True to his word, Tyson was the epitome of friendly. For each of the ten days after movie night we hung out almost all the time. He also liked to text me to check in at regular intervals. Each day, I relaxed around him a little more, and he definitely seemed to be feeling more and more comfortable around me as well. The more we relaxed around each other, the more the sexual tension ratcheted up. It was the best kind of torture.
I was wrapping up my work for the day when the phone rang.
“How would you feel about spending the rest of the day with me?”
I was happy he couldn’t see me through the phone since I grinned like a complete dork.
“Sure,” I answered happily. “Are we doing anything specific, or?”
“Something specific. You wanna go with me to the mall?” he asked.
I chuckled as I leaned back in the office chair I was occupying.
“The mall?” I questioned. “What’s at the mall?”
“Daisy, Daisy, Daisy,” he joked, “what isn’t at the mall?”
“Uh, anything cool, I would think,” I chided.
He made a buzzer noise. “Wrong. We can’t be here in Minnesota and not go to the Mall of America. It would be un-American.”
I scrunched up my nose. “It would?”
“Yep. Also, I really need something I can only get at the mall and I really want you to come with me.”
I grinned and shook my head. “You realize there’s literally no way you won’t be recognized, right?”
He chuckled. “Oh ye of little faith. I guarantee I won’t be recognized.”
“You feeling confident enough to make a bet?”
“Hell yes I am,” he boasted. “How about fifty smackers?”
“I’ll take that action,” I laughed.
Then, a thought occurred to me.
“Wait a minute,” I said suspiciously. “Did Lacey get the mall to close down just for you?”
“Nope. It’s going to be crowded as fuck. In fact, it’ll probably be wall-to-wall Renegade fans who would definitely want to tickle my pickle.”
“There’s something so wrong with you,” I laughed.
“Most definitely,” he agreed. “Meet me in the lobby in ten minutes. Don’t be late.”
I hurried to tidy up my desk in the makeshift hotel office—a situation where more and more I was starting to yearn for a permanent desk—before leaving the room and heading down to the lobby.
A quick scan of the area showed Ty wasn’t there yet. Taking a seat in the reception area, I picked up a magazine and started flipping through the pages. Every few minutes I’d look around for him again, only to be disappointed. After ten minutes of waiting, I started to get cranky. He’d told me not to be late, but then he couldn’t be bothered to show on time or text me to let me know where he was?
Letting out a frustrated sigh, I pulled up my phone to check and see if I had service. Seeing full bars, I gritted my teeth. And then, I let out a yelp when something smacked into my elbow. Turning to where I’d been hit, I realized the elderly man who’d been sitting next to me for the entire time I’d been in the lobby had gotten up and banged my elbow with his walker.
“I’m so sorry, young lady,” he mumbled. “Need to get my damn eyes checked again. I can’t apologize enough.”
I smiled at him as I shook my head. “Don’t worry about it at all,” I assured him. “No harm, no foul. I barely even felt it.”
“That’s what the misses says when I bang into her,” he joked. “Course, she used to get around, so it’s not like she can blame me. It’s like a coal mine in there.”
“Um, okay,” I laughed uncomfortably. Grabbing my purse, I stood up. “I’m going to go look for my friend.”
“Ow,” he hollered as I tried to step around him.
I stopped on a dime and looked at him with concern. “Oh my God, what is it? Are you okay? Should I call someone over?”
“You walked right into one of my balls,” he groaned dramatically.
My eyebrows shot up as I stared at him in shock. I was nowhere near his groin. “Uh, um, what?”
Even as I was asking what he meant, I was taking a few steps back from the old pervert. Clearly he needed supervision.
I felt really dumb when he pointed down and I saw tennis balls attached to each of the four feet of his walker.
“Oh! Sorry,” I said sincerely. “I didn’t mean to—”
“Touch an old man’s balls? Don’t worry, sweetie. These old things still got a little oomph in them. Wanna cop a feel?”
My jaw about hit the damn floor. “What the hell?” I hissed.
“Daisy,” he laughed, “it’s me.”
I didn’t know any elderly perverts.
Crossing my arms over my chest, I glared at him. “I oughtta hog tie you to a chair you— wait, how do you know my name?”
