Jesse

Chapter 3

I am not an expert hair cutter.

In fact, I was a first-time hair cutter. But I had Tad's permission and a strong desire to free his forehead from its emo hair prison, so I figured hey, how hard could it be?

We set up a chair in one of the upstairs bathrooms. I decided it would be easier to clean up in here than in my room, and also that it would be convenient to be near a sink. You were supposed to wet hair before you cut it, right?

My dad kept a collection of combs, toothbrushes, and other toiletries in the hall closet for whenever we had impromptu guests. Which was often. I grabbed a comb and ran it under the tap before working through Tad's hair, which was a ridiculous mess. In fact, in the time it took me to grab the comb and come back, I swear it had gotten messier.

But oh well. All the more reason to set to work.

I kept wetting the comb and running it through Tad's dark hair until the strands were damp, straight-ish, and as tangle-free as I could manage. As I set the comb down and picked up the scissors, I caught sight of Tad in the mirror and realized that his eyes were closed. Some of the weariness in his expression had fallen away. There were still dark circles under his eyes, but he no longer looked about a thousand years old. Good.

I felt a little nervous as I turned back and assessed the layers of his hair. Someone had done a good job on it at some point. I was totally about to ruin that.

"Just don't cut my ear off," Tad said. He'd opened his eyes and caught sight of my expression in the mirror.

"As if I could miss them," I said, giving one of his ears a tug.

Tad smiled - a real smile.

Here's the thing about Tad: he's not conventionally attractive. His ears stick out too far, and his nose is all flat and smushed like he's been in one too many boxing matches. But there's still something about him that I, personally, would call attractive. Something that makes you want to pay attention to him.

He has charisma.

He wasn't putting out the charisma right now, but maybe because I knew it was there, I felt like it was something I could still sense in him. It made him easy to be around. It also helped that right now he looked at ease. In fact, he looked more relaxed than I'd seen him in...well, maybe ever. Tad and I didn't exactly get a lot of quality chill-time together. I liked seeing him like this, though. Almost more than when he was putting on the charm.

"Well?" Tad said.

"Right," I said. I'd better dive in before I lost my nerve.

I picked up what looked like an unimportant lock of hair in the back and went snip. Then I went in for a couple more. Snip, snip. I figured if I started from the bottom and worked my way up, I'd figure out some sort of technique before I got to the bits people actually paid attention to. You know...hopefully.

I'd always imagined that cutting girls' hair would be harder, because there's usually so much more of it - and also girls have a tendency to freak out if you cut it too short. But I decided as I went along that cutting guys' hair was actually way trickier. There was only so much room for error before you got all the way to the scalp. And I wasn't exactly using fine-snip barber's scissors or whatever.