I opened one eye, looking over my shoulder. “What’s a wash day?”
Her hands paused at my shoulders. “Have you ever dated a black woman before?”
“Yeah, a few. Why?”
“Have any of them had natural hair?”
“Natural hair? Isn’t all hair natural?”
She laughed. “Clearly, you weren’t too serious about any of them. You definitely would know more about our hair. Anyway, wash day is the day I set aside to pamper my hair. I usually reserve it for Sundays, but since I was otherwise occupied with you this past Sunday, I have to do it today.” It was Wednesday, one of her regular days she had off. She took off the previous night to spend it with me, having recently hired a new bartender.
“What does it entail?” I asked, laying my head back down and she resumed her massage.
“I usually pre-poo with coconut oil?”
“Pre-what?”
A giggle burst from her lips. “Pre-shampoo. We call it a pre-poo because it’s done before I shampoo my hair. I coat my strands with coconut oil to remove any shed hairs and detangle, then shampoo, do a deep condition, rinse it out, and then apply my leave-in and style.” She finished the last part as if it were simple.
“Sounds complicated.”
“It’s not. You get used to it, and with my short cut it’s much less time consuming than it used to be.”
“I wanna help,” I said, turning over to grab her waist and hold her in place as I shifted to lay on my back.
“Eric, your back!” she yelled.
“My back feels fine, especially after all your pampering. Let me help with your wash day.”
She stared at me, hands at her waist. “This is what you want to spend your day doing? Helping me wash my hair?”
“You said it wouldn’t take long, right? We can go see that damn chick flick you wanted to see when we’re done.”
A thirty-megawatt smile formed on her lips. “Really?” She leaned down, lips not far from mine. I took the opportunity to brush mine against them. Hell, I took every opportunity I could to feel her lips on mine and anywhere else I could get them.
“Yeah.”
“Okay, let’s go.” She hopped off of me and out of bed. “You okay?” she asked, frowning when she saw me moving slowly to sit up.
My back did feel a little stiff, which was to be expected, but I knew it felt a shitload better than it would’ve felt without Angela’s nursing it. The day before the captain insisted I take the day off. I hadn’t wanted to but when I remembered it was a Wednesday, which meant I could spend the entire day with my Angel, my “no” suddenly became “okay.”
“Never felt better,” I responded, my hand at the small of her back urging her toward the bathroom.
“I didn’t know you could use coconut oil on hair,” I said, taking the jar with the liquid oil from her. “Do you pour it in your hair?” I asked. Although it was well into September, the temperatures had remained in the high eighties, allowing the oil that solidified during the colder months to remain in its liquid form.
She laughed. “No, I do this,” she began explaining and demonstrating at the same time. I watched as she took large sections of her hair and coated them with oil, removed any shed hair, and then put the section in twists. When she got to the back part of her hair that was too short for twists, she simply coated those strands with the oil.
“The coconut oil helps to prevent the shampoo from stripping too much moisture from my hair. Which is important since I added the color.”
I looked over and felt one of the twists she’d done, feeling the softness of her hair.
“Let me,” I said, reaching for the bottle of shampoo in her hand.
She blinked. “You want to shampoo my hair?”
“Yeah. It’s not hard. Get in the shower,” I directed, turning on the water. When I looked back to see her still standing there, an unsure expression on her face looking unsure, I reached for the T-shirt she wore, which was the one I’d worn the night before, pulling it over her head. My mouth watered when I saw she had nothing on underneath. “Get in.” My voice dropped an octave.
This time she did as requested.
