Confessed

by Nicola Rendell

  She looks down her cheek and smooths the end, wrapping the bottom around her finger to make a curl. Then she lets it go. “We’ll get a wig.”

  I click my tongue. “You never struck me as a wuss yourself. But everybody’s got to be wrong sometime,” I say.

  That does it.

  “Ass!” she gasps.

  She tugs me towards the dirty blondes, but I pull her all the way to the dark brunettes. I pick up a box of dark brown. The girl on the box, a fucking bombshell herself, doesn’t hold a candle to Lucy. But she’s got those same cheekbones. Eyes not half as beautiful as the ones staring at me now.

  “I think that’s Miss Venezuela,” she says, edging towards the strawberry blondes.

  I hand the box to her. She doesn’t take it.

  “I could wear a hat.”

  “Helen.”

  “A bandana?”

  I slide my fingers down to her ass and give a little squeeze. Her frown shifts into a smile so slowly, I barely even see it happen. “I’ll bet you’ve got a real thing for brunettes.”

  I bend down towards her ear like I’m going to say something ultra-sexy, but I know how to speak her language even better than that. “Why don’t you go grab some snacks?” I say.

  Her face warms right up,. “Snacks. Yes. But I’m getting bandages and Advil for you first,” she says, raising her chin a little. “And Bactine.”

  “Fine.”

  “And Arnica.”

  “Whatever you want.”

  She smiles and puts her hand on her hip. “What kind of snacks?”

  “Surprise me. I’ll meet you up front. I’m going to take a piss.”

  And off she goes. She’s not carrying her purse anymore, and she puts her hands into her pockets. She glances at me over her shoulder, just once, and smiles. I give her a wink back.

  I don’t have to piss. I’m going to pay for this stuff because I want to, and she’d make a big scene about it if she knew. On the way to the pharmacy counter, I walk through office supplies and grab a pair of scissors, big ones, and toss them in the basket. I step up to the pharmacy window and empty our stuff on the counter.

  I put the dye down first. The checker scans it with the laser gun. Then the nail polish. The eye shadow. Lipstick. Fake lashes. “Peony and Pear” body wash.

  The woman looks at me like I’m very suspicious.

  “What? Don’t judge me,” I say, and take out my wallet.

  20

  We check into the Baymont Inn as Mr. and Mrs. Warren. I pay cash, still annoyed that he tricked me out of paying at CVS. The room is neat and clean and smells like carpet cleaner. As we walk in, Vince moves to the window and shuts the drapes while I lock the door.

  But then he drops the CVS bag on the bed and takes out the box of dye. I had some vague idea that I could use my feminine wiles to get out of this one, but I’m pretty sure that’s not happening.

  He’s already got it open and is reading the instructions.

  My heart sinks.

  My hair is my Achilles heel. I have a recurring nightmare that I completely lose my mind and tell the hair stylist, “Go ahead! Cut it all off!” after which I wake up in a cold sweat, pawing at my head to make sure it hasn’t really happened. I’m attached to it in the kind of way that if I was going to draw a picture of myself—Me! Draw! Just imagine!—I’d probably just do a stick figure with long blonde hair and nothing else. That’s me. My hair. Doesn’t matter that it’s the magical product of modern chemistry and a salon appointment every six weeks. My hair is me. For seven years running, I’ve gone as Rapunzel for Halloween.

  Vince glances over the weirdly large set of instructions. He flips it over with a crumpling noise. Stuck to this side is the pair of plastic gloves for application. The sinking feeling goes all the way to my toes.

  It’s not just what defines me physically. It’s also—and this I’m not telling Vince, because oh my God he’d tease me for it forever—my hobby. I have 27, count ’em, 27, YouTube tutorials on hair braiding. Highest-rated French braid video on the internet, yes siree.

  “Gonna wear that?” he asks, looking me up and down. “It’d be a shame to ruin that pretty top…Peaches.”

  Sometimes I like that nickname—hell, sometimes I love it. But sometimes, the way he says it, I just get so pissed off.

