Fake Halo

by Piper Lennox

  But mostly...I don’t want him even getting the chance to hurt her.

  “You don’t care,” she seethes, “because you don’t have standards.”

  “Wow. Insulting me and yourself in one fell swoop. That’s efficient.” I lower my head and stare at her. “Seriously, do you hear yourself? It’s just hair, Clara.”

  “It’s not ‘just hair.’ It’s controlled my entire fucking life up to this point. And it always will.” Her eyes glisten again. “My whole job is focused on beauty, Wes. I’ve studied makeup and hair and fashion basically since birth, so yeah: I know damn good and well how important hair is. And I’ve gotten enough reactions to know no one sees past this.

  “Even my mom and Georgia don’t fully get it. So don’t think you can stand there telling me it’s not a big deal, because I know it is. And don’t you dare try and make me believe I’ll find a guy who can accept it without getting invested in me, first. Because if I believe that, I’ll be alone the rest of my life.”

  Her chest heaves, out of breath and finally out of words. She blinks, tears skating down her face as she shoves me away from the door again.

  This time, I move.

  She doesn’t tell me where she’s going. She doesn’t have to.

  “Say hi to Ewan for me,” I spit, ignoring the middle finger she gives me as the elevator closes.

  For my sake, I hope I’m right. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t love the idea of Clara retreating to me so I can lick her wounds.

  But for her sake, outweighing what I want for what might be the first time in my life…I hope I’m wrong.

  Twenty-Four

  “Oh...you’re early.”

  Ewan wipes his hands on a dishtowel tucked into his belt loop and kisses me, ushering me inside.

  “Sorry.” Thirty minutes was the closest I could do, since I’ve spent the last few hours wandering the streets of New York like an ant separated from its line. All I wanted was to calm down so I could think straight, but it didn’t work. Wes’s words keep rumbling in my head.

  “No, no, I’m glad you’re here. I got worried when you didn’t answer my texts.” Motioning to the stove, he says, “I started dinner just in case you said yes, but the flat’s still a bit of a mess.”

  “I don’t mind.” I reassure him with the brightest smile I can manage.

  I shouldn’t have come here. I don’t have to prove a damn thing to anyone, let alone Wes.

  What are you trying to prove, exactly?

  Either way, Wes will be right about one thing. Whether that’s the fact a guy can actually accept my illness before falling for me...or that Ewan isn’t going to be that guy, I don’t know.

  I guess I’m about to find out.

  As I tour Ewan’s apartment and relax in the simmering smells, my heartbeat slows. His wonderfully strange accent asks me about my day, and I start to feel glad I took him up on dinner.

  So he doesn’t get my brain cranking out wild fantasies my body can’t ignore.

  So the feelings I have for him are more of a crush than anything serious.

  Better that than a constant braiding of fury and lust, alongside a light switch between Enemies and Friends.

  “I’ve missed you,” he says, while we open some wine and wait for our meals to cool. We’re on his balcony. My eyes shut in the breeze, so glad to be in the setting sun and out of Wes’s apartment. Far from his words, and that stare, and all that sunlight where I couldn’t hide.

  “You missed me?” I ask, when I look at him again.

  “At the dog park. It’s strange, not seeing you in the mornings anymore.” He tastes his wine thoughtfully, eyes narrowing on the tealight he lit between us. “That, uh...that boss of yours doesn’t seem to care for me, much.”

  “He doesn’t care for anyone, or vice-versa,” I mutter, and drink my wine with far less ceremony. “Don’t take it personally.”

  “Is there.... I suppose I don’t have the right to ask you this, but maybe I do...is there anything going on, between you and him?”

  Immediately, I’m reliving the cabana. Our contact in the elevator. His crushing kiss and the fire that ignited in me, watching him release onto my body.

  The weird, stupid thrill I got, just from having him call me by my name.

  “No.” Everything rattles when I put my empty glass down and push it to him for a refill. “Can we talk about something else?”

  We chat throughout the meal. I let Ewan do most of the talking, if only because I can’t stop hearing what Wes said about thirty-day trials and vanilla, stationary sex. Asshole.

