He glanced down at my hand where it held my glass. “Well, you still have all your fingers…”
I snorted. “Barely, believe me. No workshop with alcohol,” I reiterated.
“Ok, fair enough.” He nodded briskly. “Choice number three is we have another drink andthenyou teach me to braid. I’m assuming it’ll become more fun the more drunk we are.”
“Morefrustrating, maybe,” I countered. “More tangled. Probably not more fun. You kinda need some level of dexterity to pull it off.”
“I,” he shot back, waggling the fingers of his free hand at me, “am nothing if not dextrous. I am the soul of coordination. I am a musician of the body.”
I ate a chip and rolled my eyes. “Ok, maestro. I choose option number…hm.” It was true that braiding after two or three drinks was going to be more of a challenge than braiding after only one. On the other hand, it would loosen me up and if I was going to let Jamison put his hands all over me, it would probably pay to be relaxed. Maybe I could even keep from getting hard at his fingers in my hair if I was drunk enough. “Option three.”
“Ooh, living dangerously,” he teased. “Go on, finish your drink.” He put a finger under the bottom of my glass, tipping it up to my mouth. “I’ve got braiding to do.”
10
Henry
Week 6 - Saturday
An hour and two drinks later, I rested my head against the back of my couch and sighed. “Are you sure I can’t just take a nap?”
He shook his head emphatically. “Nope. Hair time. You promised.”
“But we could pet the cat…?” I offered wheedlingly.
“We can pet the cat in between braid attempts.”
Sighing again, I pulled the elastic out of my hair and shook out the cloud of fluff. “Fiiiine.”
He reached out tentatively and ran his fingers through my hair. Goosebumps rose on my skin and I tried not to shiver. “You really do have the prettiest hair,” he told me wonderingly. “It’s kinda…golden-brown-red. Like an Irish Setter. With waves.”
I couldn’t stifle a snort at that. “Woof.”
He giggled. “Sorry. Was that insulting? I didn’t mean to insult you.”
I pondered that for a moment. Irish Setters were pretty dogs. Dignified. And yes, their fur was beautiful. I decided I wasn’t insulted, and told him so. “Nah. It was just funny. Because, you know, I’m a cat lady.”
“Fairly sure,” he said, stroking his hand over my head again, “that you’re not any kind of a lady. Either literal or metaphorical.” His fingertip teased my ear and this time I did shiver. “I saw all the evidence I needed of that the first night.”
Was he talking about…? Oh, he was. I blushed, just a little, at the memory. Little enough that I hoped he didn’t notice it. Goddamn redhead skin. Time for a distraction. “Ok,” I said in as businesslike a tone as I could muster, turning my back to him and straightening my shoulders, “step one of braiding is to separate the hair into three equal sections.”
Obediently, Jamison started to section my hair, but he did it by pushing a third of my hair to the front, a third to the left, and a third to the right. That wasn’t going to work. I mentally backed up and dumbed down my instructions. “Correction,” I said. “Step one of braiding is to hold the hair in a loose ponytail at the back of my head in your hand.Thenyou section it.”
Silence from behind me. The hand holding the front and right-side sections of my hair tightened, then loosened. “Do I let these drop?” he asked after a second.
“Yes. Drop what you did and start over with a ponytail.”
He obeyed, gathering my hair together at the nape of my neck and then starting to separate it again. “I feel like I need another hand,” he muttered.
Oh, right. There were a lot of little movements and sub-steps that I was assuming he knew that he clearly didn’t. “You can hold two sections in one hand,” I explained, “with one section in your palm and one section under your thumb. Or one between your pinky and ring finger and one between your index and middle finger. Just, you know, whatever works to keep them separate.”
Confused fingers juggled my hair, tugging slightly. I tried to neither laugh nor wince, but both were a battle. “What even…” he mumbled. “Ok. Okay, I’ve got this.”
His self-pep talk was adorable. I coughed to cover my smirk. “You’ve got this,” I assured him. “Maybe we should have started with something other than my head.”
“Like your pubes?” he asked confusedly. “What else is there to braid?”
I couldn’t stop the burst of laughter that time. “No, definitely not my pubes. If those are long enough to braid, I’ve got problems. I meant maybe shoelaces or something. Something not attached to my head, that we could lay flat for you to practice on.”
