by Helen Hoang
He shook his head. “No, it’s not that. I trust your taste. Maybe . . .” He ran his hands up and down his thighs a few times. Was he nervous? “Maybe put the scissors down for now.”
She put the scissors down. Great, he was scared she was going to mess up. She didn’t think she would. She’d picked out something classic and sophisticated. At least, she thought so.
Focusing on the wall, he said, “I’m autistic, and I have sensory issues. There’s a certain way to touch me, especially my face and hair.” He switched his attention to her face. “It’s probably best if I show you. Can you give me one of your hands?”
He held his palm out, and Esme approached him. She didn’t know what “autistic” was, or “sensory issues,” either, but she understood he was trusting her with something important—himself. Holding her breath, she slowly lowered her hand. Closer. Closer. Until they touched.
She bit her lip, expecting him to jerk away or grimace. His warm fingers closed around her and squeezed, and heat melted outward as she exhaled.
They were holding hands.
He cleared his throat. “Light touches bother me, and it’s worse when I don’t know it’s coming. So, when you cut my hair, I’d appreciate it if you kept your touch firm. Like this.” He gathered her hand in both of his and pressed her palm to the middle of his chest, keeping his hands over hers.
He looked calm on the surface, steady, competent, like he always did, but his heart beat wildly beneath her palm. He was nervous. But not for the reason she’d thought.
“All those other times when I . . .” she whispered.
His chest lifted on a deep inhalation. “Too light, and you caught me by surprise.”
“I didn’t know . . .” She’d thought it was her touch. She’d never imagined it was everyone’s touch. “What does it feel like when people touch you too lightly?”
His brow wrinkled. “It’s just too much. It almost hurts, but actual pain is preferable. It’s difficult to describe.”
“If I need to touch you, I should tell you first?” she asked.
“Yeah, it’s best to warn me if I’m not expecting it.”
She tugged on her arm slightly. “Can I touch your face?”
He nodded and let his hands drop away from hers, but his throat bobbed on a loud swallow.
She lifted her fingers toward his jaw but stopped before making contact. “Can you help me?” She didn’t want to get it wrong.
His lips curved with the beginning of a smile, and he brought her hand to his face as he pressed his cheek into her palm. “You don’t need to be so worried. I know what’s going on now. If we work together, I can control my reactions.”
“Is this bad?” she asked, afraid to move a single finger.
“No, it’s fine. For my hair, it’s best if you can keep good tension on the strands while you cut them. I don’t mind if you pull hard. It doesn’t hurt. But no light touch. Please.”
“No light touch.” She reached her other hand toward him, curled the fingers as she hesitated, and then threaded them into his damp hair, pressing her fingertips firmly to his scalp. “Is that okay?”
When his eyelids drooped with pleasure and he nodded, she grew braver. She pushed her other hand from his jaw up to his temple and into his hairline.
“How is that?” she whispered.
“Good.” The word rumbled out of him, deep, almost gravelly.
His hair was thick and cool between her fingers, smooth as silk, and before she realized what she was doing, she was massaging his scalp with slow, sweeping motions. And he was letting her. His eyes fell shut, and he leaned into her touch like he was soaking it up. His breaths came slow, easy. If she pressed her palm over his heart now, she would have bet everything his heartbeat had calmed down. She’d done that.
She pulled on the strands like she usually did while cutting. “How is this?”
He frowned, but his eyes didn’t open. “Tighter.”
“Like this?” She pulled harder.
“More.”
She bit her lip and pulled harder yet, scared of hurting him. “This?”
A long breath sighed out of him. “That’s better.”
She shook her head as she smiled to herself. He was a puzzle she never would have been able to solve if he hadn’t shown her how. Those were the best kinds of puzzles, though, weren’t they? The ones no one else could figure out?
“I’m cutting now,” she said.
He opened his eyes and focused on her. “All right.”
She heard his words, recognized them as permission to go forward, but in that moment, she couldn’t pull her hands back. She wanted to be closer to him, not farther away. Her massage had brought color to his cheeks and a drowsy cast to his dark, dark eyes. His lips had never looked so kissable. The need to kiss him grew into a wild craving, urging her to crawl right onto his lap, press her body against his, and take, take, take.
She wrenched herself away before she could do something she’d regret and took a moment to gather her thoughts. This was a haircut. That was it. His words echoed in her head, a reminder.
You. Have. To. Stop. Do you understand? You. Have. To. Stop.
If he wanted more, he would have to make the first move. She couldn’t do it.
The coldness of the scissors grounded her, and her mind sharpened into focus like a surgeon’s did when they picked up a scalpel. All things considered, Khải had been really tolerant of her, and he was taking her to hunt for her dad today. This was a good thing to do in return, and she wanted to do it well.
Moving to stand behind him, she said, “I’m starting.”
“Okay.”
But just like before, she had difficulty making the first move. He couldn’t see her from here. What if she surprised him and ruined this whole thing before it began?
She held her left hand by his ear. “Can you put my hand in your hair?”
