Chapter 3: A Beginner's Guide to Haircare (beta)

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***

Brian

I sat in my hotel room, massaging my temples and staring at my phone. My wig sat next to me on my bed, as did one of the dresses I’d bought yesterday. It was emerald green with long sleeves and a plunging neckline, a slit running up the right leg meant to reveal a generous amount of thigh. The photos of the clean apartment haunted me on the pixelated screen. I’d gotten what I wanted. It had barely taken any effort. I didn’t need to keep dressing up. 

Except I did. 

Obviously, I had to. Kyle was expecting a date that night. He was expecting a gorgeous ginger lady to waltz across the threshold of the apartment and presumably rock his world that evening. Except the lady wasn’t really a lady, she was… 

She was a fraud. 

And the idea of letting him down like that seemed bad. Really bad. Obscenely bad. Unforgivably bad. For a plethora of reasons, not the least of which being that if ‘Rose’ flaked on him tonight, I’d probably wind up right back where I started vis a vis him being depressed. And yeah, the place was clean now, but seeing him depressed like that…

I was probably just gonna fly away again soon. It wasn’t fair to Kyle to rip his heart out so quickly. And it wasn’t fair to lead him on either. I suppose I could just tell him who I was, but that felt like immersing my skin in sewer water. I mean, what was I supposed to do, show up dressed to the nines and then pull off my wig and let my stupid, horrible voice do the rest of the work? God, that was disgusting. I was disgusting. Or at least, I would be if I did that. And the apartment would be FUCKING RANCID if I did that.

I had to keep Kyle happy. It was the right thing to do. It was the smart thing to do.

I closed my eyes and breathed in and out. What did I want out of this? I wanted a happy roommate and a clean apartment. And the way to get both of those things was to be someone other than myself. I mean, c’mon, nobody wanted Brian. Not for very long, anyway. It was why I always made myself so scarce. There was nothing appealing about that guy, just some superficial charm and a willingness to tell people what they needed to hear. It was like the night Kyle and I had first met: I’d ruined his night with my bullshit, taken away an opportunity for him to get laid so he could save my scrawny, pathetic, worthless ass. I’d gotten out of there as quickly as possible before I could make his night any worse, but he’d resented me for it. I mean, why wouldn’t he?

Part of me wondered, though: did he already know who I was?

No, no, he would’ve said something. I was overthinking it. 

Okay, time to get myself kitted out again. First came a long, hot shower, washing and shaving everything from the eyelashes down, making sure I purged every loose hair. There wasn’t too much of it, but still, better safe than sorry. It was honestly incredibly relaxing, not to mention satisfying, like watching an ice cube melt on your driveway during a summer heatwave, or spraying water down a hill and following the trail as it curved down the roads and snaked about like a newborn river. 

 My sisters had taught me enough about skin care for me to already know the next couple of steps: cleanse, exfoliate, tone, moisturize, then makeup. It made me feel like an artist, mixing brushes into the right material and using my face as a canvas, turning a dull, nondescript piece of pasty white into something beautiful and colorful. I cleaned up my brows as well, careful not to take too much off but not wanting them to be too bushy either. Finally, then came the dress, and then the wig--

I stopped midway through putting on the wig and froze solid. 

I grabbed my phone and double-checked the photos I’d been sent. Fuck, he’d sent new ones. He’d even cleaned his bedroom. The whole place was spotless. And he was inviting me over. What was he expecting? Sex? Shit, I hadn’t planned for this part. I couldn’t have sex with him, that would be wrong. I’d have lured him into it with false pretenses. That would make me a monster! I had to make it clear that wasn’t happening if it got that far.

Okay, sex was off the table, but what about a makeout session? That wasn’t so bad, was it? I could do that, I could play the part of a girl too nervous to fuck on the second date, but willing to play some tonsil hockey on the couch while he ran his hands through my hair--

Wig. Through my wig. Which would realistically fall off if he did that. And then the secret would be out, and everything would go to shit, and he’d kick me out of my own apartment and I’d have lost the closest thing to a friend I had--

Unless he was doing this on purpose. 

Unless he knew. 

Unless this was all a part of some elaborate plan to catch me like a bunny in a bear trap. 

‘The apartment is still a mess.’

