In the distance, there was a figure walking toward me, wavering as though it were a mirage. But then it came closer, and I saw that it wasn’t a mirage at all.
Seeing him, I felt this incredible swell of happiness. I ran toward him, my feet sinking in the soft sand. He stopped, smiled, and then the next second I was in his arms.
It was only weird later, when I woke in a cold sweat. In the dream, it felt right, the same way that I knew it was sunrise and that it felt normal to be wearing this superfloaty skirt that I would never own in my life.
His hands are on my waist, touching bare skin, skimming down my hips. I want to be as close to him as possible, and I arch my back and link my arms around his neck. I’ve never felt this way before, all warm and fluttery and alive. “Nathan,” I breathe.
My eyes flew open, and I sat up like a shot, my tank top twisted and sticking clammily to my body. I looked at Ami, a wave of mortification passing over me. She was still sleeping, but it felt like the dream was a spotlight on me much brighter than the streetlamp slanting through the window blinds. It seemed almost unbelievable to me that she couldn’t see it, that it hadn’t awakened her.
I dreamed about Nathan kissing me. I dreamed about Nathan kissing me. Oh, my God. Nathan touched me. I could still feel his fingers on my skin, feel the warm strength of his arms around me.
What had I been about to say? Before I woke up, I had just said Nathan’s name, and somehow I knew I was on the brink of saying something else. Would I have said, Oh, God, that feels so good?
Where was a good psychoanalyst when you needed one?
RATIONALIZATION: The process of developing a socially acceptable explanation for inappropriate behavior or thoughts
WE weren’t leaving until later the next day, so Tim gave us the morning and early afternoon to see a bit of San Francisco. Normally it would have been a blast, poking around shops with Ami, chatting and people-watching.
But I was still unsettled from my dream the previous night, and Ami, as if sensing my weird mood, was uncharacteristically quiet herself. Aimlessly, we roamed through one particular shop that was a smorgasbord for tourists. Under normal circumstances, Ami and I would have been having a ball trying on the brightly colored hats and mocking all the postcards. But instead, we were going through the motions, picking up kitschy San Francisco snow globes (filled with confetti instead of snow) and minimodels of trolley cars, with little real pleasure.
We left the shop without buying anything and strolled down the sidewalk, and I wished that I had thought to bring a sweatshirt. The chilly breeze coming off the nearby water cut through my Clean Communities T-shirt and whipped long tendrils of my hair around my face. Earlier, I had gathered my hair into a ponytail, but there were still those pieces that crossed obnoxiously over my eyes and stuck to my lips. Ami and I passed a hairdresser’s shop, and I stopped.
“Here,” I said. “I want to get my hair cut.”
“What?”
“I’m sick of it,” I said. “It keeps blowing in my face, and it’s just a pain to take care of. I want it cut.”
Ami put her hands on her hips. “Okay, I wasn’t going to say anything,” she said, “but you’ve been weird all day, and I am not going to let you cut your hair in a mood like this. You love your hair. I love your hair.”
Andrew also loved my hair. For some reason, that only spurred me on. “My mind is made up,” I insisted. “It’s ridiculous to have hair this long.”
“But you get all bent out of shape about Audrey Hepburn cutting her hair supershort in Roman Holiday. You always say you liked it better before.”
“Yeah, but by the time we rented Sabrina and she did it again, I was totally over it, remember? It’ll just take some getting used to, that’s all.”
Ami pursed her lips, obviously considering what to do with me when I was acting like a kid who wanted a new Barbie doll. “Fine,” she finally agreed, surprising me a little.
“Okay,” I said, giving her a sharp nod as if to say, that’s settled. “Let’s do it.”
She grabbed my arm. “It’s your hair, Leigh, and you can do what you want. But as your roommate, future maid of honor, and friend for life, I have to beg you to reconsider. At least wait until we’re back home, okay? You don’t want to get your hair cut at the”—she glanced up at the sign and made a face—“Hair Factory.”
