The conversation shifts to other topics as Kylie parks in a lot just off the main strip of downtown Nashville. I pay for parking, and she takes my hand. She leads me to Broadway, where the bars and the lights and the shops are, the famous stretch of Nashville. It’s a busy night, despite the chill in the winter air. Couples stroll hand in hand, families, groups of guys and clusters of girls, everyone laughing and going from bar to bar and shop to shop. She’s taking me somewhere specific, I realize, and I go along with her. She finds the door she’s looking for, and I start to balk.
“No, Kylie. Hell no.”
She grins at me. “Come on, Oz. Please? Just look?” She doesn’t bother to wait for my response, just drags me by the hand into the boot and hat shop.
The door is rickety, and an old-fashioned bell sounds as we open it. The floor is covered in old wood planks that squeak and dip as we walk over them, almost as if we might put our foot through a board at any moment. It smells of leather, and the walls are lined with a dizzying array of cowboy boots. There’s a line of benches running through the middle of the store, with piles of boxes between the benches, single boots displayed on top. There are cowboy hats, fedoras, huge belt buckles, a glass case displaying spurs and string ties and expensive gold-and-silver belt buckles. I have never in my life felt more out of place. I’m wearing my beat-up combat boots, a pair of baggy black jeans, a black November’s Doom T-shirt with a gray long-sleeved shirt beneath it. My hair is bound at the back of my neck, and for once I’m not wearing my hat, at Kylie’s insistence. I look every inch the metal kid, and I’m getting looks of confusion from the guy behind the counter, an older man with an actual handlebar mustache and an enormous white cowboy hat, tight jeans, and a flannel shirt tucked behind a thick leather belt and shiny oval buckle.
“Kylie, what are we doing here?” I ask, trying to inch away toward the door.
She just laughs. “Oh, don’t be a sissy, Oz. We’re buying you a pair of cowboy boots.”
I snort. “The f**k we are. For one thing, I don’t have the money for boots, and for another thing, hell, no. I’m not wearing cowboy boots. What about me says I would ever wear something like that?” I point at a pair of boots. They’re black with orange and red flames, gaudy and dizzyingly bright. “Or those?” These are silver, actual snakeskin, with metal scrollwork at the toe and heel.
Kylie just waves at me. “Of course you wouldn’t wear those. We’ve got to find something that suits you.”
“Um, newsflash, sweetness: you ain’t gonna find it here.” I stuff my hands in my pockets and stop in place, refusing to follow her farther into the store.
She keeps going, perusing the selection. At the far end of the store, she seems to find something, and hustles back to me, a box in hand. “Sit.” She pushes me backward until a bench hits my knees, and I sit automatically. “Shoes off.”
I cross my arms over my chest. “No.”
She lifts an eyebrow. “Okay, be stubborn. But you know you can’t say no to me.”
“No. No. No.” I fake a glare. “See?”
“Doesn’t mean you’re going to really say no. Now, boots off, or I’ll take ’em off you for you.”
“What am I, three?”
She lifts both shoulders. “Well, yeah. You are sort of acting like a three-year-old about this.” I just stare at her, and she huffs in irritation. “Just look at them, would you?” She opens the box and hands me a boot.
It is pretty cool, actually. It’s more of a biker boot, square-toed, black, with a strap of black leather running over the top and around the heel, buckled at either side with chunky silver.
“Goddamn it, Kylie.” I glance at the small white price tag sticker with the $300 scrawled on it. “No way. No way I can afford those. They’re not bad, but no.”
Kylie kneels in front of me, grabs my foot, and reaches for the laces. “Who said I was letting you buy them?” She tugs my combat boot off, and for some reason, I let her. “Oz, please. Just try the boots on.”
I sigh. “Fine. But you’re not paying for them.”
“Yes, I am. We f**king killed it, Oz. I’m proud of you.”
I stop with my foot partway into the boot. “You’re proud of me?” I’m not sure whether I’m pissed off at the implication of condescension, or pleased. A little of both.
Kylie glances up at me; my mixed reaction must show on my face, because she says, “Not like…god, that sounds condescending, doesn’t it? I’m just…I’m happy you did it. I had fun. And I know you were as nervous as me, and you did it anyway.”
I stomp my foot into the boot, and then the other foot, and I hate the fact that they’re the most comfortable boots I’ve ever worn. “I get what you mean. And thanks.”
“How do they feel?”
I lift an eyebrow. “Expensive. Really f**king expensive.”
“But good, right?”
I sigh. “Yeah. Comfortable as hell. But you’re not—” I’m cut off by Kylie taking the box up to the counter and whipping out her debit card before I can blink twice.
I watch helplessly as she signs away three hundred dollars and then returns to me, shoves my old battered boots into the box, and grins at me.
“Am too,” she says, with a shit-eating grin.
“Kylie—”
She takes me by the hand, and I let her lead me out of the store. The boots are really, really comfortable, and they look badass. When we’re on the street, she shoves me against the wall between the store and a bar, and presses into me. “Just say thank you, Oz. It’s a gift. It’s me repaying you for giving me the best night of my life. Performing? With you? It was magical. It’s not charity, it’s not because you can’t afford it. It’s because I want to see you in a pair of badass biker boots. It’s because I want to. Because I can. It’s a thank-you. And it’s a ‘please, please will you gig with me again?’ bribe.”
I can’t help but let my hands wrap around her back, resting just above her hips. “Kylie.” I let my forehead touch hers. “Fuck, you’re impossible.”
She smiles at me, her lips nearing mine. “I know. It’s a talent.”
“One of many.” I kiss her, and even on a crowded city street, I feel my resolve wavering.
I’ve refused to sleep with her thus far. I want to, and she wants to, but…I just won’t. She’s waited. She’s still a few weeks from her eighteenth birthday, and she’s a virgin. I’m…not. Decidedly not. Very much not. She thinks she wants her first time to be with me, but she deserves more. She deserves romance. Love. And I’m not sure I can give her that. I like her. I appreciate who she is. Her talents. Her beauty. Her innocence. And it’s for all those reasons that I keep pushing her away, keep telling her no, keep ripping myself away from her when all I want to do is bury myself in her, kiss her and never stop, strip her naked and leave her limp and breathless and ruined for anyone else but me.