HE FUCKING KNEW! 

But he didn’t know I knew that he knew. And I couldn’t just come out and say that without destroying the whole illusion. I had to out-maneuver him on this if I wanted to save face. That meant making the illusion as convincing as possible. 

That meant I needed something more convincing than a wig. 

I needed help. 

I picked up my phone and dialed the only number I could think of who would be free and willing to help me. “Hey, sis?” I said the second she picked up the phone. “Is your salon open today?”

***

“Okay, walk me through this one more time?” Hester said, pinching the bridge of her nose and looking at me through narrow eyes. 

“I’m pretending to be a girl to get my roommate to clean the apartment, but I think he’s onto me, and I wanna catch him trying to catch me so I don’t look insane.”

“Yeah, pretty sure that ship has sailed, bro,” my sister said as she stood in front of me in the lobby of her hair salon. She didn’t have any appointments till later in the day, so she’d been able to fit me in. Hester was a year older than me, the closest to me in age of my five older sisters. She and I had always gotten along pretty well, even if she thought I was an idiot (something she never hesitated to remind me of). We were the same height at five-five, but she was more evenly proportioned, and her brown hair was always long and luscious. She and her husband were already on their third baby, something that always plunged a hot, painful stab through my chest when I remembered it. “Also, wouldn’t it be easier to clean the place yourself?”

“It’s the principle of the thing!” I said, standing up and meeting her steely gaze. 

“Or you could hire a maid or something. You make plenty of money.”

“That would be tacky. Now please, I need you to give me ass-length hair extensions so nothing falls out of place if Kyle and I start making out tonight!”

“The fact that we’re related is why I’m insecure about my own intelligence, I just want you to know that.”

“I can live with that,” I said. “I can also pay full price for this. No family discount.”

“With a twenty percent gratuity?” Hester asked. 

“Twenty-five percent,” I replied. 

“Okay, fine, just don’t tell anyone I did this for you. I want no part in the fallout when this inevitably explodes in your face.”

“Deal!” I said, extending my hand for a shake. 

She sighed. “Just get in the chair, dummy.”

She started by washing and conditioning my hair, and I could finally see why women loved the salon so much: it was hugely relaxing, like all my stresses and anxieties were being delicately scrubbed away! Then she sat me down under the dryer, one of those big helmets you always saw on television, and the most bizarre feeling of contentment came over me. Some kind of affirmation that I was on the right path, conjuring warm and fuzzy feelings that reverberated through every fiber of my being. An immense satisfaction, born of the knowledge that I was doing the right thing. And I was! This was what I needed to do to improve Kyle’s life, and, by proxy, keep the apartment clean and make it so I didn’t have to worry about anything. 

All according to plan!

The extensions took a good, long while as they were slowly fastened and glued to my hair. I’d gone all out and requested real hair for them, even after Hester had informed me how expensive that would be given my particular color. It didn’t matter, though. This would all be worth it. 

After a very, very long while, it was done, and I was faced with my own reflection. It probably helped that I was already wearing my dress and a full face of makeup, but with the addition of the long, luscious locks, I straight-up gasped. The hair, my hair, my real freaking hair, cascaded down my back and stopped midway. Hester had outright refused to make them butt-length, pointing out how much of a hassle that would be to maintain, but even so, this was amazing! I looked like a fucking fairy tale princess! 

I opened my mouth to reply that I would be cutting this all off in a few weeks anyway, but I stopped short. The illusion was perfect. Brian was nowhere in sight. Hearing his voice would bring him crashing back and shatter all the hard work Hester and I had done. This wasn’t where he belonged. He shouldn’t be here.

Besides, Hester would probably kill me if I told her I was gonna undo all her efforts in two weeks. Best not to bite the proverbial hand that was feeding me here. 

So instead, I smiled, and I bounced up and down in my seat and swayed my hips back and forth. Hester balked for a second, tilting her head to the side, but as soon as I registered it, her face softened. Her smile was one of sentimentality and affection. I hadn’t seen that directed at me since we were little kids. Since…

A memory crackled inside my mind, something from when I was incredibly young. I was with my sisters in the attic, and we were playing together. Hester’s face had been just like it was now, but Dad came up and caught us and he…

He wasn’t happy with what he saw. 

