“No,” he said. “I just... You go to boot camp with the clothes on your back. This is all I really have at the moment.”
He could have worn his dress blues, but they would have called even more attention to him. He’d gone with the winter blues: Button-down shirt. Pants. Tie. All in a navy blue so dark, it may as well be black.
Shiloh was looking at his chest. She touched his shoulder quickly. Then tugged on his tie. He waited for her to say he looked like an SS officer. (Shiloh really knewnothingabout military uniforms.) “It’s nice,” she said. “You look nice.”
“Is there a reason you won’t look me in the eye?”
She held on to his tie and laughed, still not looking up at him. “I’m kind of freaked out byyour hair.”
Cary laughed. He was blushing. He picked up his duffel bag. Shiloh let go of his tie.
“Come on,” she said, walking toward the elevator.
“Don’t you have to check me in?”
“Nope. We’re libertines here.”
“Did you talk to your roommate yet?”
“I haven’t seen her—but don’t worry.” They were the only people on the elevator. Shiloh pushed a button.
“You cut your hair, too,” Cary said. “I thought you were going to shave it.”
She touched the edges and frowned. “I chickened out. I didn’t want that to be the thing that people know me by, like, forever.The bald girl.Like Sinéad O’Connor. So that I’d never look normal with hair again.”
Shiloh’s hair was dark, dark brown and very, very straight. It had always been long, as long as Cary had known her, and had always seemeda little too thick to be manageable. He’d seen her break elastic bands trying to tie it back. She had thick, dark eyebrows, too, and dark hair on her arms. Her mom said that her dad might have been Greek.“My dad might have been anyone,”Shiloh would say. Now that her hair was short, it looked even thicker. Like a wedge.
“You don’t like it, do you?” She led him off the elevator, spinning to walk backwards, facing him.
“It looks fine,” Cary said.
“But you liked it better before?”
“I don’t have any opinions about your hair.” He liked everything about her, however it was. That had been true since they met.
She spun to the front again. “I’m growing it out. I think it makes me look perky.”
“What’s wrong with perky?”
“Nobody takes perky seriously.”
They were already at her door. Cary had never been in a college dormitory before. It was pretty much what you’d expect. Like a hotel.
Shiloh let him into her room. It was small. There was space for two beds, two desks, a rug, and a little TV.
“You can sit on the bed,” she said. “Or the desk chair. Sit wherever. I don’t have anything to drink. I could buy you a Coke.”
“I’m okay.”
She rolled her eyes. “Sitdown,Cary.”
“I’m waiting for you to sit.”
“Oh my god,” she said, sitting on the floor. Folding those long legs.
Cary didn’t think he’d ever really seen Shiloh’s legs before. They were as long as his and probably thicker. Sweet at the knees and the ankles. He sat on the bed, facing her, trying not to stare at them.
“Was boot camp terrible?” she asked.
