Chapter 8
LEE
There were a bunch of different texts you could send after fucking around with someone in your workplace earlier that afternoon, but the one I got from Chase didn’t make any sense at all.
Is your mom a hairdresser?
I looked at it for a while. Then I put my phone down. Then I looked at it again, and it still said that.
Yes.
“Earth to Lee,” Mom teased. “I asked if you needed me to throw your uniform in the wash? But feel free to get around to it yourself.”
“No, that’d be great,” I said. “I’ll go change.”
I kept my phone with me, and I was half into a pair of sweatpants when I got the reply from Chase.
I need a favor.
My first thought was that he wanted a trim. His hair was kind of messy. But that didn’t seem like the kind of thing Chase would ask for. Hell, I couldn’t think of anything Chase would willingly ask me for.
Apart from your dick.
I shut that thought down fast.
My thumb hovered over the keyboard, but before I could reply, a new message popped up.
Please. It’s an emergency.
Since I’d never heard that word come out of Chase’s mouth, I believed him. Instead of texting back, I called.
“Hey,” he said, sounding wary.
“Hey. So what’s going on?”
“Uh.” I could hear a kid crying in the background and then muffled sounds as Chase moved away from the noise. “My friend’s kid. She gave herself a haircut. It’s real bad, and we can’t find anywhere that’s open to fix it. She’s only in kindergarten.”
There was a lot his tone was telling me that his words weren’t, like how much he really, really didn’t want to be making this call.
And how, if given the choice, he wouldn’t cross the street to piss on me even if I was on fire.
In fact, if I was ever on fire in the street, he’d be the one standing there holding the can of gasoline and the matches.
But he was calling anyway. So maybe he was capable of being a decent human being after all, at least where this kid was involved.
Well, half-decent, but it was a start.
“Hang on,” I said. “I’ll go ask her.”
I hitched my sweatpants up and headed back down the hall. Mom was in the laundry room, shoving clothes into the washer.
“Where’s your uniform?” she asked me.
“I’ll get it,” I said. “Hey, you remember Chase from earlier?”
“Sure.”
“He knows a little kid who’s cut her hair and she needs it fixed. He wants to know if you can help out?”
Mom winced. She’d seen some hair disasters in her lifetime, that was for sure. “Well, I can’t make any promises but tell him to bring her around.”
“Here?”
“Of course here,” Mom said. “I have everything I need.”
“Okay.” I headed back to my room to grab my uniform and put the phone up to my ear. “Chase? Mom says you can come over. I’ll send you the address.”
Chase Hooper knowing my address. That had to be the start of a true crime podcast, right?
“Thanks,” he said, like the word had been torn from him, and ended the call.
I texted the address, took my uniform back to my mom, and said, “He’s coming over.”
She gave me a look. “Why are you being so weird about it?”
Because he hates me and I fucked him on a prep table a few hours ago, Mom.
But it wasn’t like I was going to say that.
“I’m not being weird about it,” I lied and decided to go and be weird about it in another room where she couldn’t call me on it.
Sam was in the living room, her ass on the floor and her back against the couch. Her textbooks were scattered all over the coffee table, and she almost looked like an industrious student doing her homework, except for the K-pop concert she was watching on her iPad.
I sprawled on the couch behind her and said, “That doesn’t look like U.S. History.”
“Fuck off,” she said with a grin.
It was already getting dark when Chase arrived from Goose Run, and Mom had relegated Sam and me to making tonight’s dinner of Shit from a Jar.
We hadn’t started yet because Sam had decided to help me make a list of Filipino pastries I could make for the bakery, and we’d gotten stuck reminiscing about our lola’s best food.
Needless to say, when we visited our grandparents, nothing came from a jar.
Headlights arced against the living room windows as a truck pulled into the driveway.
I went and opened the door.
Chase jumped out of one side of the truck, and a hot guy with long, messy blond hair climbed out the other. Then the hot guy reached back inside the truck and helped a little girl out. She was wearing a hat shaped like a panda. The hot guy picked her up and put her on his hip.
Chase cast a wary look at the front door, and me, and then squared his shoulders and walked over to meet me. “This is my roommate, Wilder,” he said. “And his daughter, Gracie.”
“Hey,” I said. “I’m Lee.”
Wilder shook my hand. “Thanks for doing this, man. I really appreciate it.”
Gracie stared at me, wide-eyed, and her bottom lip wobbled before she leaned over to her dad and whispered loudly, “Is he cutting my hair?”