I swallowed a gulp, and with it, I forced the memory back down. 

I didn’t have time to get lost in my head right now. I was a woman on… A MAN on a mission, to make my roommate think I was a woman. 

Nailed it!

Finally, the hour was upon me: date night. I climbed into a rideshare and waited, thinking of all the ways I could maintain my cover this evening. The thought occurred: Rose Underhill didn’t exist. She had no birth certificate, no social security number, no driver’s license (okay, Brian didn’t have one of those either), didn’t have any social media presence at all. If I wanted to keep up the pretense, I needed to fix that. 

I snapped a few selfies in the backseat of the car as the sun began to set outside, then downloaded Insta and uploaded them. I searched up for things I thought Rose would be interested in- beauty, health, cooking, urban gardening (it was just so freaking cool the way people could turn concrete jungles into lush green spaces, what can I say?)- and then went about following accounts I thought were interesting. Honestly, I wasn’t sure why I’d taken so long to do something like this. I mean yeah, there was a lot wrong with social media, but parts of it seemed kinda fun. Little windows into lives that would elsewise remain unseen. 

As the sun finished setting across the city and the black blanket of winter night took hold, I arrived at Kyle’s apartment. At my apartment. Brian’s apartment. You get the idea. 

I ignored the sound of the driver wolf-whistling at me as I walked away. I came within an inch of using my own building key to let myself in, but managed to stop myself. Instead, I buzzed the intercom and waited until Kyle made his way down.

My eyes, already big and wide from the mascara, bulged to the size of dinner plates as Kyle held the door open for me, wearing a black suit with a blue tie, his hair neatly combed, oaky cologne emanating off of him. I swallowed a gulp, mesmerized by the sheer magnitude of his presence. He was everything Brian wasn’t, a paragon of masculinity, oozing testosterone and sex appeal. Something flared up through my chest, a hot, almost explosive sensation that turned my body language dainty and fragile. He was just so damn much, it was impossible not to be blown away by it. 

You know, objectively speaking. One cishet guy to another. 

“Hello, beautiful,” he said, putting a massive arm around me, his enormous bicep a rock-hard shield to protect my manicured, perfumed self from the outside world. The heat inside me cooled into a gentler warmth, a feeling of safety and contentment and undeniable happiness. Had I always felt that way around Kyle? He definitely was protective of me as far back as I could remember. And given how huge he was, it made sense that my fragile ass would feel safe around him. But this was different. He felt different. 

I felt different. 

Like I wasn’t Brian. 

I can’t say I minded. That guy wasn’t anything to write home about. 

“You doing okay?” he asked.

I nodded. 

“Still not talking?”

I nodded again, wishing there was a better way for me to communicate with him. But I’d never been good at pitching my voice up (it always came at low and flat and bored unless I was drunk out of my mind) and the idea of hearing Brian’s voice come out of my mouth made me sick to my stomach.

“That’s cool,” Kyle said. “I just want you to be comfortable. You look amazing, by the way. You do something new with your hair?”

He noticed? Oh crap, was I caught already? I ran a hand through my extensions, my eyes darting back and forth as I squirmed within Kyle’s gasp.

“Sorry, didn’t mean to put you on the spot,” he said as we waited for the elevator together. The door dinged and opened, and we stepped in together. “I mostly just meant that it was a good look for you. And my mom taught me it’s always good to compliment a lady on her hair.”

I crinkled my nose and smiled, shimmying from side to side even as I stayed comfortably in his grasp. That was when he grabbed my hand and spun me around, dipping me like we were doing a tango and then leading me out the elevator door as it opened. It was insane, an electric pulse through my every cell. He took the lead, and I went with it, letting him guide my every step as we danced our way across the threshold of the home we shared. 

Kinda.

“You’re a lotta fun, you know that?” Kyle said.

‘Really?’ I mouthed. I’d never been called that. Persuasive, sure. A good drinking buddy, yeah, a couple of times. Entertaining, as far as business affairs went, definitely. But fun? I don’t think I’d ever been fun. Or Brian hadn’t been. But Rose… Rose could be fun. Rose WAS fun. 

And that meant that right now, I was fun. 