I opened the door, gesturing for her to go inside. “I know what I’m doing,” I said confidently.
Once I was in the chair, a cover draped over me, and my hair wet and combed straight, my poise started to waver a bit. Did I really know what I was doing? Every woman, after all, is born with the instinctive knowledge that there exists no worse fate than a bad haircut. I wouldn’t do anything drastic, I told myself. Just a few inches.
The hairdresser came to stand behind me, cracking her gum loudly. She had a weird, frizzy cut that was slightly longer in the front than in the back. I wanted to ask her if she had cut her own hair, but was scared of the answer.
“Whaddya want?” she asked. Her name tag said her name was Yvonne.
“Um…” I looked around the shop, hoping for last-minute inspiration from one of those posters they always have of gorgeous people with amazing hair. I saw a flyer advertising a program called Locks of Love, asking customers to donate hair to kids with long-term hair loss who need wigs.
That sounded okay. I could justify the haircut a little better if it was a charitable thing.
“How much hair do I have to cut off to donate to Locks of Love?” I asked.
I didn’t know what I expected. Maybe that Yvonne would be so thrilled I was going to do a good deed that she’d wipe the bad attitude from her face. Instead she sighed, pushing the gum around her mouth with her tongue.
“Sheila!” she called to the woman at the next station. “How much hair do you need for that Locks of Love thing?”
Sheila paused in the middle of blow-drying to think about it. “Ten inches?” she said. “Maybe a foot?”
I looked at my hair in the mirror. I had that, easily. “How short would that make my hair?” I asked.
Yvonne took out a measuring tape, stretching it next to my hair. “We gotta give it a couple inches, ’cause it’ll be shorter when it’s dry,” she said, “but right about…here.”
Her hand was above my shoulder. I swallowed. “That’s before or after it’s dry?” I asked.
She moved her hand up to just below my chin. “There,” she said. “Still wanna do it?”
Ami was sitting over in the waiting section, not too far from my chair. She shook her head. “Uh-uh,” she said. “Don’t do it, Leigh. Remember, go gradual.”
But I had already asked about that program. Wouldn’t I go to hell if I chickened out now, just because of a few lousy inches? And kids with diseases, that’s pretty intense. I don’t want that on my conscience. If the haircut was that terrible, it would always grow back.
“I have to agree with your friend,” Yvonne said. “You have really pretty hair. It would be a shame to cut it all off.”
I gritted my teeth. When was the last time a shop clerk said: That’s a really nice shirt you’re wearing. I wouldn’t buy another, if I were you. Or a real estate agent: What a charming home you have. You should live here forever and forget about selling it. It was ridiculous.
And so what if my hair was pretty? Is there a law that says short hair can’t be pretty, too? And don’t sick kids deserve something pretty?
“Go for it,” I said. “Take a whole foot if you need to.”
Yvonne raised her eyebrows. “All right, if you say so.”
She took out her sharp, silver scissors, and I almost backed out. There was that pit in my stomach, the one I always felt on roller coasters—you climb up and up, and the split second before you’re about to rush back down, you’re like, No! I changed my mind, I want off!
I know, I know. That’s part of the thrill. But I actually hate roller coasters. When it makes that steep descent, I’m not the o
ne screaming with excitement. I’m just screaming.
With deft motions, Yvonne plaited my hair into one long braid. She snipped a few of the shorter pieces in the front until they just barely covered my ears. It’s still not too late, I told myself. That could just be your bangs—bangs are back in style, right?
“Having second thoughts?” Yvonne asked.
I almost nodded, but kept it still when I remembered that she had scissors in her hand. “No,” I lied.
She shrugged and began to snip more hair from the front, until finally she hacked the top of the braid, just at the nape of my neck. Out of the corner of my eye I could see my latte-colored braid still in her hand, and I thought I was going to throw up.
I spent the next half hour with my eyes closed, scared even to think about what Yvonne was doing with my hair. She could have shaved the word ice in the side of my head and I would have been completely clueless.