He glanced at her over his shoulder, gave her a puzzled smile, and pressed her hand to his hair before facing forward again.
Her motions were tentative at first, but she gained confidence with every snip of the scissors. She gathered his hair between her fingers, taking care to keep the tension tight, cut, and smoothed her fingers over his scalp before gathering more hair. Over and over, she did this, and before long, the rhythmic nature of it relaxed her as much as it did him.
She trimmed the back and sides and ended up in front of him. With a last snip of the scissors, dark hair floated to the kitchen floor. She took a step back to assess her work, widening her focus to take in more than just his hair, and the transformation made her gasp. He’d been good-looking before. This was too much.
The short haircut opened up his face, showing off his strong features to full advantage. Girls were going to throw themselves at him. Starting with her, if she wasn’t careful.
“How is it?” he asked.
Making sure to keep her touches firm, she tugged on the strands to see if the lengths were even on both sides. “It’s good.” Tapping the handle of the scissors on her jaw, she let a smile sneak onto her lips. “I’m good.”
He dug his cell phone out of his pocket, unlocked it, and handed it to her. “Take a picture for Vy, please. She’s the hair police.”
Esme took pictures from several different angles, but before returning the phone to him, she sent her favorite one to herself. “She’s going to like it.”
He scratched at his neck where small hairs stuck to his skin as he sent the same picture to his sister. “We’ll see.”
She got the broom and dustpan and had half of the hair on the floor swept up when his phone buzzed. Chuckling, he showed her the text messages on his screen.
Finally!
Who cut it? Tip 50%!
My baby brother is a hottie!!!
“I guess she approves,” he said.
Esme grinned. “I told you she’d like it.”
“Thank you.” He returned her smile, and it was one of his rare real smiles that wrinkled his eyes, dimpled his cheeks, and revealed even white teeth.
Sky and earth, she wanted to taste that smile. And each of those dimples. Pure wanting speared through her body on electric currents, making the fine hairs on her skin stand up, and she almost swayed toward him. If she was better at being Esme in Accounting, would he want her back?
His smile dimmed. “What is it? Is something wrong?”
Without taking time to think, she answered, “I want to kiss you.”
When she heard the words fall from her mouth, a furious blush heated her cheeks, and she spun around and busied herself emptying the dustpan into the garbage. Why had she said that? Why?
He approached her. “Esme . . .”
She stepped around him and swept up the rest of the hair on the floor. “Sorry. Forget I said that.” She dumped everything in the garbage again and hurried to return the broom to the closet. “When do you want to go to Cal Berkeley?”
Rubbing at the back of his neck, he said, “We can go after I eat something and shower again, I guess.”
“Okay, I’ll get ready.” She limped toward the hallway.
“Wait, aren’t you hungry?”
Not for food. “No, thank you, Anh.”
“I’ll get you when it’s time to go, then,” he said as he ran his hands through his newly short hair.
“Take your time.”
She’d just be in her room, trying not to think about him.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
As Khai drove Esme to Berkeley, he couldn’t get her confession out of his head.
She wanted to kiss him.
He wanted to kiss her back.
But he couldn’t.
You kissed a woman if you wanted to date her and have a relationship, if you wanted to love and be loved in return, if you could love. If you kissed a woman when you couldn’t deliver on the rest, you were an asshole. It was better to jack off in the shower.
He wished that was an option. Ever since Esme had come into his life, he was in a constant state of arousal, and there was no relief—except for what happened by accident in his sleep. To date, he’d had to get up four times in the middle of the night and change his boxers. It was embarrassing as fuck. Like being twelve again. And his dreams always involved her. Always. Half the time, they involved her Hammer pants, too.
It had been a while since he’d seen those particular pants. Currently, she wore a pair of blue jeans that looked like they’d been painted onto her legs. He didn’t care for denim himself, but he wouldn’t have minded running his palms along her thighs. For someone who didn’t like touching, he spent an awful lot of time fantasizing about it.
When they reached campus, he parked as close as was humanly possible to the registrar’s office, and they walked down the road together. More accurately, he walked. She limped.
“The doctor should have given you crutches.” Instead of his phone number. Opportunistic bastard. “How are you feeling? Do you need help?”
“It’s not too bad.” The smile she beamed at him was sunnier than the yellow long-sleeved shirt she wore. One of the sleeves had orange text down the side that read Em yêu anh yêu em. His written Vietnamese was god-awful, but he knew enough to roughly translate that as Girl loves boy loves girl. It was a nice concept. The circle of love and all that. Too bad he could never complete that circle.
“Let me know if you want to rest. I can just carry you there, too.”
She tucked the hair behind her ear. “If you do that, people will think you’re my boyfriend.”
He looked at the students walking around campus and shrugged. “Why does it matter?”
“In that case, I hurt really bad. Carry me all the way,” she said as she smirked and took an exaggerated limp.
He knew her well enough now to catch when she was joking with him, but he picked her up anyway. She laughed and wrapped her arms around him, grinning at him as her eyes sparkled in the sunlight. Right then and there, Khai decided green was his favorite color, but it had to be this specific shade of seafoam green.