“It’s me,” he whispered dramatically. “Tyson.”
I looked him up and down in shock. Even his hands had wrinkles and they were also covered with age spots. He was wearing a pair of khaki pants, thick black shoes, a collared yellow shirt and a gray Members Only jacket. He looked ancient. Only when I looked into his eyes was I sure it was Tyson. Those, he hadn’t covered. He grinned at me cheekily when he saw I believed him.
“I gotcha, didn’t I?” he asked smugly.
I smacked him on the arm, which wasn’t a great move since the women who’d been sitting in chairs a few feet away let out angry sounding gasps.
“Well I never,” one of them exclaimed. “Smacking an elderly man! The youth of today is going to hell in a hand basket.”
Ignoring them, Tyson winked at me. “Ready to go?”
I nodded then laughed as he lifted up his walker, grabbed my hand and sprinted for the door. We were hysterically laughing by the time we got to the curb. I was surprised that one of the giant SUVs we were typically driven around in was nowhere to be found. The mystery was solved when Tyson pointed to a new looking shiny white Cadillac.
“I’m driving today,” he announced cheerfully. I couldn’t stop looking at him. He really didn’t look anything like himself. It was bizarre.
“What about security?” I asked in a low voice.
He gestured back over his shoulder. “We got two of the guys in a kick ass Camaro on our six. They’ll stay out of our hair unless I’m recognized.”
“Let’s go do a mall crawl then,” I laughed.
“Ah, there’s your enthusiasm,” he chuckled as he stowed the walker in the trunk. “I knew you were just busting my balls earlier. Everyone loves the mall.”
“I was raised between New York City and a teeny-tiny town in the south. There wasn’t much in the way of malls in the city and there darn sure aren’t any malls in Harmony,” I explained as he held the door open while I settled into the passenger seat. “I just never got the why of dealing with malls.”
After he got into the car and turned it on, he looked over at me. “The why? Daisy! I’m shocked. There is no why. It just is. The mall is like canned meat sticks. They’re terrible to look at and you know they’re gross, but you can’t help yourself.”
I giggled as he pulled away from the curb and got us onto the road. “You’re pretty passionate about malls,” I joked.
“I was a mall rat when I was in junior high,” he answered. “Used to get there early and leave when it closed. It was like a pre-teen rite of passage in the valley.”
“In New York the rite of passage was being able to hang down in the Village. In Harmony, it was being able to go to the Saturday dances at our church.”
He glanced over at me and raised a brow. “Church dances? Like you had dances inside the church and danced on the pews and in the aisles?”
I shook my head and let out a snort. “No! Our church has a social hall attached to it for wedding receptions and such. Any Saturday that there weren’t weddings, they’d set up the room for dancing. You know—punch, a DJ, maybe even some live music from time to time. The boys would dress up in their good jeans and cowboy boots and we girls were permitted to wear skirts that rested just above the knee.”
He burst out laughing. “I know it was meant to be pure and shit but thinking of you in some country girl skirt just hitting you at the knee is fuckin’ hot.”
It was so weird hearing him say it but having it come out of his grandpa-looking mouth, and I threw my head back and giggled like an idiot until I could catch my breath. “You’re a creepy old letch,” I admonished.
“Keep talking like that and I’ll paddle you with my cane,” he teased.
“You don’t have a cane, you have a walker,” I reminded him.
“Nah. There’s a cane in the trunk too.”
I could barely contain my laughter. “You really went all out on this disguise, didn’t you?”
“Damn right,” he said proudly.
The mall wasn’t far from the hotel so it didn’t take us long to get there. Once we parked and got out of the car, he looped his arm through mine and started walking with great purpose toward the entrance.
“Don’t you want your walker or the cane?”
“Uh-uh. I just got one to make you laugh. I don’t need it for the disguise.”
I smiled but couldn’t respond verbally because my eyes were misting over with tears. I was touched that Tyson had set out to make me laugh, but it also reminded me of my brother. There were times when Dusty had gone out of his way to be funny, and it was those times I always tried to remember when I thought of him. Not the end. Never the end.
