Free A Date With the Other Side by Erin McCarthy

But in a good squashed way.
    And while she stared at Boston and he stared back, Harriet wiped her hands on her pink billowing blouse and stuck one out at Boston. “I don’t believe we’ve met. I’m Harriet Danforth.”
    Boston recovered enough to shake her hand. “Boston. Boston Macnamara. And you must be Chevy’s mom.”
    He shot Shelby a look of amusement and she slapped her hand over her mouth so she wouldn’t laugh. He remembered what she’d told him about the origin of Chevy Danforth’s name. It was a frightening vision, Harriet carried away by passion with Clyde Danforth in the back of a nineteen-seventy Chevy Nova.
    “Yes, I am. Have you met him, Boston? Is that your real name? Or is it a stage name?”
    Now Shelby did laugh. “He’s not a circus act, Harriet. He’s a Samson executive.”
    Boston’s hand remained trapped in Harriet’s but he shook his head and kept smiling, impressing the hell out of Shelby. “Boston is my real name. And I haven’t met Chevy. Shelby just mentioned him to me.”
    Harriet clasped Boston’s hand between both of hers, giving enthusiastic pats and jerks, so that his whole arm was working like a puppet string. “Oh, I see. Well, Shelby’s always had a crush on Chevy, so I’m not surprised she mentioned him.”
    “I do not have a crush on Chevy!” she burst out, mortified in the extreme. Chevy was nice if you liked talking dirt bikes and Budweiser memorabilia, and you didn’t mind that his body was the size of a 747, but she had no aspirations to live with a walking beer encyclopedia.
    Boston raised an eyebrow.
    Harriet leaned forward and whispered in a voice loud enough to ensure that any person within forty feet heard, “I’m sure Shelby would have eventually married Chevy except that she let Danny Tucker knock her up first.”
    Boston’s startled eyes shifted to her, and Shelby felt a hot rush of shame sweep over her. Lord, but she felt like she was eighteen again, with every gaze in Cuttersville condemning and self-righteous. Gran’s disappointed silence. Her mother’s shrieking hysterics.
    Her fear then that she would never make it fly as a wife and mother.
    And sadness too, which crept up on her now sometimes flat out of nowhere and reminded her that if she hadn’t miscarried, she would have a seven-year-old child now, just about the age of that boy in the cemetery.
    “I have to get going,” she said, stumbling over her words. “I’ll see you around, Boston. Don’t let Harriet give you highlights.”
    She turned, pain in her gut, intent on making a quick getaway. Boston’s commanding corporate voice stopped her.
    “I still want my tour, Shelby. I’ll see you at the house at seven.”
    It wasn’t spoken as a question, but she didn’t want to argue it with him in front of Harriet. Nor did she want any of the salon sharks who were plastered to Harriet’s front window to see the stupid tears in her eyes.
    “Fine. But it’s fifty bucks for a private tour.”
    It was only after he agreed and she walked away that she realized something about that phrasing sounded vaguely like prostitution.
    Just her luck, Harriet would be spilling it all over town that Boston Macnamara was pimping out Cuttersville girls and Shelby Tucker was his madam.
     
    Boston stepped out of the shower, feeling his hair to make sure that all of the mousse Harriet had slapped in it had been removed. He should have known better than to get a haircut in Cuttersville. Common sense would have dictated that he wait until the weekend and drive the hour and a half to Cincinnati to get a cut by someone who wasn’t still using nineteen-eighties hair products.
    But he hadn’t, so he’d gotten mousse.
    Fortunately, she hadn’t messed up the cut. He padded across the white tile floor, his feet still damp, and looked in the oval mirror hanging over the vanity sink. He had only needed a trim, with those annoying little neck hairs shaved off, and Harriet had managed that, all while extolling