She grew self-conscious all of a sudden, and her hands curled into fists. “I can walk.”
“We’re there.” He nodded toward the large white building with its four massive pillars and Sproul Hall engraved over the middle set of double doors. “The registrar’s office is in there. They should have a database of all the students who’ve gone here. I don’t know if they’ll give us the information you want, though.”
Staring up at the building, she nodded. “He walked up these same stairs.”
She wiggled her legs, and he let her down. She aimed a distracted smile at him before she hobbled up the stairs to the building. When they made it inside, she looked around with roaming eyes and parted lips.
He shoved his hands in his pockets and gave her space to explore. He didn’t really understand her fascination. It was just a building, and it wasn’t like her dad had left part of himself here. Well, if he had, that was nasty.
There wasn’t a line at the registrar’s, so they walked directly to the counter.
“Hi, how can I help you?” the guy asked through his enormous orange beard.
Esme hugged her purse to her chest, wet her lips, and glanced at Khai quickly before she said in rehearsed-sounding English, “My dad went to school here a long time ago. His name is Phil. Can you find him for me, please?”
So she could speak English. She just chose not to. With him. The guy looked at both of them over the tops of his purple plastic-rimmed glasses. “Are you serious?”
Esme nodded.
“You don’t know his last name?” the guy asked.
She swallowed, shook her head, and replied in English again, “No. All I know is Phil.”
Khai slowly turned his head so he could analyze her. She only knew her dad’s first name. That was surprising and . . . sad. This decreased her chances of finding him dramatically.
“There are probably thousands of Phils here. I’m a Phil.” The guy tapped his name badge where it said Philip Philipson.
Khai arched his eyebrows. The guy was about two hundred percent Phil, but his age and coloring were all off. “She has a picture.”
She hurried to pull it out of her purse and handed it over. “Twenty-four years ago.” She tried to smile, but her lips barely curved before she cleared her throat.
Philip Philipson offered Esme an apologetic smile. “I totally want to help you, but I’m not allowed to give you this information. I’m so sorry.”
“But he was here,” she insisted.
“I’m really so sorry. Maybe you should hire a private investigator,” Philip said.
She hugged the picture to her chest as her eyes went glossy, and Khai wanted to reach across the counter and shake an apology out of Phil. Before he could act, Esme pushed away from the counter and limped from the room.
He followed behind as she rushed out of the building, hobbled down the steps, and limped across the plaza to sit by the round water fountain. She dragged in deep breath after deep breath, but as far as he could tell, she wasn’t crying. She might as well have been, though. He didn’t see how it was that different from what she was doing.
A familiar sense of ineffectualness seized him. He never knew what to do when people were emotional like this, but he wanted to do something.
For lack of any better ideas, he sat down next to her and said, “My parents divorced when I was little. I know my dad, but we never see him.”
She turned to look at him. “Why not?” Back to Vietnamese again. What did it mean?
“He’s busy with his new family and lives in Santa Ana. He’s an accountant. Like me. Or maybe I’m like him. I don’t know.” He rubbed his neck. “Maybe
. . . it’s better that you don’t know your dad. You can imagine he’s better than mine.”
“That’s true.” A small smile touched her lips, but it faded quickly. “But I just—I just wanted to know, and if I go without seeing him, I’ll have wasted the trip here, and . . .” She swiped a sleeve over her eyes and tried to take more deep breaths, but then her face collapsed and her shoulders shook.
Fuck, she was crying for real now. Something much like panic gripped him. She couldn’t cry. She was supposed to be happy for the both of them because he didn’t know how.
He grabbed one of her hands. Hand-holding was good, right? But then she leaned toward him, and soon he was hugging her as she buried her face against his neck. The air rushed out of his lungs. She was in his arms, turning to him, trusting him, just like that time she’d had the nightmare.
It was terrifying. It was wonderful.
He didn’t know what to do other than hold her tighter. Students crossed the plaza. Birds chirped in the trees, and a soft breeze blew. Sunlight was warm against his face. She nuzzled closer, and the weight of her body pressed on him. He felt the impression of lips on his neck.
Did that count as a kiss?
She turned her face to the side and peered up at him through damp eyelashes, and he brushed the residual moisture on her cheek away with his thumb. So soft, so pretty. He stroked wet tendrils of hair back from her temples, and her lips parted.
In an instant, everything changed. The wind became velvet, and sound was the loudness of his heart and the rush of his blood. Colors brightened and danced. The green of her eyes, the yellow of her shirt, the blue of the summer sky, it all centered around the pink of her mouth.
He didn’t realize what he was doing until he saw his fingertips smooth over her bottom lip. What a sight to see his tanned skin against her pale face. Her eyes went luminous and dreamy, and when he ran his fingertip over her lip again, her mouth opened wider. He found himself leaning toward her, wanting, wanting, wanting, but he managed to stop before he broke all his rules.