  Going on the lam, it isn’t all romance. I pull my tank off over my head, exposing a black bra that does delightful things for my girls. I get a glimpse of myself in the full-length mirror. In my bra and leggings, I look like I’m about to teach a hot yoga class. I look at my hair over my shoulder, curly and pretty from the braid. I really, really don’t want to do this. At all.

  “Want me to show you the camel pose?”

  “Nice try,” he says.

  “Hey, baby. I’d like to align your chakras.”

  A huge belly laugh shoots out of his mouth but he doesn’t look up from the dye instructions. But he quiets down just as fast, yanks his own shirt over his head, and heads for the bathroom.

  I trot after him. We stand together in front of the mirror, and the fluorescent bulb kicks on. Something in the bathroom smells funny. Like cheap soap and a whiff of mildew.

  I say a little silent goodbye to my hair, to me, as I unbraid it for him. I can always braid it, I think, dragging my fingers through a knot.

  Except then he pulls a pair of scissors from the bag and opens them in the air with a metallic slice.

  Purely out of reflex, I clutch at my hair. “Oh no. We’re not doing that. Brown, yes. Short, no.”

  His eyes flash. He runs his hand down my hair, letting his hand rest at the small of my back. “It’s fucking beautiful, but there’s no way you can keep it this long.” He looks at me a little sadly. “If it’s something you’re known for, you gotta ditch it.”

  “What, like you and that tattoo?”

  “Stop.”

  I shut my eyes. God, oh my God. What a shallow, little, horrible person I am. I find myself searching for my now-buried peanut necklace in an attempt to find something just a little bit familiar to hang on to.

  “Hair like this, it’s what surveillance videos are for.”

  I open one eye. The fluorescent bulb flickers insanely. “How short?”

  He looks it up and down. “The shorter the better.”

  “An inch.”

  He shakes his head, slowly. So slowly. I feel his hand caress the curve of my hip. “God, you’re adorable.”

  “Two inches.”

  He brings his hand up my back and presses his fingers on my shoulders. Each one is warm and strong. He doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t have to. Just stands there with the scissors in the air and waits.

  I let out a long deep breath. I sound like some lady doing Lamaze. I nod. “Okay. Okay.”

  His lips press against the back of my head, and he sets the scissors down. For a moment, he disappears and then returns with my makeup bag. This he unzips and takes out my brush. Carefully, gently, he brushes out the knots and tangles. He brings his body up behind mine, and I feel him hard against my ass. As he passes the brush down my scalp, the teeth slide down my back, and I shudder. I lean back into his body, melting into his heat and strength. With one hand on my side, at the curve of my waist, he keeps me steady.

  “Fuck, you make me hard,” he says.

  I don’t think I manage a word. He moves the teeth of the brush through my hair down my spine. It’s more a “ummmfffnnnggs.”

  He goes on brushing. With the other hand, he explores my body, dragging his fingers down my skin, possessively kneading my flesh so that my skin ripples under the pressure of his hand. I watch white marks appear and then disappear in the wake of his fingers, like contrails after an airplane.

  The teeth of the brush on my bare back send goose bumps all over my body. The noises I make are downright lurid. “I say we skip the makeover. Let’s just do this forever.”

  He unfastens my bra, and the straps fall over my shoulders. The brush moves over my nipples,
making them perk up instantly and sending a shiver through me. I place a hand and forearm over them, not even thinking. He shakes his head at me in the mirror. “Don’t you dare hide from me.”

  And I drop my hand.

  He studies my face with a serious intensity that I haven’t seen from him or anybody else before. I let myself fall forwards, against my outstretched arms on the sink. He runs the teeth down my spine, and then pulls my leggings down, with my panties. He bends me forward so I’m bent over the sink, elbows on the fake marble. Easing my head down between my shoulders, I get lost in the rubbery teeth gliding over every inch of me. I close my eyes and wonder if he’s going to move back up again.

  A quick whistle fills the air, then a whack! A stinging, sharp, searing pain straight up from my ass. “Fuck!” I gasp, popping my eyes open.

  But he just spins the hairbrush, and I watch him swallow his smile. He straightens me up and squares my shoulders. He holds the brush out in front of me, and I take it. Which is when he picks up the scissors again.

