Someone to Love (10 page)

“I’m fine.” I assure for the thousandth time
as she escorts me back to mission control. She pumps up the chair
until my stomach bottoms out from the g-forces she’s emitting.

“Don’t you worry.” She combs my hair down the
front of my face and cuts straight across in one clean hack attack.
“Walla.”

Holy shit!

Did she just hack off my hair and follow it
up with a
walla
? Why does it suddenly feel like I’m back in
fifth grade at Becky Zuckerman’s house and she’s giving my hair a
“little body”—code for a fucking mullet.

She fiddles with a rubber band, that honest
to God she just plucked from the filth pit that is her mouth, and
flexes it over my head. She backs up revealing my new
unicorn-inspired ponytail sitting on top of my head as I struggle
to catch my breath. Clearly
Boppy
here is freaking insane.
Clearly, her not-so-cute moniker comes straight from the fact
someone took her to task with a baseball bat and now my hair is
reaping the grave benefits of a fractured skull trauma.

She begins mixing bottles and solutions as if
they were potions while I plot my escape from this dungeon of
disaster.

“We don’t want to get any of this crap
anywhere it’s not supposed to be,” she sings, ignoring the fact I
now have a miniature erect penis sprouting from my forehead.

“Where it’s not supposed to be? Like my
hair?” I’m only half-joking.

“Just some chestnut highlights. Nothing more,
I promise.”

She spends the next leg of a decade basting
my hair with what looks like glue then proceeds to wrap it in
tinsel. Any moment now I’m expecting her to tune me like a radio
and dial into the mother planet. Personally, all of this wasteful
use of tinfoil is making me hungry for a Ding Dong.

She spins me into the mirror, so I can
appreciate the full effect of her not-so-handy work.

“Oh my God!” It flies from my lips without
meaning to. My hair has ballooned out two feet in every direction
and it looks as though I’ve donned an aluminum afro.

“Here.” She opens a jar marked “avocado” and
slathers a green paste liberally over my face as her final descent
toward insanity plays out right here on my person. “You’ll be spit
shined and ready to go. New Year’s Eve, here you come baby!” She
lets a couple of hearty whoops rip for added affect. “Now all you
have to do is sit under these lights for a solid thirty minutes.”
She pulls a set of octopus tentacles off the ceiling and surrounds
me with a spray of blue and red bulbs. Suddenly, it all feels a
little too electric chair for my liking.

I look at myself with my muddied face, the
tiny follicular penis sitting erect on the top of my head and my
hair splayed out like a tinsel factory exploded. I’m betting the
electric chair is a tad less humiliating.

“I’m gonna take a quick lunch break.” Boppy
snaps up her purse. “I’ll see you in a jiff!”

She spins the chair around, presumably so I
won’t be moved to inflict self-harm should I gaze too long in the
mirror, and I’m met with a stunningly handsome, drop dead gorgeous,
very much aware of the fact I look like an ass, Cruise Elton.

Just fuck.

Cruise

Oh Shit.

I should probably busy myself pretending to
look at paperwork, or answer the phone for the hell of it, or just
run out the fucking door because my mother’s incompetent salon has
just turned one of the most beautiful women on the planet into a
prime example of why other females should never set foot in the
establishment.

A smile twitches on my lips as her mouth
opens in horror. Great. Now she thinks I’m laughing at her. I’d
better go over and say something.

“Kenny?” I ask in the off chance it’s another
coed who’s mortified to see me.

She closes her eyes, and a tiny whimper
escapes her throat.

“Have I mentioned I’ve never been to a salon
before?” She squeaks.

I can see why, but don’t say a word.

“So”— she looks around as her eyes glitter
up—“tell me about school.” She presses her lips together,
presumably fighting off tears.

A nervous laugh beats down my chest, and it
takes everything in me to suppress the crap out of it. The truth
is, I’m taken by her even in the Halloween garb she’s currently
imprisoned in.

“I’m a graduate student,” I say, pulling up a
chair. “I’ve got my sights set on a fellowship, next year, with
hopes to teach at Garrison some day.”

“Really?” Her eyes glow a beautiful
iridescent and my body feels as though it’s just fell through a
trap door, landed in a place where it’s just Kenny and me on the
other side.

“Really,” I say. “Either that or I’ll run the
bed and breakfast.”

She licks her lips, inspecting me. “You don’t
happen to know any computer languages, do you?”

Computer languages?
“I know some Java
Script, C plus plus, and C, but mostly that was for programming
when my solitary goal in life was to become the world’s most wanted
hacker. That, and trying to rob my father blind of his millions,
but in my defense, I was thirteen and he said no when I asked for a
new bike.”

She belts out a lusty laugh, and soon, I
don’t see the circus around her beautiful features. All I see is
Kenny and the light that shines like a beacon from inside her
heart.

“So you know three.” She relaxes for the
first time. “I actually don’t know any, so your father’s millions
are safe from me.”

“How about you? What are you studying?” An
animalistic wave overcomes me, and I have the urge to do her right
here in the salon under the red-hot spot lights brewing from above,
tinfoil and all.

“Well, I’m on the five year plan, plus I took
a year off. Outside of striking a name for myself as campus bimbo,
I’ll be taking up airspace in the liberal arts department. In fact,
I was supposed to have received my schedule this week, but I keep
forgetting to check my emails. I’m hoping I got all the classes I
wanted. Art, English 102, Finite math, and a class on gender
relations.”

“Study of men and women in society?” I perk
to attention.

“That’s the one.” She darts a freshly
polished fingernail in the air, and I imagine diving the digit deep
in my mouth, grazing over it with my teeth.