I heard the blow-dryer go on, and I knew she was almost finished. She fluffed a couple of pieces here, combed out others there, and I heard the snip of the scissors as she trimmed some uneven edges.
Finally, she cracked her gum and said, “There ya go.”
I opened my eyes. I couldn’t believe it.
It looked…good. My hair has always been straight and shiny, but sometimes I wished it had a little more volume to it. Now the layers made it look like it was actually styled, curling just under my chin and swinging around my face. And my face, which I’ve always thought was a little too angular to be pretty, suddenly looked softer, glowing, even. I swear, it even made my skin look better.
What a difference a haircut could make.
“Here’s your hair,” Yvonne said, handing me the braid. “I’ll get you the address for that program. You mail it yourself.”
That was kind of a raw deal, but I was still powerless to argue against kids with diseases. I glanced down at all the hair I’d lost, but it didn’t really freak me out the way it would have a few moments ago.
Okay, the braid itself did. Holding a hunk of your hair all braided up felt a little creepy, just a few steps away from moaning, “Precious,” like that dude in Silence of the Lambs. But I didn’t regret the haircut anymore. How could I, when it looked amazing?
I happily paid for the cut, adding a tip for Yvonne that was much more generous than what I would usually pay. Hey, I’m a college student. I don’t try to be cheap. It usually just happens.
“Wow,” Ami said as we walked back out onto the sidewalk. “Your hair looks awesome. How come you never thought to cut it before?”
I shrugged. “I don’t like change,” I said.
Ami nodded, not that she could relate at all to that. Her hair is even shorter than mine, with longer, almost shaggy bangs, but cut short as a boy’s in the back. Just another thing that Ami could pull off that would make me look like a moron.
Then again, short hair suited me a lot better than I had ever thought it would.…
Easy, I told myself. Five minutes into having short hair and I was already planning to go shorter. I wanted to enjoy this length for a while.
I couldn’t help swinging it as I walked, fluffing it with my hands and enjoying its brushing against my cheek. In first grade there had been a girl in my class who always wore this high, bouncy ponytail, and whenever she walked she would twist her whole body, making her hair swing like a jubilant pendulum. I always thought she was the biggest drip.
Now I was beginning to wonder if I’d misjudged her.
“So what do you think Andrew’s going to think?” Ami asked, shooting me a glance from the corner of her eye.
“He’ll like it,” I said, wishing I felt as sure as I sounded.
Ami was silent for a moment. “You haven’t talked to him all weekend,” she said. “Are you two okay?”
In the world’s most obvious change of subject, I looked at my watch. We had another twenty minutes before we had to meet Tim and Li. “Let’s get ice cream,” I suggested brightly, steering her toward a small dairy shop on the corner. “I could use something cold.”
Not too long before, I had been complaining that it was too cold outside, but to her credit, Ami just went along with it. She ordered a cone of mint chocolate-chip, I got a cup of strawberry with rainbow sprinkles, and we sat on a bench to eat.
I let a spoonful of ice cream dissolve on my tongue while I considered my next words. “We didn’t have sex that night,” I said.
“I kind of figured.” Ami peered at a rivulet of green ice cream that was sliding down her cone as though it were the most fascinating thing she’d ever seen. “What happened?”
By now I’d abandoned the condom excuse, even though I still maintained that safe sex was an important issue. “I just got scared, I guess,” I said. “There’d be no turning back from that, you know? And I wasn’t sure I was ready to go there.”
Ami looked at me. “So did you break up?”
“No, of course not,” I said. “We’re just taking a little breather, to reassess.”
“To reassess whether you want to break up?”
“No!” I set my spoon angrily in my cup of ice cream, splattering strawberry on my hand. “We’re not going to break up over something this stupid. I just need some time to think, that’s all.”
“What makes you think this is stupid?” Ami asked. “Sex is an important part of a relationship, you know. Cosmo says that a woman knows within five seconds if she wants to sleep with a man or not.”