“Yeah, you are,” Kyle said. “Reminds me of a friend of mine. Almost like we’ve already known each other for a while.”

I froze solid, caught in a trap inside my own living room, trying desperately to keep the astonishment from manifesting on my made-up face. 

“It’s the hair, I think,” Kyle said as he walked over and ran his massive meat-hook through my extensions. “Same shade of flaming red. Always looked good on him. Looks even better on you, though, gorgeous.”

My jaw on the floor and my back stiff, I look around at my surroundings. I knew the place would be clean, but I hadn’t expected sakura scented candles on every surface, rose petals leading from the floor of the kitchen all the way to Kyle’s bedroom, and two glasses of white wine placed on the table along with a two plates, placemats, fancy silverware, and a big bowl in the center mixing together my two favorite Thai dishes. 

“I got some ice cream for dessert,” Kyle whispered into my ear, “Coffee oreo good?”

It was, in fact, my very favorite flavor of ice cream. And yeah, it was a common enough one for people to like, but the fact that he’d picked out all my favorite foods… 

He knew.

HE FUCKING KNEW. 

I gritted my teeth, and turned my shocked pout into a lethal smirk. Time to fire right back. I shoved my manicured hand into his hair and turned his face towards mine, a mere quarter-inch separating his mouth from my pink-painted lips. ‘I love it,’ I mouthed. 

“Little early to be busting out ‘I love you’, don’t you think?” he said, eyes narrow, smirk positively devious. 

I gasped. Fuck, I hadn’t meant to- no, no, he was chuckling at me. Bastard was fucking with my head. Dammit. ‘Is it?’ I said, going for an innocent doe-eyed expression that I hoped beyond hope landed. 

“You’re funny,” he said, his breath clean from a fresh brushing, his eyes sparkling in the low-light. “C’mon, let’s eat.”

He pulled my chair out for me, took off my coat and set it down around the back of the seat. Before he sat down, he plugged his phone into a speaker, and put on some music. “Hope you like it. My roommate put this playlist together. I had to recreate it, as best I could.”

The dulcet tones of Frank Sinatra rolled out of the speakers. A memory collided with me like an unexpectedly large wave on a day spent lazily floating atop the sea: when we’d been moving into this place, I’d played a two-hour mix of crooners. I’d even sung along to some of them, all while unpacking and shelving and sorting. 

And he’d remembered. 

I’d forgotten until now, but he remembered. 

Fuck. Kyle knew so much about me. What food I liked, what music I liked, what I’d always said a guy ‘should’ do on a date with a beautiful woman but what I’d never had the courage to do. And I barely knew anything about him. 

 He sat down, served me a few spoonfuls of food, and held up his glass for a clink. I returned it, and then grabbed my phone out of my purse and typed something out on a blank message: ‘tell me about yourself?’

“What do you want to know?” Kyle said as he served himself. 

Everything, I thought, it’s only fair. ‘Whatever you’re comfortable telling me,’ I typed.

“Hm. Okay. Well. I grew up in Scarborough, Maine.”

That I knew.

“I’ve two younger brothers, Peter and Matthew.”

I knew that. 

“Played football and hockey growing up.”

I knew half of that. The football part was obvious, but he didn’t talk about hockey nearly as much. ‘What positions?’

“Hockey, I was a forward. Football, I was a free safety,” he said. “Liked hockey better, honestly, but I was better at football, so I wound up playing it at Harvard. Business major, education minor. Wanted to open a gym, but didn’t have the capital, so I wound up coaching at a prep school. Do some substituting on the side for them as well. Brings in a little extra cash.”

Still in the realm of stuff I knew, but mixed with stuff I didn’t. I honestly had no idea about the substituting thing. 

“I think I’d still like to own a gym someday, but honestly, I like the school I’m at. I go back and forth- I have pretty good credit, and my living situation here has actually let me save up some cash, but if I really wanted to become a small business owner I’d need to take out a loan. But at the same time, I’d really like to be a father someday. I was pretty close to my old man, before he passed away.”

Oh. Oh my gosh! I had no idea. 