Apparently I didn’t do a good job of hiding my reaction because Ty slowed down and turned to look at me.
“You okay?”
I shook off the memories of Dusty and forced myself to smile. “I’m fine. Sorry—just had a moment there.”
He stopped entirely as we stepped up onto the sidewalk leading to the mall.
“It was a sad moment,” he commented.
I nodded, swiping beneath my eyes with my free hand. “It was, but I’d rather not think about it right now. I won’t be fit to walk the mall if I’m crying.”
“Fuck the mall,” he said without hesitation. “If you’re upset, we’re out of here.”
I stood my ground. “No,” I said firmly. “I’m really, really fine. We’re here and I want to go in.”
He studied my face, probably looking for some indicator that I was pretending. Since I wasn’t, he had to take me at my word.
“Okay,” he agreed. “But if you want to leave, we go.”
“You have yourself a deal.”
He kept me close as we entered the mall. From time to time people would stare at us and I’d start to panic thinking they were in the process of recognizing him. Instead, each time I’d hear someone saying something about how sweet it was to see “a granddaughter” (me) spending time with her grandfather. Ty definitely got a kick out of it.
The mystery of why he’d wanted to go to the mall was solved when he pulled me into the Hot Topic store. I about died when he told the clerk he’d made a special trip from his old folks’ home to buy some stuff from the Harry Potter collection. I pulled away from him and clapped my hands together excitedly.
“Why didn’t you tell me this is why we came? I would’ve thrown you into the trunk on top of the cane and the walker to force you here if I’d known.”
That got a laugh from Ty, but the clerk who was walking us through the store looked really perplexed. I made an apologetic face at him as I mentally scolded myself for not remembering Ty was in disguise. To the women in the lobby and the clerk in Hot Topic, it definitely seemed like I was being way too aggressive with an elderly man. I was positive I hadn’t made a very good impression when the clerk lingered not too far from us after we got to the Harry Potter display.
“You like Harry Potter too?” I asked.
“Fuck yeah I do,” he said definitively. “It’s the best fuckin’ thing ever written. I’ve read those books nine billion times.”
I smiled like a big goof. He didn’t just like the movies; he’d read the books.
As I watched, he started going through everything, pulling things out and handing them to me to hold as he went.
“You like this shirt?” he asked as he held up a Dumbledore’s Army tee.
“Love it!”
“You wear a small, right?”
“Medium in tees,” I answered. “I like them on the bigger side.”
He went on like that for a few minutes before he threw his hand in the air and announced he’d hit pay dirt a few minutes later.
“This is it, Dais. The reason I had to come today. Are you ready to be amazed?”
I didn’t think I could be more amazed since by then the clerk had taken two enormous armloads full of stuff from me to the register. So far Ty had grabbed T-shirts, hats, socks, leggings, cardigans, scarves, earrings, hoodies, over the knee socks and even a backpack.
“I’m ready.”
“Do you solemnly swear you’re up to no good?” he asked in a very serious tone of voice.
I grinned and nodded.
Lifting his hand, he held up a Marauder’s Map bowtie. It was awesome, but I totally didn’t get why he’d had to go to the mall specifically to get it.
“Why did you need this specific thing?” I asked.
“You like Harry Potter,” he pointed out. “I know because you were wearing a Hogwarts Alumni shirt the night I came to your room, and you said you were watching one of the movies. Plus, you wear the time turner necklace sometimes. As soon as I saw this online, I knew I had to have it. I have a very important event coming up,” he informed me, “and this is the icing on top of the Ty sundae.”
I was so enamored of him I almost floated up and away. He remembered what I’d been wearing the night I opened my hotel door. For some reason, that really touched me. Forcing myself to get my head out of the clouds, I mentally ran through all of the upcoming events I knew were on his schedule. I came up with nothing that required a bowtie.
“Uh, you do?”
“I do. And to that end, I have a question for you.”
“Okayyyyy,” I drawled as I waited for him to explain.
“Daisy. Will you go to prom with me?”