I rolled my eyes. “Cosmo doesn’t know everything,” I said. “Just look at all their so-called statistics—‘Thirty-five percent of men have reported getting it on with a superior at work.’ What kind of guys read Cosmo? The kind who sleep around with their bosses, that’s what kind. It’s a misrepresentative sample of the Sex and the City crowd.”
Ami looked like I had just kicked a kitten. “Cosmo has a lot of valuable information in it,” she said. “And Sex and the City was a revolutionary show.”
I wasn’t going to win this one, so why try? “Whatever,” I said. “All I’m saying is that it’s not that I don’t want to have sex with Andrew. I just want everything to be right, and it didn’t feel right that night. But we love each other, and soon, it will.”
I tried not to think about the conversation I’d had with Andrew right before I’d left. Ribbed for her pleasure. Ick.
Ami’s ice cream, untouched for several minutes, had started dripping in earnest, and she gave it a disgusted look before tossing it in the garbage. “Okay,” she said. “Let me ask you this. Have you fantasized about it?”
A guilty flush spread over my face.
“You have!” Ami squealed, as though we were in sixth grade and playing a game of Truth or Dare. “Well, that’s a good sign.”
“Yeah…” I wonder what she’d think if she knew it hadn’t been about Andrew. That stupid dream had been on my mind all day, and it almost seemed worth spilling it all to Ami just to get another opinion on it.
“Actually, I had a dream last night,” I said cautiously.
“A sex dream?”
“Kind of. More…romantic, but yeah, definitely sexy.” My fingers twisted nervously in my newly cut hair. “Did you hear the couple next door going at it last night?”
Ami’s eyes widened. “You heard the people next door having sex?”
I nodded. “Yeah, it was really gross,” I said. “But that’s probably what made me have this dream. That’s the only explanation for it.”
“Two strangers—please tell me it was only two—mating like rabbits through the wall may have been a part of it. But, come on. You and Andrew have been going out for a year without doing it; I’m sure you had sex on the brain anyway.”
Sometimes, when the water was cold, it was better to just jump in. Wading just drew it out and made it harder. “It wasn’t about Andrew,” I said.
Ami blinked, but she recovered quickly. “That’s not unusual,” she said. “I’ve had sex dreams about faceless or random people before.”
“Oh, he wasn’t random, and he had a face,” I said. I took a deep breath. “It was Nathan.”
Ami’s jaw dropped. Literally. Her mouth hung open for what felt like several minutes, and she started forming words, only to have it drop open again. From the way her lips kept coming together, I could tell she wanted to just say, “What?”
But then her mouth closed, and her eyes squinted, as though she were considering something. “Actually,” she said after a while, “I could see it.”
Now it was my turn to look stunned. “What?” I said. “Ami, that’s crazy. Like you said, it’s normal to have sex dreams sometimes, and it’s been on my brain lately, and there was that couple next door—”
Ami cut me off. “That doesn’t explain why it would be Nathan, and not Andrew.”
I was starting to regret wanting a second opinion. “Look, I don’t like Nathan, okay? I’m in love with his roommate, for crying out loud. Nathan and I can barely stand each other.”
“You said it was more romantic,” Ami said. “That’s gotta say something. What exactly happened in the dream?”
I told her about being on the beach and seeing Nathan, running toward him and then kissing. I could feel my face grow hotter as I briefly outlined the kiss, leaving out the part about the bubbly feeling in my stomach.
“Whoa,” Ami breathed. “That’s major. The sunrise, that’s like new beginnings, right? And a gauzy white skirt…sounds almost like a wedding dress!”
“All right, Stretch Armstrong,” I said. “Cut it out.”
“Fine,” she said. “You’re a psych major. What would the great Freud say about this?”
Non–psych majors always say things like “the great Freud,” as though all psychology students worshipped the man. Don’t get me wrong, I give him props for starting the whole movement into insight and whatnot—but seriously, what a crank.
Psych Major Syndrome Page 14