  Before dessert, Ewan gathers our dishes and takes them in. By the time it occurs to me that I should do dishes or, at a minimum, help with dessert, he’s already done both.

  “You seem preoccupied.” He hands me a bowl of ice cream once I settle into his sofa. It’s threadbare and smells like a basement, which makes my eyes water, but I convince myself it’s a nice couch.

  It’s a couch I wouldn’t mind sleeping with someone on. No matter how vanilla he might be.

  “I got in a fight with someone earlier. It’s nothing.” I shake my head. No more thoughts of Wes, good or bad.

  “Should I...take your mind off things?” he laughs shyly, and I tell him absolutely.

  Until now, all we’ve done is make out in taxis and the back of a movie theater like teens on their first chaperone-free dates. We touch through clothes, but I’ve done a much better job at stopping things with him than I did with...ahem, other men, who I’m trying not to think of at the moment.

  This time, when his hand deftly undoes the buttons of my shirt, I don’t stop him. When his erection presses to my thigh, I push back and try to get lost in the noise he makes.

  “Clara,” he breathes, face buried in my neck, “you’re so beautiful....”

  I shut my eyes and push my fingers through his hair, heart pounding the second I feel his hand climb my neck to do the same thing.

  “You’ve always got a hat on,” he whispers teasingly. People do that: tease me about my hats, or brow makeup, or anything they notice too many times to keep ignoring. “Bad haircut?”

  My ribs ready to crack themselves in half. “Kind of.”

  “Show me. It can’t be that bad.”

  “A guy shouldn’t have to fall in love with you before he accepts a flaw that, honestly, isn’t that big a deal.”

  When I swallow, the pain in my throat radiates down my sternum. “Okay.”

  I slip off the hat.

  Ewan observes it slowly, while I stare at the scuffed particleboard of his coffee table. “Well?”

  “What’s this?” The cool pad of his thumb against the bald patch makes me stiffen. “Someone get too close with the clippers?”

  Even the soft chuckle he gives can’t numb the horror I feel in this moment, actually showing someone what I’ve done to myself. What I’ve done before, and what I’ll keep doing, in varying patterns and intensities until I get so old I either don’t have hair anymore, or my hands stop working right. Whatever comes first.

  “I pulled it out,” I whisper, the tears in my eyes like bleach.

  Ewan draws back. “Why?”

  “I don’t know.” The words bubble out of my stomach. “I have this—”

  “You’d be so beautiful, Clara, I just...I can’t understand why you’d do that to yourself.”

  Do you think I enjoy this? I’ve gotten this kind of comment before, as a kid. Even my own mother couldn’t grasp it, until one doctor in a sea of many finally told us it had a name.

  And then, eventually, that it had no cure.

  Ewan looks over the rest of me, head to toe. “Is that...is that the only place you do it?”

  “No.” Strangely, I feel the shame burning inside me turn cold. I feel myself growing numb.

  I feel myself beginning to not care one fucking bit if Ewan accepts it or not—because I realize I don’t fully care about him. Maybe there was a reason it was so easy to stop things from going farther, whene
ver he tried. Maybe there’s a reason I haven’t been dreaming of him the way I dream of Wes.

  Maybe this is what I was trying to prove.

  “I do it from everywhere,” I tell him, as the fire grows and forges every word. “I dig out ingrown hairs with a needle and pull those too. If I get a root, I touch it to my mouth. Sometimes I scrape it off with my teeth. And I do all of this without even being aware of it.”

  My challenge quiets, already seeing that he’s failed before I whisper, “Does that bother you?”

  “Everywhere?” he repeats, eyes instantly drawn to my skirt. The tenting of his pants is gone.

  As I grab my purse, I tell myself it’s not his fault: it is a lot to process. It’s not like I can expect immediate acceptance.

  Well, why not?

  Questions or confusion, I can understand. Even shock or a poorly-timed joke or two might be okay, depending on the person.

  But not this: the fact Ewan just keeps sitting there, staring, when he sees me readying to leave.

  Five minutes ago, I was beautiful—and now I’m not. I merely “could be.”

