By senior year, Aspen hadn’t been worried about getting kicked out of the sorority anymore, so they’d gone a little wild with their look. They’d shown up at Noah’s apartment eyebrowless, with less than an hour to go before rush started, and he’d laughed so hard he’d needed to calm down before he could drive them to the sorority house. Aspen had cherished every wavering note of his laugh because he hadn’t done it very often back then.
Thankfully, he laughed a lot more nowadays. Like, at Aspen, as he said, “I’m pretty sure if you don’t leave the bleach on for twice the recommended time, not all of the hairs will fall out.”
Aspen clutched their imaginary pearls. “Damn, you make a mistakeone timeand can neverlive it down!”
Their hair had looked amazing. Their eyebrows? Not so much.
Noah was full on grinning now, and Aspen allowed their eyes to roam over his sharp cheekbones and the smattering of stubble across his jawline. He’d grown into such a handsome man, Aspen told him that all the time. It just…felt a little different now.
“I’ve been thinking you’d look good in purple,” Aspen said, because it came about as close as they could get to admitting that sometimes, they pictured Noah’s face when he wasn’t there.
Noah raised a pale eyebrow as he turned a corner, and they fell into the slow chug of downtown traffic. “On my eyebrows?
“No, just your hair.”
Noah scoffed, and Aspen leaned across the center console to brush a lock of fine, blonde hair off his forehead. “Not like Barney purple, but I think a tasteful lilac or amethyst would look nice.”
“Ahh, I see. You just want me to dye my hair the color of your birthstone—which, come to think of it, isn’t that your favorite color of the month?”
Aspen’s cheeks heated, and they pressed their face further into the back of the seat. “It is my birthstone, and no, now my favorite color is blue. Hence why I want to dye my hair blue.”
Noah snorted and accelerated through a green light only to have to pull to an abrupt stop when a car swerved in front of them and slammed on their brakes. After he came to a complete stop, Noah turned to look at Aspen, and they shared an exasperated look over city drivers.
Once they began moving again, Aspen squeezed his hand. “Thanks for remembering my birthstone, though,” they said, taking their turn to rub their thumb over the bony knobs of his knuckles. “And last month’s favorite color.”
“Of course, Asp. If it’s important to you, it’s important to me,” Noah said, as if it truly could be that easy.
Chapter 1
Aspen
Two months later
“Are you sure you don’t want to take things slow?” Blair asked as she held a lock of Aspen’s wet hair in one hand and a razor in the other.
“You know I never take anything slow, hon,” Aspen said from their seat in her barber chair
They squeezed a little more primer into the bowl of bleach they were mixing before looking up to meet Blair’s eye in the mirror.
“Right,” she said with a snort. “You did decide to marry your ex after less than a year of dating, after all.”
She dropped the lock of hair and brought the razor to the back of Aspen’s head, right below where they’d sectioned off their hair for an undercut.
Aspen scowled. “Well, let’s hope this decision goes a little bit better than that.”
Blair squeezed their shoulder, and her face morphed from pity to concentration as she began the slow process of buzzing the side of Aspen’s head.
Aspen had always found haircuts soothing, verging on meditative, whether they were the stylist or the one in the chair. While they were happy to chat with a client if that’s what they wanted, over the past several months, Aspen had begun taking on more genderqueer folks, and many of them just wanted to sit and experience their first haircut of a different gender.
When Aspen had finally decided to chop off their hair, from mid-back to shoulder length, Blair was the one who helped Aspen clean it up. After that, Blair had taught them everything they knew. They’d experimented with cutting it themselves to varying lengths, but they knew without a doubt that an undercut was the next style they wanted to try.
Susie, the owner of Susie’s Salon, always said that hair can trap toxins and even show signs of stress and trauma. Aspen wanted to shave off one side completely and bleach and dye the other. That was the only way they would feel ready to move forward.
Well, that, along with the email sitting on their phone from their lawyer, letting them know that, after nearly eight weeks of being passed between the courts, the divorce had been finalized.
“You okay with a little fuzz?” Blair asked, rubbing her fingers over the peach fuzz left behind on the first large strip she’d carved out of Aspen’s hair.
“Yup, that’s good with me,” Aspen said, adding the final dollop of primer to the bleach.