“He, uh, he taught me everything, really,” Kyle said, looking down at his plate and picking at the food with his fork. “Sports, cars, shaving. Riding a bike. How to take care of my brothers. After he died though, he uh… I had to… Shit, I’m sorry, this isn’t a date conversation, I shouldn’t be-”

My hand moved automatically, settling on his, a tiny appendance on a colossal instrument of strength. I didn’t know his father died. I didn’t know they were so close. I was a horrible friend. I had to hear this now. It was only right. Only fair. Especially given all he was doing for me. All that I was asking of him. ‘Go on.’

“Are you sure?”

I nodded. 

“... After he passed away– car accident, some drunk asshole zoomed through a red light– I had to step up. I was sixteen, and my mom worked full-time already, so I had to do a lot of extra work with my brothers. Peter was thirteen and Matthew was ten, so there was a lotta me making sure we had a stocked fridge, making sure they did their homework, that kinda thing. When it was time for me to go college, I wanted to stay local, commute from home, make sure things were okay, but Peter… He was ready to be the man of the house. I taught him everything that Dad taught me, and he taught it to Matthew. And they’re both doing great now, and Mom’s remarried. I’m just so damn proud of them all, pulling through it. Makes me hope that there’s something after all this, you know? Some way for Dad to be looking down on us? Shit, sorry, I’m rambling-”

‘It’s okay.’ I conjured my most sympathetic look as his pain registered in me and flared the fires of my compassion. 

The weak smile on his face told me everything. His slumped posture and downcast eyes told me even more. Body language was easy for me; always had been. What people were doing always made vastly more sense than what they were saying. And in that moment, I wanted him to be okay.

“So yeah, that’s why I wanna be a dad,” he said, his smile growing in size and strength. “I want to be like mine was, and I want to be that for my kids. I got a taste of it, taking care of my brothers growing up, and I get it a little more every day I’m at my job, helping the boys in my classes or on my teams be the best they can possibly be. What about you? Do you want kids? I know that’s a little forward, I just figure if we’re gonna do this, we may as well be on the same page about the big stuff.”

I drew in a sharp, shallow breath while my lips formed an ‘O.’ I noticed then that my hand was still on his, and part of me wanted to withdraw it, but that was Brian talking. And Brian wasn’t here right now. I had to think like Rose. Whatever that meant, whoever she was, I needed to think her thoughts in order to help Kyle and to help myself.

Brian had never even thought of the idea of being a father. He didn’t have a paternal bone in his body, and he was so abysmally terrible at dating women in the first place that it had never felt like it was in the cards. Besides, there was nothing appealing about him, nothing helpful or strong or supportive. He’d be the kind of father that cosigned all his kids bullshit and then jetted off to work on the other side of the country or planet. 

What about Rose, though? Was she maternal? She wouldn’t be a father, she’d be a mother, and that… That excited me. I pictured her, pictured me, with a baby swaddled in blue blankets and balanced on her hip, while her husband, while… While Kyle doted on us, bringing me breakfast in bed after chopping firewood to keep us warm. That put a smile on my face, a song of joy singing from my core to my brain, a beautiful dream to get lost in. Rose liked that. 

Rose wanted kids.

‘Yes,’ I mouthed while nodding and smiling and shimmying in my seat. 

“Oh yeah?” Kyle said. He liked that. “I can picture that. Motherhood would look good on you.”

‘Thanks.’

‘No problem.’

The idea wouldn’t get out of my brain the entirety of dinner, like a fire that caught on dry kindling and expanded to a burning blaze. A mom. Rose wanted to be a mom. She wanted to get married and settle down and make a home with her husband and fill it with babies. And she…

She couldn’t really have those, could she? Not the normal way. That… That was an impediment, one that ripped through the paper of the images of domestic bliss swirling through my brain. But that wasn’t a dealbreaker, not necessarily. There were other ways besides the old fashioned way. Surrogacy, adoption, fostering. All valid ways of becoming a mom. My sister Maggie had adopted two of her kids in addition to the two she’d given birth to, and my sister Tess had gone for in vitro fertilization with her wife. 

It was okay. 

I could still- I mean, Rose could still-

Kyle’s finger trailed up my face and caught a tear before it finished streaming down. “You okay?”

I nodded. 

“Sorry, I forgot that’s probably a loaded question for you.”