  He hands me my hat. I rip it out of his grasp.

  “Should I get a cab to take you home?” he asks quietly.

  Wes was right. What a stupid fucking accent.

  I swing his door open and breathe in the scent of the hallway. It smells like dust and commercial grade disinfectant, but that’s miles above the basement scent of his couch.

  He stands, but doesn’t move to stop me when I step into the hall.

  “No, thanks,” I tell him. “I’m not going home.”

  I haven’t checked my stats in hours. Out of boredom, and because every app on my phone is already opened to my pages, I check now.

  Since Clara’s post yesterday, views are up. Likes. Comments. Subscribers. All of it’s seen a noticeable change.

  And I still couldn’t care less about any of it.

  “I’m sorry,” I text her. She reads it, but doesn’t answer.

  “Bowie.” When I slap my leg, his lazy ass lolls in the dying orange sunset on the carpet. “Bowie, outside?”

  Reluctantly, he shuffles over to me and lets me clip him in.

  “Don’t give me those sad eyes,” I tell him. “I didn’t run her out of here. She left.”

  We don’t walk for long. Part of it is because Bowie just doesn’t find much to catch his interest, on this particular walk: no cats on fire escapes, no bike messengers to tail like he’s never seen a bike in his life—but a big part is that I don’t want to go far, in case she comes back.

  Why the hell would she come back?

  I hate this feeling: hoping Ewan treats her right, but also wanting him to stay the hell away from her regardless. Wanting Clara to be happy and believe she’s beautiful, but knowing I probably can’t be the one to make either happen.

  “Wes, man, how are you?” Solomon nudges my shin as I pass, so distracted I almost don’t notice him on the stoop of the building beside mine. “Haven’t seen you around for a while.”

  “I’ve been out plenty,” I tell him, while Bowie curls up on the step beside him and flops down like he lives here. “You just sleep until four p.m. and miss it.”

  “Seen you with some cute girls,” he grins. “What’s their story?”

  “One’s my sister. And sixteen. So she’s off-limits.” I sit against the low stone handrail and wet my lips, staring at the cigarette butts in the sidewalk cracks. “And the other’s....”

  He laughs. “Yours?”

  I was struggling to find some words to describe Clara properly. “Mine” is as far from accurate as I could get. “No.”

  “Ah,” he nods, leaning back on his elbows, “had a few like that before. It happens.”

  “Profound.” I slap his hand and tug Bowie off the steps, who reluctantly follows. “I feel much better, dude, thank you.”

  He cracks up again. “Any time. And hey,” he calls, when I’m almost inside my building, “my mom’s been bugging me to get you over for dinner again soon. Don’t break her heart.”

  Smiling, I assure him I won’t.

  A nagging feeling tells me I could, and probably should, go over there tonight. It’s certainly better than flopping into bed and letting Bowie reject me, preferring to take his nap on the sofa.

  Instead, I watch the sky melt and wonder what Clara’s doing, and why I can’t stand that it’s not with me.

  It’s the earliest I’ve fallen asleep in years. Deep as hell, too: the kind of sleep where you’re halfway dead.

  So how on earth I hear the soft knock on my door, so quiet it doesn’t even wake Bowie, I have no idea.

  I can only assume I was waiting for it—that I fully expected to find her there on the other side of the door, illuminated in the fluorescents like the neon of the city is stuck to her from the walk over here.

  As soon as she flows inside and kicks the door shut behind her, she kisses me.

  Twenty-Five

  Wes grabs my hips and lifts me against him, my legs wrapping around his waist while he presses me against his door.

  “You’re back,” he whispers.

  I sink my teeth into his smile, adoring the pressure I feel growing between his legs.

  Heavy-lidded, he watches when I draw back and finally release his lip, now swollen and begging me to do it again.

  “You’ve been crying,” he says.

  I pause and sniff while he kisses the tear tracks still on my face, curving down my jaw. “Yeah…but only for a little bit. I stopped, when I remembered what you said. That he doesn’t deserve me.”

  “Not so sure I deserve you, either.”

  “More than him.”

