Kat, Viv, and Pen, all watching us like hawks from the other two couches, that together all three formed a U shape in his TV/sitting area, grinned when Gren, oblivious to what he was doing, began unfolding the socks and bent like he meant to put them on me for me.
Catching the socks and tugging them from his hands, eyeing him like he’d gone funny, I arched a peachy colored brow. “I’ve got it, but thank you.”
“Right. Sorry. Okay.” Gren sat back but began swiping his hands on his pant legs repeatedly. The smell of dried bark filled the air, so strong it choked out his scent.
My head lifted and I gave a sniff. The smell was coming from Gren.
“You’re nervous. You smell different.” My hand automatically went to one of his and I took it in mine, setting it on my lap. It felt like the most natural thing in the world to do.
Gren swallowed thickly and nodded. “My scent changes when I’m nervous.”
Sitting back as the little wolf pups finished their food and began to clamber around me on the couch, little red sauce corners on their mouths, they were enamored by my hair. “It smells like dried bark. I reek of Fall leaves,” I mumbled absently as the girls glanced at each other and grinned.
“I like your hair,” one said, the lighter haired brunette.
“I love your hair,” the little blond piped up.
“Can I brush it?” the one with dark, wavy locks asked sweetly, holding up a tiny doll brush.
“Can I touch it?” the fourth breathed.
“Girls,” Kat called softly to her daughters.
“We’re asking first, Mama-”
“Nicely.”
“We’ll be gentle.”
“She smells nice!”
They all spoke at once, until I was laughing, giving up trying to keep up. Gren’s hand stayed on my thigh, entwining our fingers as he sat back and watched the girls trying to charm me into letting them play with my hair.
“Sure,” I said finally, to four squeaky, happy cheers.
Twenty minutes and a thorough hair pulling later, I’d cracked the code.
Bianca, an exact mini of her mum, had the darkest hair and green eyes, her long hair pulled back from her face in a long French braid that trailed down her back. Her deep purple shirt had a glittery moon and a wolf on it, and she was wearing lace up sneakers an almost exact deep plum as her shirt.
Deirdre, or Deedee, was arguing with B, or Bianca, for an up ‘do for me, bright blue eyes wide as she tried to cajole the rest of her crew into this. Her wispy, reddish blond hair hung loose around her face. Deedee had to stop whatever she was doing to brush the unruly locks out of her eyes as they continuously sprung forward as if solely to vex her. She had plain black shoes on, dark blue jeans with holes in the knees, and a blue, green, and white striped flannel on over a plain black shirt.
Alice, just plain Alice, her brown locks with shocks of natural golden brown and red highlights lightening her hair, half of it up and half down, was perched on my lap. Her dolly, the nearly bald Bad Bernice, was getting a sung lecture like she was in a musical on why she should brush her teeth, while Alice’s legs swung back and forth over the side of mine. Her little dress shoes bumped the backs of my legs with every wild swing backward. Her dress almost matched Bad Bernice’s, as if Alice had wished to coordinate their outfits from their shiny black shoes, white tights, soft pink dress with deep pink ribbon around her middle tied in a large bow at the back, and tiny matching pink hair clips on the sides of her head. Alice had more or less checked out from the hair salon business and was content to simply be near and present as opposed to a part of the hair pulling.
And Calliope, the blond with bright green eyes and the sweetest smile, the shyest of the group, had given up on trying to get a word in edgewise with her sisters on my hair and has since moved on to Gren.
Gren, holding his hand for her so she could place the clips she kept unearthing from the tiny backpack she’d sat in his lap to put in his hair, dutifully took off his glasses and told him to sit, “As stiln as podssible,” for her, as per her gravely delivered instructions, so his hair brushing wouldn’t hurt him.
“I think it’s better if I can’t see what you’re doing,” he told Cal, as she liked to go by, conversationally.
Glancing down at him, she gave him an arch look even I couldn’t decipher. With a sniff and a long look down the length of her pert little nose, she announced, “I’ll make you pretty.”
Viv, grinning as she rocked Dresig, who’d passed out, the mangled wolf plushie the little one loved stuffed between him and his mother as he hugged it, grinned at our sweet-faced tormentors. “He looks lovely, Cal,” she encouraged. “I love the big daisies and the bows.”
The look Gren gave her, squinting in her direction, said he didn’t appreciate her interference, but he held his tongue.
“Too many clips,” Jules called to Calliope absently, glancing up from the board book he was studying with such a hard look to comment.
Giles grunted but was too busy coloring to look up.