“Bradshaw teaches it,” I say, trying to drag
myself out my sexual stupor before I find myself in a
hard
situation. “He’s a good guy. He’s been sick, so they’ve got a T.A.
covering it.” I don’t tell her that I’m the T.A. That I’ll be
structuring a syllabus for the class later this afternoon because
Bradshaw had a lobe of his lung removed last month.

“I just took it because it sounded like an
easy A.” Her eyes flicker like mirrors in the sun. “But with a T.A.
holding down the fort, I’m sure I won’t even have to show up.”

Not show up? Sounds like she might be on the
fifteen
-year plan.

“Oh, I’m sure he’ll make you work for your
grade.” I blink a quick smile. “In fact, I hear he gets inventive.
He really likes to personalize the syllabus for each student’s
individual needs.” Not really but the idea came to me, so I run
with it. I think I’ll get started on her syllabus right away. I
might even throw in a liability waiver—a hold harmless agreement
for the more acrobatic requirements she’ll need to participate in
if she intends on achieving that “easy A.”

A half hour later the buzzer goes off, and
about twenty minutes after that, Boppy drags her tail in from her
break.

“Holy shit!” She snipes while scratching to
remove the tin from Kenny’s hair like she were stomping out a
kitchen fire. She throws her under the sink with half the foil
still glued to her scalp and starts sending up a string of prayers
to the patron saint of fucked-up hairstyles.

After a good span of eternity, Kenny finally
makes her way to the counter, or at least I think its Kenny. Her
face is scrubbed raw, with her eyes pink and watery like someone
poured in vinegar, but it’s the hair where the real trauma
lies.

“Oh shit,” I whisper.

“Oh shit is right.”

She’s good and pissed, and well, incredibly
irresistible even if she does look as if she’s magically aged about
fifty years. I’m pretty sure she wasn’t in the market for grey
streaks when she came in.

“I look like a skunk.”

I make my way around the counter.

“Kenny, the city kitty.” I pull her in by the
fingers. “Lucky for you, I’m into older women.”

Her lips quiver like she might lose it, so I
do the only thing I can think of to make the two of us feel better.
I cover her mouth with mine and splurge on a kiss that drives me
deeper into the insanity Kenny has me wrapped in.

On New Year’s Eve, Ackerman House gyrates to
raucous, loud hip-hop music that manages to pulsate through every
cavity in my body. Swear to God, I’m about to find the volume
control and turn it down about six notches, which probably
highlights the fact that at the tender age of twenty-four, I’m too
old for this shit.

Mercifully, the music dies down, and the next
song belts out something a little smoother that my eardrums might
approve of once they stop bleeding.

“So which one?” Kenny steps in front of me
while eyeing a group of football players. Two of them are engaged
in a mock fistfight that has them socking one another, hard as
possible.

Tonight’s lesson involves approaching
potential hookups. Not that Kenny will be hooking up with the goofs
running around this place. My lesson is specifically designed to
keep her integrity intact.

Kenny went all out in the looks department
tonight with her sky-high heels and a black miniskirt that shows
off her luscious limbs. I don’t think I can take much more of her
walking around the house half-dressed, her wet hair, her
braless
mornings. If she doesn’t give in soon, I’ll fall on
my knees and beg her to have her way with me. She’s got me shaking
just walking past her in the hall. We’ve done the movie and the
dinner thing, twice. I think it’s time to up the ante, lie down and
see if she bites. God, I hope she bites.

“Okay, see those two guys?” I point just past
the jocks.

“The cute one with the football, and the
buffed-out guy in a wife beater?” She licks her well-glossed
lips.

“Nope.” I redirect her to the lanky pair with
their pants riding high on their waists. “We’re going to start with
those two. I want you to get at least six different numbers
tonight. That should help you break out of your shell.” And keep
her woman parts safe from assholes that have an unnatural obsession
with pigskin and wife beaters.

She struts around to my other side, and her
hourglass figure weakens my defenses. Her hair still holds the
strong scent of solution from Mom trying to correct the blunder her
former employee proliferated. Gone is the grey. Kenny’s hair sort
of morphed to a dark chestnut with highlights. Mom is damn lucky
Kenny doesn’t sue for emotional damages. She wore a hoodie three
days straight.

“Those two?” She balks. “Are you sure?”

“I’m positive,” I whisper. “Now, get a move
on, young grasshopper. I’ll watch from the sidelines.” I nod over
to the super geeks in the corner until she ventures off in that
direction.

A tangle of bodies filter between us, and I
can’t help but notice Kenny is turning heads. Before I know it, an
entire herd of vulture-like, horny-as-hell, jocks surround her.
Great.

“How’s the virgin?” Cal shoulders up to me
and hands me a beer.

“She’s in the room ass-wipe,” I reprimand,
cracking it open and taking a sip. “And things are progressing
slowly. I haven’t scared her off yet, if that’s what you mean.”

“That’s not what has me worried. It’s the
fact
she
hasn’t scared
you
off yet. What’s going on?
It’s New Year’s fucking Eve, and you’re overseeing a vestal of
innocence while other guys hit on her? I’m beginning to think
you’ve lost your touch. Take her to task in the bedroom or boot her
out the door. If you don’t do her, I might just have to intervene
and do her for you.”

“Right. I’m leaving you now.” I head toward
Kenny to help her navigate the sheer number of drooling idiots who
have amassed around her like zombies in some B-rated horror
flick.

“Hey!” A pair of familiar arms wraps
themselves around me. I glance down to find a brunette with her
eyes half-closed, already wasted into tomorrow.

“Donna.” I think.

“Amber.” She flashes a toothy grin.

Or that. “Look, I’m…” I glance over at Kenny
and her band of aspiring bedmates, as she waves from across the
room. She glances at the pale limb secured around my waist, and a
hurt look flashes across her face. Kenny flips her hair and
pretends not to notice as she turns her attention back to the
“cute” jock.