  “Low bar,” he laughs, licking the entire length of my throat until I’m gasping, imagining his tongue everywhere else, “but I’ll gladly hop over.”

  He pushes off from the door and carries me to the bedroom. Bowie follows, but Wes kicks a tennis ball down the hallway and locks him out, promising to make it up to him later as he sets me on the bed.

  “Can I undress you?”

  The fact he even asks makes me tilt my head in the moonlight and electric hum of the skyline, wondering if this man who swept me up in the darkness really is Wes. “Of course.”

  He does it quickly, but with a softness I never could have predicted—and in the exact opposite order I expected.

  First my skirt and panties, giving a heavy and happy kind of sigh when he sees my bare sex.

  For once, I’m not wondering what the guy thinks of the red bumps, or the uneven patches of hair despite constant shaving to try and keep the pulling at bay. I’m not panicking when his hand slides between my thighs.

  “You’re so wet.” His breath paints my skin until I shiver, the damp heat unbearable and addictive. His fingers enter me as he rises over me, his free hand unbuttoning my blouse. With every inch of my chest and stomach he uncovers, Wes moves the fingers inside me faster.

  “Oh,” I moan slowly, head tumbling into his pillows. “Wes, that’s it....”

  He undoes my bra and kisses my nipples, then flicks his tongue over each until his breath feels like ice. He presses his warm lips to them, and my body shudders in the mixed sensations.

  My nails rake down his back and gather his shirt, pulling it off him like a tablecloth trick.

  His mussed hair tickles my face when he leans close to whisper, “Where am I coming tonight?”

  Much as I loved him finishing on my stomach—and much as I’d love to see and feel it again—I’m also thrilled by every last possibility. I don’t get it. I’ve never found ejaculate sexy, and certainly not worth dreaming about.

  But I dream about his. I find his release, from the face he makes to the process itself, so incredibly sexy I can’t wait to experience it however I can.

  “My mouth,” I whisper finally, and Wes bites his smile and groans the start of a curse word.

  I undo his jeans and shove them down with his boxers, pumping him to the rhythm of his
fingers inside me.

  “Okay, okay,” he says suddenly, withdrawing his fingers to grab my wrist and stop me when he’s close. “Let me get these pants off.”

  He trips his way out of bed, the jeans and boxers caught at his ankles. I laugh. He smiles, calling me mean.

  After he helps me out of my opened blouse, he slides my bra straps down my arms like applying salve to a burn. Every touch, no matter how fast or slow, makes me hungrier for him.

  “Should I get a condom? It won’t taste great when I pull out to finish in your mouth,” he chuckles, resting the pad of his thumb against my bottom teeth, “but I can find one somewhere if that’s the only option.”

  “I’ve got that Implanon rod in my arm,” I tell him, but my words are indecipherable.

  “What?” He laughs, removing his hand. I smile and repeat it.

  Then I open my mouth, look up at him, and wait patiently for him to put his thumb back.

  “Weirdo,” he whispers, stare heavy as he sticks it there again.

  Slowly, I draw it the rest of the way into my mouth and envelop it with my tongue until, with his brow furrowed, he swallows hard and shuts his eyes.

  “Fuck, Clara...I don’t know how you do this to me.” He holds his erection and shows me the pre-ejaculate forming at the tip, every vein seeming to flinch when I suck his thumb harder. “I’ve only ever gotten this hard around you. I only do this kind of shit with you—coming in your belly button. Putting whatever I can into your mouth. Fucking around with you in public places, just because I couldn’t wait to touch you.”

  When he shuts his eyes to the ceiling, I release his thumb. Right away, he puts it to good use, rubbing my nipples until I lie back. I hold his hand with both of mine and pull him with me.

  “You know why you haven’t slept right,” he whispers, lips playing their way across my ear while he positions himself, “ever since that night in the cabana?”

  “Obviously not,” I whisper back, mirroring his seductive tone, “or I wouldn’t have emailed a therapist about it.”

  His teeth sink a soft, broad bite into my neck. “Such a sharp tongue. It amazes me it can lick things so well.”