In an instant I was transported right back to my teenage bedroom as my mom screamed at me that I needed to go to prom like a normal girl. I’d refused because her timing had been shit. It was the biggest fight we’d ever had, and our relationship had suffered terribly. A few months later I packed my crap and left, dropping out of high school along the way. I swallowed past the boulder of emotion in my throat as I tried to keep myself from getting weepy. I knew he had no idea about the can of worms he’d just opened for me emotionally, and I wanted to keep it that way.
“Prom?” I croaked.
He frowned as he looked me over. “Yeah, we’re doing an ’80s prom night when we’re in London. I’m stretching it with the whole Harry Potter bowtie but I have to represent. Everything else will be true to the era though.”
I forced the memories from that dark time way, way down. I wasn’t in high school anymore and my life wasn’t in crisis.
“Is it weird, me asking you to go to this? I thought—”
“I’d love to go with you,” I assured him. “You just caught me off guard.”
“You sure?”
I crossed my heart. “I’m sure.”
His eyes lit up as a smile spread across his face. Of their own accord my lips formed a smile in return. In that moment I forgot where we were, while also forgetting he looked like he was ninety years old. Our eyes stayed locked as he leaned closer, wrapping his arm around my waist so he could pull me towards him. I met him halfway, our lips meeting in a sensual kiss.
“Holy shit, look at Grandpa gettin’ that sweet young beaver,” someone yelled.
We sprang apart as someone yelled, “That’s nasty, Anna Nicole. We all know you’re doing him for the money, you skank!”
Ty roared with laughter while I hung my head in shame. “This is so embarrassing,” I mumbled.
Throwing his arm around my shoulder, he started guiding us toward the register.
“Fuck it,” he advised with a laugh. “No one here fuckin’ knows you. Let ’em think you’re giving an old man a piece of ass. What’s the harm?”
The way he said it helped me find the humor in it, and I was giggling like an idiot as we got up to the register. I asked the clerk to separate my stuff from his, but was quickly shot down by Ty.
“I’m buying all this shit,” he said firmly.
“I have money,” I assured him.
“Didn’t say you don’t. I’m paying and that’s that. Now gimme some sugar and say thank you.”
The mischief in his eyes was a challenge. I could tell he didn’t think I was going to play along, but he was wrong. Reaching out, I grabbed his ass.
“Thank you for my things,” I said in a high-pitched baby doll voice. “When we get back to your room at the home, I’ll play dress-up for you. We’ll just need to make sure you take your heart pills first, sweet buns. You know how your ticker can get crazy when all the blood flows down to your little ding ding.”
He was so shocked he sputtered before throwing his head back and damn near howling with laughter.
“Fucking amazing,” he choked out. “You’re fucking gold.”
“That’ll be seven hundred and eighty-four dollars,” the clerk announced. His voice dripped with disgust, which only made Ty laugh harder. He paid the bill with a black Amex card that damn near made the guy’s eyes bug out of his head. Too bad he didn’t look at the name on the card. He was so anxious to get us out of the store he did the end of the transaction at hyper speed.
We laughed the entire way to the car, our arms loaded down with bags. When we got back to the Cadillac and Ty popped the trunk, I realized there was a bumper sticker on the back. After reading it I laughed so hard I damn near peed my pants. It read My Other Ride is Your Mom.
“You put a bumper sticker on a brand new car. It’s ruined, you dork!”
He rolled his eyes and reached out, pulling it off the back of the car. “There’s this amazing new invention that allows for bumper stickers without fucking the paint sideways. You may have heard of it—it’s called a magnet.”
“You travel with a magnetic bumper sticker?”
“Ever heard of Carrot Top?”
My brows knitted together. “Uh, yeah.”
“I’m like a way cooler version of him. I’ve always got props, love.”
“You know what you are?” I asked.
“A fuckin’ weirdo?” he guessed.
I waved his comment off. “Nope,” I answered. “You’re a really great man.”
His eyes widened as he stared down at me.
“Not sure I’d go quite that far—”
“You don’t have to, I did. Take the compliment, Tyson. It isn’t going away.”
His smile almost seemed shy. “Thank you.”
I could see praise made him uncomfortable, which was interesting considering what he did for a living. People genuflected in front of him constantly. He could’ve acted like it was par for the course or like it was somehow his due, but he didn’t.
It was just another reason I thought he was a good guy.