Marrying The Single Dad. Melinda Curtis

the object of the women’s infatuation called out loud enough they heard him through the glass. “I’m getting a haircut. Wait for me here.” Joe pointed to the curb.

      “Okay, Dad,” came a high-pitched prepubescent reply. A familiar figure—slight, in blue coveralls—appeared on the sidewalk. Sam plopped onto the curb, booted feet in the gutter, slouching and drinking from a Martin’s Bakery to-go cup.

      Phil ushered Joe inside and into his chair. “What are you looking for today? Trim? Buzz cut? Mohawk?”

      “Trim.” Joe spared Brit a look that was stay-away contemptuous.

      Lighten up, dude. It wasn’t as if I made away with anything this morning.

      Phil opened a drawer at his station. It took him several tries to clench a folded drape with his age-spotted fingers.

      The first inklings of apprehension worked their way through Brit. She’d noticed Phil’s tremulous hands for years, but hadn’t made the leap to what that meant in terms of him cutting hair. She couldn’t let him cut anyone’s hair. At least, not with scissors. “How about a buzz cut, Mr. Messina?”

      Phil’s head came up. “Messina?”

      “No, thanks.” Joe stared at Brit as if she’d teleported from another planet and offered him a ride on a unicorn.

      Phil was stuck on Joe’s last name. “You’re one of those Messina boys who used to live here?”

      Joe sighed, as if being recognized was the worst news of the day. “Yes.”

      “Is that...” Rose glided gracefully to the window with the broom, which took skill, considering she looked to be nearing eighty. “Is that a girl?”

      Brit’s attention turned to the child on the sidewalk. The child she’d assumed was a boy because of the shapeless, grimy coveralls and an equally grimy baseball cap. Brit had gone through a tomboy phase after the devastation of the Promotion Dance. She, of all people, should have recognized a girl beneath the trappings.

      “Hell, yeah, Sam’s a girl,” Joe said defensively. “Anyone can see that. Brittany’s sister just called her by her full name in the bakery.” But this last was said without Joe’s typical iceman tone.

      Agnes and Rose exchanged doubtful looks.

      “Wow.” Brit should have felt better that other people assumed his daughter was a boy, too, but she didn’t. The little girl had probably been called a boy more than once and she was getting to an age where those remarks would register and sting. “Poor Sam.”

      “Poor Sam.” Joe snorted like a bull about to charge. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

      “Sam...” Agnes said evenly. “As in Samantha?”

      “Yes,” Joe ground out.

      “What’s going on?” Mildred asked, squinting toward the window through her thick glasses. “I see someone, but can’t tell if it’s a boy or a girl.”

      “Exactly,” Rose said.

      * * *

      “SHE’S A GIRL.” Joe kept his voice down, but that didn’t stop his eye from twitching. “What’s wrong with you people? Brittany was wearing coveralls this morning and I didn’t mistake her for a man.” Granted, Brittany filled out her clothes differently than his daughter did.

      The barbershop had fallen silent. Uncomfortably, painfully silent. And he guessed it wasn’t because Phil was trying to remember if Joe was the Messina who’d taken his ex-wife’s car for a joyride.

      Joe refused to turn and look at Sam, unwilling to validate their perception. Lung-deflating doubt—that he wasn’t a good father for a girl—tried to suffocate him.

      “Hard to tell gender nowadays,” Phil said, interrupting Joe’s panic attack. He flung a plastic drape over Joe’s lap. It smelled musty and unused, kind of like the garage apartment’s shower curtain. “If she’s a girl, you might want to buy a pair of pink coveralls.” He fumbled with the drape snap at Joe’s neck. “Which Messina are you?”

      “The only Messina in your chair,” Brittany said, moving behind Joe so she was visible to him in the mirror. She widened her eyes and waggled her eyebrows at Joe in some kind of undecipherable car-part-thief code. “Anyone can wear pink or coveralls nowadays, Grandpa.”

      Grandpa? The Lambridges were among the most upright, uptight citizens in town. Was Brittany a beautician with an innocent hobby? A woman willing to pay for car parts like a law-abiding Lambridge? Or was she cut from the same cloth as Uncle Turo? The kind of person who cut corners. The kind of person Joe couldn’t afford to have in his life anymore.

      “It’s common to mistake gender at that age. There’s no bumps or curves or whiskers to go on.” Phil’s hands fumbled in a drawer for something. “Plus there hasn’t been a Messina girl in town. Ever.”

      “That’s not exactly hard science, Grandpa.” Brittany gave Joe an I can’t believe you don’t understand me look.

      “You still haven’t told me.” Phil picked up a pair of scissors with hands that shook. A lot. “Which Messina are you?”

      “I’m Joe.” Finally, possibly too late, he’d cracked Brittany’s code. Her brown gaze reflected his worry about scissors and unsteady hands. Joe shifted in the chair and moved his gaze in the mirror to the antique bicycle on the wall behind him, the one ridden by a playfully curved, brightly painted, aluminum mermaid. It was nothing he’d expect to find in a barbershop. But then again, he’d expected a barber with a reassuring hand. “Hey, Phil...um...are you okay?”

      “He’s quick, that boy.” The woman sitting in the walker chuckled. “Took me another five minutes in that chair before I panicked.”

      “I’m fine,” Phil said cheerfully, as if he hadn’t heard Mildred. “Never better.”

      “Your hands...” Joe met Brittany’s gaze again. He’d never admit it, but his gaze might have been pleading.

      Brittany laid a hand on Phil’s forearm. “How about I give Shaggy Joe a trim?”

      “You?” Joe choked out. What did this wrench-wielding woman know about cutting hair? Maybe Joe should take his chances with Phil.

      “Yes, me. I’m licensed to trim.” Brittany gestured to a framed certificate on the wall.

      If Brit was a beautician, her appearance shouted thirty-five-dollar haircut. She may have worn coveralls earlier, like Sam’s, and her dark brown hair was mostly hidden under a cap, like Sam’s. But that’s where the similarities ended. Phil’s granddaughter had rhinestones on her baseball cap, sparkling threads in her thin pink sweater and in her black leggings.

      Truthfully, he didn’t mind the leggings. Brittany had a nice pair of legs. But he did mind the salon-like sparkle if it meant he’d pay more for a simple haircut.

      “The man sat in my chair.” Phil raised his scissors like they were the torch held by the Statue of Liberty. Unlike Lady Liberty, Phil’s hand wavered, bringing Joe back to his original dilemma.

      “Phil, I...uh... I’m Joe, the bad Messina you remember.” In truth, Joe’s two older brothers had probably raised more hell than Joe, but a man had to bail when sharp objects were near arteries. “I’m the one who took Leona’s car for a joyride.”

      “Joe, Joe, Joe.” Phil tsked, lowering his unsteady hand. “Leona said she’d given you permission.”

      Only after Uncle Turo had talked to her.

      “Don’t be nervous,” Phil said. “I used to cut your hair all the time when you were a kid. And I don’t hold grudges.”

      “True,” the old woman in the walker said, leaning forward and peering at Joe through bottle-thick lenses.

      Joe caught Brittany’s