Wilder hitched her up and said, “No, sweet pea. Lee’s mom is a hairdresser and she’s going to make your hair look all pretty again, okay?”
Gracie nodded solemnly, but it was obvious she wasn’t quite sold.
Mom bustled out from behind me. “Hi there! You must be Gracie! I’m Lindsay, Lee’s mom. Can you take your hat off for me, sweetie?”
Gracie tugged the panda hat off.
Yikes.
Gracie’s lower lip wobbled.
“Well now,” Mom said brightly. “That’s not too bad. Let’s get you inside and see what we can do!” She held out her hand to Gracie and flashed a smile at Wilder. “Come on in, Dad.”
They headed upstairs to the bathroom, where Mom had been cutting Sam’s and my hair since before we were Gracie’s age.
Chase lurked on the doorstep like a suspicious animal sniffing around a trap.
“Come on in,” I said grudgingly. “Who knows how long this’ll take?” I pointed to the living room. “TV’s through there. You want a beer or something?”
“I’m good,” he muttered and slunk through to the living room.
Sam had gone upstairs with Mom, but she’d left all her books spread out on the coffee table.
Chase’s gaze slid over them before he looked at the TV.
I grabbed the remote and handed it to him, then sat down on the couch.
After a moment, he sat down at the other end.
It wasn’t a big couch, but it felt like the gap between us was a chasm right now.
Like, a couple of hours ago I’d given him a hickey and had my dick inside him, but now he wouldn’t even look at me.
Fine.
If that was how he wanted to play it.
He flicked through the channels, finally settling on a replay of an NHL game.
“You like hockey?” I asked.
He didn’t even glance at me. “Nope.”
We watched the hockey he didn’t even like, and I stewed silently because he was being such a dick. Which turned out to be something I could work with when he was lying on his back with his legs held open, but not so much when he was sitting in my living room ignoring me.
I was a pretty decent guy, I thought. People mostly liked me and I mostly liked them.
But with Chase, it felt like every step I’d taken was a misstep, and it seemed like that was the point.
As though there was nothing I could do to make him like me, because that was the way he wanted it.
If it hadn’t been for those tiny accidental hints of something else going on, it might have been easier not to give a shit. And if we hadn’t fucked too probably.
But if he was so determined to hate me, why the hell had he come onto me so hard? Like, who carried a condom in their pocket at work unless you were planning something? Or trying really hard to get Employee of the Month.
I couldn’t figure him out.
“You okay?” I asked him. “After this afternoon, I mean.”
“Yup.” He stared at the screen, and did he have to be so cute? He was like an angry, feral kitten. At least his claws were put away for now, but I knew it wouldn’t take much for them to appear. That didn’t stop me wanting to pet him, though.
We watched the game for a little while longer.
I settled back on the couch with my phone, scrolling mindlessly and glancing at the TV screen, but every time I looked up, Chase was watching me.
He’d look away and pretend he hadn’t been, but I’d clocked the way his gaze was lingering on my chest and stomach.
Kind of flattering, honestly. I was a solid guy and not everyone appreciated that, but Chase was obviously here for it.
I could feel the space between us like it was a different temperature than the rest of the room.
My fingers twitched with the urge to run them over his skin and touch the places that he’d let me before.
Chase was magnetic, and every sense in my body felt the pull.
He was like an itch—impossible to ignore.
When I caught him looking my way again, I gave him a smile and said, “Sooo, how long does a haircut take anyway?”
His mouth twitched before he looked away to hide it.
Fuck him, I knew there was a human being in there somewhere.
I decided to take my wins where I could find them. I stood up. “I’ve gotta go make dinner.”
I thought that’d be it from Chase, so a few minutes later I was surprised as hell when he wandered into the kitchen and said, “What are you making?”
“Nothing fancy,” I said. “Just pasta and sauce from a jar. But I got a couple of sourdough loaves from the bakery, so that’ll work.” I gave him a moment to roll his eyes or something, but he didn’t. He just nodded. “I was gonna give you some too, but you took off pretty quick.”
He shrugged. “Told you. I didn’t want to clean up.”
“It was worth it,” I said, digging the big pot out of the cupboard under the sink and filling it with water. “The cleanup, I mean. Definitely worth it.”
He shrugged again, but I didn’t miss the faint flush rising in his cheeks. If he wasn’t careful, he might actually smile.
From upstairs I heard a burst of laughter, and Chase’s gaze flicked to the ceiling and then back to me.