with you, when I let you see all of me and when you let me know all of you, every private inch, when we made that promise with our bodies and our lips, I thought that would be the most intimate thing we would ever do.”
“Millie?” I whispered. I didn’t know where she was going with this, but there was sorrow in her words, and finality, like she’d reached a conclusion about me, about us.
“But it wasn’t. Sex is not the most intimate thing two lovers can do. Even when the sex is beautiful. Even when it’s perfect.” Millie drew a deep breath as if she remembered how perfect it had truly been. “The most intimate thing we can do is to allow the people we love most to see us at our worst. At our lowest. At our weakest. True intimacy happens when nothing is perfect. And I don’t think you’re ready to be intimate with me, David.”
She stopped talking, letting her words ring in the air, and my hand curled against her breast, kneading her and needing her, and not knowing how to give her what she wanted. Her breath caught and her head fell into my chest as if the pleasure warred with the pain.
“I don’t know how,” I confessed, and I pulled my hand away so I wouldn’t hurt her in my frustration.
She grabbed my hand and brought it back, this time pressing it to her heart.
“I’m telling you how. You hold onto me. You trust me. You use me. You lean on me. You rely on me. You let me shelter you. You let me love you. All of you. Cancer. Fear. Sickness. Health. Better. Worse. All of you. And you’ll have all of me.”
“I don’t know if I can beat it, Millie.” I choked on the words and suddenly I was crying. My first instinct was to be grateful she couldn’t see me, and then I felt her hands on my cheeks, feeling the tears, and I braced myself. But I didn’t pull away. She stood on tiptoe and pulled my face to hers, pressing her trembling lips to mine, comforting, quieting, and acknowledging my fear. And it wasn’t just fear, it was my deepest fear. If I fought, I didn’t know if I could win. In fact, I was pretty sure I wouldn’t. I tasted Millie’s tears, and I knew she tasted mine. And then she spoke against my lips.
“You don’t have to beat it, David. You don’t have to beat it. You just have to let us fight with you.”
I wrapped my arms around her and held on for a moment, unable to speak. When I found my voice I still didn’t let her go.
“No tap outs,” I whispered.
“No guilt,” Millie said gently.
“Amelie means work.” I don’t know why that came to my mind, but it did. As she held me up, I thought of her strength.
“That’s right.” She smiled tremulously. “So are you going to work for me or not?”
Moses
I HEARD A crash downstairs, and I paused, concerned and a little irritated. Kathleen was asleep, and I really didn’t want her waking up. She had a couple new teeth coming in, and she was ornery and more than a little miserable. Then I heard Millie’s voice, raised, angry even, and I froze, listening. I heard the rumble of Tag’s voice too, and Millie came right back at him, even angrier. I walked to the top of the stairs and caught bits and pieces of what Millie was saying. She wasn’t taking a breath, and she was laying it all out. And then the door to the bedroom was closed, and the voices were obscured. I started down the stairs, more hopeful than I’d been all week. I don’t know how she’d done it, but Tag was in Millie’s room, and things were finally coming to a head.
Henry came bursting into the house, Millie’s name on his lips, and I raced down the remaining stairs, intercepting him.
“Henry, wait!”
Henry jumped and turned, startled at the vehemence in my voice. There was no way I was letting anything interrupt what was going on behind that door.
“Don’t go in there. Millie’s with Tag. And we need to leave them alone for a while.”
Henry looked at the closed door and looked back at me. He nodded his head slowly. I got us both a cold can of Coke from the fridge and handing one to him, put my arm around his shoulders and steered him back out of the house. We sat out on the deck, putting our feet up on the railing so we could watch Georgia work while we downed our drinks. I loved watching Georgia work.
“Axel has never ridden a horse,” Henry remarked, clearly thinking about the evening before, when Axel and Mikey had delivered Tag’s truck, uncertain of where to stow it in Salt Lake, with everything up in the air like it was.
“Nope. Did you show him how it’s done?” I knew Henry had shown off a little, but I wanted to give him a chance to talk about it. Tag hadn’t come down when the guys arrived. It was a miracle he was talking to Millie now.
“Yep. I show him things, he shows me things,” Henry said, nodding. “I’m part of the team.”
It was my turn to nod. Tag had assembled an amazing group of guys. And the coolest thing about them was how they all treated Henry.
“There is no ‘i’ in team,” Henry said suddenly, seriously, as if repeating something he’d heard at a school pep rally. Or maybe he’d heard it in the gym.
“Nope.”
“There is no ‘i’ in Tag Team either,” he added.
“Nope. There isn’t,” I agreed.
“Are we Tag’s team?” he asked.
I started to explain what Tag Team was, the label, the fighters, the gym. And then I stopped myself. “Yeah. We are. We’re Tag’s team.”
“Because we love him?”
“Yeah,” I said, getting choked up all over again. I was so tired of being overcome with emotion. But Henry had a way of sneaking up on me and saying the obvious, and saying it in such a way that it seemed profound. In Vegas, Millie had explained Tag’s condition to him the best she could, and he had come to me asking to go to a barber so he could get his hair cut like Tag’s. I hadn’t really known why he’d wanted to. I’d just thought it was just a case of hero worship. But Millie had been stunned by Henry’s desire to cut his hair. Apparently it wasn’t something that came easily to him. I realized now that it was his way of lending moral support, of being part of Tag Team. I watched as Georgia climbed over the fence and started toward us, grateful that I’d have her moral support momentarily.