“Do you need any help?”
My curious gaze lifted to meet his before a deep crease folded across my forehead. “Have you had too much to drink? What the heck do you know about black hair?” I squinted at him as I continued to pull the next braid apart.
He moved and sat beside me so close I reared back, staring, my rapid gaze scanning him up and down.
“I know more than you think I do,” he stated, his gaze locked on mine. We sat staring at each other. Something had changed. A weight had shifted. Shit couldn’t get any weirder between us.
“Seriously, are you drunk?” I sniffed in his direction like I could smell the level of his drunkenness.
“No. I’m not drunk.”
Curious to see what he’d do, I handed him the extra comb from the bedside table we shared. He took the comb, picked up one of my braids and went about his business of picking it apart.
What the….
My gaze went from his working hands to his face. What had gotten into him? He wasn’t acting like his usual bossy self.
“You’re being weird,” I stated, attempting to cover up the strange vibes swarming within me. A veiled look washed over his features, so fleeting I was thinking maybe I’d imagined it.
“Seriously, you call me weird when you’re the one who’s restricted herself to an all-female diet when you have fresh male at your disposal,” he declared, his expression remaining unreadable.
My lips twitched at his comment, but I forced myself to stifle my laugh. I assumed he knew my use of the word weird meant he was making me uncomfortable.
“You date a lot of black women?” I questioned him. I was sure he realized by now, that my bluntness was simply a part of my personality.
The smirk on his face was laced with an arrogant edge. “I don’t date,” he stated before a blaze ignited in his gaze.
“You fuck and flee because you lose interest afterwards,” I added for him without indifference. “I understand it better than you think. You’re attracted, you hit, it’s either good or bad, you move on. There isn’t a real investment,” I stated, revealing my relationship history because I believe it mirrored his.
“Can I ask you something?” he inquired as he separated the weave from my real hair and reached across me to sit it atop the rows I’d stacked there. I froze when his body brushed mine, uncertain about being close to him.
“Yeah,” I finally answered, ignoring the fact my heartrate had sped up and I could feel it pulse in my neck.
“Please don’t take this the wrong way. I’m simply ignorant on this matter,” he admitted and paused to await my acknowledgment.
I nodded, interested in what he was about to say.
“Tonight, was the first time I’ve gotten to see you interact with women, so I have no doubt that you’re gay. But, you don’t act or dress like any of the more dominant lesbians I’ve encountered. I don’t understand the way you are in comparison to what I think I know,” he disclosed, his confusion apparent.
My tension eased, grateful he was only trying to understand me.
“I date women. Therefore, I’m going to have some fashion sense. When I was younger, I used to dress like a boy. I had the short haircut and all. It wasn’t until I did a favor for a friend of mine, when I was sixteen, my view of myself was altered. I’ll always fight for the underdog. It’s the one area where I don’t care if you’re a man or woman, boy or girl. I hate bullies. I hate seeing people get picked on that can’t or don’t know how to fight for themselves.”
After a deep sigh, I continued. “There was this boy, Michael Davison. The kids always picked on him because he was poor and he didn’t have nice clothes. Like mine, his mother was a well-known crack addict. He told me he wanted to go to his senior prom, but he knew he’d never work up the nerve to ask any of the girls. He was sure they’d laugh in his face if he did. I could tell he desperately wanted this one good thing from his horrible experience in high school. Although he was a senior and I was a junior, I agreed to go with him. When the time came, I picked a nice dress, let Beverly do my hair, and makeup, and damn near scared the shit out of myself after seeing the results. What surprised me most was I didn’t dislike what I saw in the mirror.”
Thinking about Michael’s reaction to my reveal drew an instant smile. “When Michael saw me, he didn’t even recognize me. I’d never seen anyone smile as much as he smiled that night. He understood that I didn’t want him romantically, but he told me all night that he was the luckiest boy in high school because he was at his senior prom with the prettiest girl in the school. I assumed he was being nice because I’d agreed to go with him. But, a lot of the other students reacted the same way.”
Was I really sharing one of my corny high school stories with this man? That fact alone was a telling sign that kept reminding me Dax and I shared a connection. I blinked the disturbing idea away so I could finish the story.
“Michael had more popularity in one night than he’d had in four years of high school, and I’d discovered a different side of myself. I was hit on that night by girls and guys. It helped me understand that I didn’t have to make myself into the image of a male to date girls. Since that night, I embraced being a woman. Crazy thing was I pulled way more women embracing my femininity.”
Dax had taken down three of my braids while listening to my story and was working on the fourth.
“I love that story because you discovered a part of yourself that you’d chosen to hide or more so, believed you’d had to hide.”
I nodded, recalling the night had meant as much to me as it had to Michael.
“You have beautiful hair,” he complimented as he pulled at the shoulder-length frizzy mess emerging from the braids we’d nearly finished taking out. My sandy hair was undecided, a texture I could wear natural, but was stuck between wanting to be curly and wanting to be an afro.