  His hands make them look like kids’ scissors. But they most definitely are not. “Ready?” His fingers brush across my hair, straightening it out. I try hard to memorize the feeling of the ends at the small of my back.

  I nod. I close my eyes. “I’m ready.”

  For one second, nothing happens. But then I hear the biting slice followed by the cool metal of the blades, gracing my neck. Just below my ear. My hand flies up to the spot, but I don’t open my eyes. “Oh my God. That’s not two inches!”

  “It was never going to be two inches.”

  The edge of my hair tickles the very bottom of my jaw. My hands get clammy, and I feel a little woozy.

  I glance down at the floor and see my hair in heaps. Another long lock joins the pile. I don’t have the courage to look at myself in the mirror

  “Don’t move,” he says. Slice goes the scissors along the other jaw.

  Tears well up in my closed eyes. I work my palms into fists. I feel another handful of hair land on my feet.

  I feel almost sick. “I can’t do this,” I whisper.

  One more snip and he says, “You already did. Take a look.”

  I brace myself and force my eyes open. A sort of strangled yelp comes out of my throat. I slap my hand to my mouth. He trims a little bit off the right-hand side to even it out.

  It’s a straight-across bob. Tight, clean, angular. I feel like I look like Sia, maybe, but then I lose sight of myself behind misty eyes.

  “You look fucking beautiful.” He sets the scissors down.

  I don’t feel beautiful. I feel panicked and lost and weirdly ridiculous for having this near-breakdown over the loss of twenty inches of keratin. But it’s real. It’s overwhelming. It’s not just an idea anymore.

  I grip the edges of the Formica counter and let the fear sink all the way in. I let myself feel it all at once. The terror. The potential outcome. Everything. For five seconds, I let myself be terrified.

  And then I let it go. Because there’s no going back now.

  I lift my head and open my eyes. “I’m okay,” I say, and grip the edge of the sink. I look like me and not-me. Suddenly, I have an idea… Because then there he is, behind me, sexy as ever, pushing his hair back with his hand.

  “You’ve got people after you too,” I say, turning towards him.

  “Yeah.” The look he gives me, it’s brutal. A warning. “And?”

  But I feel like it’s time to level the playing field. “It’s not just me who has to disappear.”

  “No, you don’t,” he says, reaching to grab the scissors from my hand.

  I get to them first, snip the air and press him to the wall with my hand to his chest. “Oh yes. I do.”

  He’s acting like a shorn sheep, but he looks just gorgeous. He keeps running his fingers over the short buzz and then staring at his hands. Using the scissors alone made him look like the victim of a rampant lice infection and a rushed home haircut, but now I clean him up him up using the 1/8th guard on his electric razor. Honestly, I didn’t think he could get hotter. But he is. I turn off the razor and tap the guard into the sink.

  He says, “That was unnecessary.” He examines himself side to side in the mirror, setting his jaw in a particularly serious way. Everybody’s got their mirror face. Mine is pouty. His happens to be just absurdly hot.

  “Agree to disagree,” I say, sweeping our hair into a pile on the floor with a dry washcloth and then putting it in the garbage. “I think you look twice as sexy as you did before. More…dangerous.” I eye him in the mirror. One of his hands drifts to my ass, but his other palm keeps rubbing his scalp. I find it incredibly sexy how untanned the skin of his scalp is. He looks almost military. Military and dangerous. “Like a dishonorably discharged Navy Seal, maybe.”

  “Aren’t you a goddamned riot,” he says.

  I dust the last little bits of hair off my leggings and then get up on my tiptoes to run my fingers over the buzz. “It’s sexy. Admit it.”

  He glares at me. “We’re not done with you yet, Peaches.” He takes the box of dye from the bag.

  I purse my lips. “I’m looking forward to this part.”

  “Oh yeah?”

  “Yeah. A brand new me.”

  He opens the box. “Now you’re getting it.”

  I mix the dye with the developer and shake the bottle. Vince puts on the gloves, and I unscrew the cap, handing it to him over my shoulder. I’m feeling pretty okay about it all until I realize that the top of the box says, “PERMANENT.”