‘I’m fine,” I said, putting the picture back together in my mind’s eye with metaphorical tape. ‘Really.’

“Good. I just want you to be happy, you know? You’ve got this light about you when you’re in a good mood, it’s pretty great.”

I cocked an eyebrow. I took out my phone again and typed ‘oh really? And have you seen me otherwise?’

Now it was his turn for wide-eyed panic as he realized his own mistake. Gotcha, you beautiful meathead. “I, uh, I just meant-”

‘Just meant what?’ I typed.

“I just meant now. You got really sad for a second there. And I get why. I can’t imagine all the disparate emotions all this must give you. But you’ve also just a really good energy about you when you’re happy.”

Dammit. Nice save. Fuck. I typed out, ‘Define ‘good energy?’’

“Adorable, really.”

I felt my heart slow for half a beat, then go ‘ba-dum’ in my chest like a gong. I’d never been called adorable… Wait, yes, I had. But not since I was little. Not since back when my sisters used to dress me up. 

Huh.

Didn’t know what to do with that, entirely. But it felt good. It made me smile. It made me laugh, made me play with hair and bounce up and down in my seat. That’s the kinda girl Rose was, then. An adorable girl. A maternal girl. A girly girl. 

I could work with that. 

We kept eating, and he kept talking, telling me stories about his childhood in Maine, stupid stuff he and his friends got up, camping trips he’d gone on with his dad and his brothers, games he’d played in and gone to. The crooners kept on singing from the stereo, smooth baritones and honeyed contraltos that compliment that cozy, intimate feel of the evening. Finally, we both finished off all food, and with two glasses of wine apiece in our bellies, I was satisfied and inebriated and feeling very, very good about myself.

The sight of Kyle blatantly undressing me with his eyes definitely added to it. Good, it meant I was doing what I set out to do. I was helping him rebound. I was helping him be his best self, not the depressed gooner I’d come home to a few days ago. 

“You having a good time?” he asked, pulling my seat out and taking my hand as I got up from the table.

‘I am,’ I mouthed. 

“I’m glad. You, uh, wanna do anything else?”

The look in his eyes was hard to read. There was a chance he wanted what most guys wanted at the end of a night like this. But he seemed… Conflicted. Like he wasn’t sure how far to take this. Like he didn’t entirely know what he wanted out of this. 

I didn’t want the night to end. As weird as it was, I was having a great time, better than any time Kyle had spent with Brian. So I thought, and I scanned the amazingly clean apartment and saw one of Kyle’s prized possessions: his DVD shelf. So I wore my winning smile and pointed a manicured nail at the shelf, tugged on his massive hand to bring him over to the living room.

“You wanna watch a movie?” he said, clearly surprised but clearly unopposed. “Sure, why not? It’s the weekend, and a movie and some ice cream sounds like a nice capper to all this.”

‘You pick,’ I mouthed. I realized that I’d never actually looked at his collection. I had no idea what movies he liked! That was one of the first things you were supposed to find out about someone, and I didn’t even…

God, why was I such a shitty friend!?

“Uh, well, I hope you like old kung fu movies, because that’s most of what I own,” he laughed. “They’re, uh, somewhere between a guilty pleasure and a hyper-fixation for me.”

I shrugged. I mean hey, why not? I enjoyed action movies. That’s basically what we were talking about here. 

Kyle set up the home theater system while I served us two bowls of ice cream, and we sat together on the couch while we ate. The movie was honestly fun- the English overdub was terrible, but that just added to the cheesy charm of it all, and the fight scenes were absolutely incredible. As the film progressed and the food was polished off, I found myself shivering from the ice cream, and Kyle, without hesitation, went into his room and came back with his bedspread. He draped it over the couch and crawled under it next to me. “This okay?”

I gave him a thumbs-up. It felt like what Rose would do. What she would want. And I wanted answers, and the closer I got to him, the more I felt like I would get those answers. This was what I had to do. For his sake. For mine. For our home’s sake. 

So I kept getting closer, and closer, and closer, nudging myself over to him until I was leaning on him, even as my full belly and the two glasses of wine and the warm, comfy blanket and dim lighting slowly robbed me of consciousness. 

I remember thinking, ‘this is a bad idea’ as I fell asleep in his arms.