“Are you sure you want me to do this?” she asks.
“Yes.”
“I’m no hair stylist.”
“Giselle would shave symbols into my head, and I wouldn’t be able to go out in public for weeks.”
“You could if you shaved it all the way off.”
“Don’t have the head for it.”
She doesn’t laugh.
Good thing, since it’s not a joke. “I shaved my head after our next-to-last tour, then went into hiding for a few months. Didn’t leave my house unless I was in a hoodie with the hood up. Every time.”
Got several new tats in those few months.
And it’s the last time I really cut my hair. Trimmed on occasion, yes. Cut like this, no.
She circles me with the scissors like she’s deciding the best way to tackle cutting out the mess in my hair.
I don’t look to see if my hair is all that she’s studying.
Had to change out of my wet clothes, and now I’m in nothing but a pair of cotton shorts.
A pair of cotton shorts and the tattoos covering nearly every inch of my exposed skin.
It’s been a while—alongwhile—since I’ve let anyone new see me shirtless.
Not ashamed.
But my ink isn’t for anyone else’s amusement or entertainment.
She’s blank-faced as she stops in front of me again. “I’ll try to keep it as long as I can.”
“It’ll grow back.”
“You sure you don’t want a picture for posterity’s sake?”
“I’m sure.”
“Okay then.” She touches my hair, and goosebumps flare across my scalp.
Mind over body. Mind over body.
My mind responds by dishing up images of Sloane in my bed last night, legs spread, stroking her pussy.
“Thank you for helping save Peggy,” she says.
I don’t answer.
I’m too busy breathing as she tugs at my hair and takes the first snip.
“And I want you to know I’m fighting a lot of guilt when I say this, but I still have to leave. It’s not entirely you. It’s a long history of people letting me down and me practicing acknowledging that I don’t have to always take the short stick. Not that this has been…the short stick. But also, I have a very complicated relationship with feeling like I owe people when they do nice things for me, and I…don’t.”
Translation: I’m trying to not let one orgasm guilt me into doing anything you want.
At least, that’s how I interpret what she just said.