  “No, no, wait, wait, that's…” Only it’s too late to stop him. He’s already started putting it all over my roots. In a moment, my hair is covered all over with the creamy dye. It smells strongly of ammonia and chemicals that probably shouldn’t be inhaled in an enclosed space.

  He sniffs. “You want to know the first thing I thought when I laid eyes on you?” he says, pausing with the gloves crinkling by my ear.

  I nod. As I do, the tip of the applicator rubs against my scalp. A glop of die lands on my part.

  “That if you were a brunette, I’d be totally fucked.”

  I turn a little, and he repositions my face straight ahead with the clean-gloved hand. “You did not.”

  “I fucking did. I thought, ‘Good thing she’s blonde, or she’d be kryptonite.’” He pauses with the squeeze bottle in the air. His gloves crinkle.

  Lowering my eyes to the counter, I focus on a chip in the Formica. “You’re just saying that.”

  “Yeah? I look like the type of guy who just says things?” he asks.

  True, so true. I try to stifle back a smile. It doesn’t work. I’m biting my lip and smiling at him, and that’s totally okay with me.

  Crinkle-crinkle go the gloves. The little applicator bottle gasps for air when he squeezes it. “Now, hold still because I want to do this right. Copy that, beautiful?”

  “Copy, that…Captain.”

  He coughs. “Yeah, you can call me that whenever you want. Whenever.”

  He applies the dye carefully and meticulously, starting at the back of my scalp and working down and forwards. He’s thinking so hard the muscles in his jaw flutter. There is something intensely lovely about this, this big beast of a man so carefully dying every last strand of my hair.

  “Have you ever done this before?” I ask as he’s just moving towards the front of my face. He places one of his gloved fingers on my hairline to make sure the dye doesn’t drip down.

  He looks at my eyes in the reflection and holds them for a long pause. Part of me is expecting him to say he did, with some old girlfriend.

  “Yeah. Before my mom passed, I’d do it for her.” He blinks and looks away, like he’s trying to shake off the memory and yet hang on to it too.

  And that’s when something small but important shifts in my heart. It has a feeling and a sound. A tiny, heavy pow.

  After twelve minutes, which he keeps track of with adorable care using the clock beside the bedside table, he turns o
n the shower. He checks the temperature with his hand and guides me inside. The shower is tiled in those tiny one-inch tiles all over like they have at the gym. I tip my head back under the water. He gets in behind me, swiping the curtain shut behind him.

  He lets the water run down over my head, and it makes long, dark drips all over my skin. I watch the dye pool down around my feet and run down my legs in long, watercolor streaks.

  Through the streaming water, I study his legs, his skin, the tiniest little parts of him that get lost in the overwhelming whole. His skin has this natural glisten, this moisture that just drives me wild. I watch the water bead on his abs and his half-hard cock. He massages my head with his big hands, and I see the water starting to run clearer in the tub.

  “So you know what I want to do,” he says, wringing out my hair before bringing it back into the spray of the showerhead. “But what about you? You never did say.”

  Again, I reach for my necklace. I had no idea how often I did that until my peanut was gone. “You’ll laugh. I know you’ll laugh.”

  “You didn’t laugh at me,” he says. His fingers rub my scalp, and his other palm grips the back of my neck. “It really doesn’t matter.”

  “The hell it doesn’t.”

  I stare at the soap tray. I think about what a girl like me is supposed to want to do, and I realize I can let all that go now. All of it. What I was supposed to be is no longer what I have to be. “I want to work with horses. A horse farm.”

  His fingers stop massaging my scalp. “Yeah?”

  I nod. He turns my head to rinse upside down. He rakes his fingers through my hair and then he straightens me up, with his palm on the small of my back. Once more he tips my head back and gently moves my bangs away from my forehead.

  “What kind of horses?” he asks.

  “Any kind,” I spit a little of the running water from my mouth and blink. “Abandoned horses, wild horses, anything. Donkeys even. Donkeys are fantastic.”

  He glances at me and then away. Slowly, a smile creeps over his face.

  “What?”