Chapter 1
Aspen
Two months later
“Are you sure you don’t want to take things slow?” Blair asked as she held a lock of Aspen’s wet hair in one hand and a razor in the other.
“You know I never take anything slow, hon,” Aspen said from their seat in her barber chair
They squeezed a little more primer into the bowl of bleach they were mixing before looking up to meet Blair’s eye in the mirror.
“Right,” she said with a snort. “You did decide to marry your ex after less than a year of dating, after all.”
She dropped the lock of hair and brought the razor to the back of Aspen’s head, right below where they’d sectioned off their hair for an undercut.
Aspen scowled. “Well, let’s hope this decision goes a little bit better than that.”
Blair squeezed their shoulder, and her face morphed from pity to concentration as she began the slow process of buzzing the side of Aspen’s head.
Aspen had always found haircuts soothing, verging on meditative, whether they were the stylist or the one in the chair.
While they were happy to chat with a client if that’s what they wanted, over the past several months, Aspen had begun taking on more genderqueer folks, and many of them just wanted to sit and experience their first haircut of a different gender.
When Aspen had finally decided to chop off their hair, from mid-back to shoulder length, Blair was the one who helped Aspen clean it up.
After that, Blair had taught them everything they knew.
They’d experimented with cutting it themselves to varying lengths, but they knew without a doubt that an undercut was the next style they wanted to try.
Susie, the owner of Susie’s Salon, always said that hair can trap toxins and even show signs of stress and trauma. Aspen wanted to shave off one side completely and bleach and dye the other. That was the only way they would feel ready to move forward.
Well, that, along with the email sitting on their phone from their lawyer, letting them know that, after nearly eight weeks of being passed between the courts, the divorce had been finalized.
“You okay with a little fuzz?” Blair asked, rubbing her fingers over the peach fuzz left behind on the first large strip she’d carved out of Aspen’s hair.
“Yup, that’s good with me,” Aspen said, adding the final dollop of primer to the bleach.
“It’ll give Noah something to play with,” Blair said absently.
Aspen would have retorted with something snarky, but they were distracted by their reflection.
They watched as their blush started at the edge of their temple and slashed across the top of their round cheeks.
When Noah blushed, it started right at the highest point of his cheekbone and spread outwards, almost like a ripple in a lake.
That thought wasn’t helping their blushing situation. Neither was the only thing they could think to say in response, which was, “I do love playing with his sideburns when he shaves them.”
Blair raised her right eyebrow, which also lifted the sleeping dragon she had tattooed above it. “And now you can play all you want, cause you’re officially single and ready to mingle.”
Aspen pressed a little too hard into the bowl of bleach with the brush, and a glob spilled out onto their purple jeans.
“Oh shit,” they grunted, quickly placing the bowl on the wheeling cart and wiping at the bleach with their barber cape.
“Hey, you little menace! That’s my cape!” Blair said, turning off the razor and grabbing the towel from around Aspen’s neck. She whacked their shoulder with it before tossing it at their bleach-covered pants.
“And that’s my towel!”
“It’s also your bleach!”
Aspen groaned, but the corner of the towel was already in the bleach, so they decided to turn it into yet another one of their cleaning rags.
Once most of the bleach was gone, they looked down at the pinkish stain. “Do you think I could splatter the whole leg with bleach, and it would look intentional?”
Blair adjusted the apron to cover more of Aspen’s neck and then went back to her razor duties. “I feel like with your new enby attitude and this stunning haircut, you’ll be able to get away with a lot.”
Aspen wasn’t entirely sure about that. They were having another good outfit day, where the curve of their chest and hips seemed to fit perfectly in their vintage t-shirt, and their ass looked fantastic in their now bleach-splattered jeans.
However, the day before, they’d spent two hours crying in front of the mirror because they wanted to wear a dress, but in an enby way, and they couldn’t seem to pull it off.
It had taken them a while–like over eight months of intensive research and soul searching–to land on the label of nonbinary.
Still, almost a year and a half later, they sometimes wondered if they might be closer to genderfluid.
Some days, they didn’t mind their curves at all and actually liked dressing them up and flaunting them while wearing traditionally masculine shoes, accessories, or jackets.
Then they had days where every dip and roll of their body felt repulsive, and they wanted to crawl inside a burlap sack and never leave.
They were hoping that having some gender-fucky hair would help.
“Like…say…kissing your very cute bestie who has been an absolute angel to you throughout this whole ordeal,” Blair said, and Aspen’s eyes snapped to hers in the mirror.
“What?”
Blair rolled her eyes. “Were you spacing out?”
“I mean, yes, as always, but I can use context clues. You think I should kiss Noah?”
“I was saying that after this haircut, you’re going to look so good, I bet you could get away with kissing Noah.”
Aspen glowered at her. “Yes, because that sounds totally consensual and is exactly how I’ve been envisioning my first post-divorce kiss: as something I have to ‘get away with.’”
Blair sighed. “You know that’s not what I meant. You two are practically joined at the hip. I bet if you had a teensy little conversation about it, you would absolutely get consent.”
“Not all friends have to kiss. Just because you and every woman you’ve ever befriended have kissed—”
“Hey!” she said, pointing the razor at Aspen in the mirror. “I haven’t kissed Talia.”
“That’s because your roommate is aroace, which I’m pretty sure is why you wanted to live with her and a bunch of other dudes in the first place.”
Blair smirked and buzzed another lock of Aspen’s hair. “Alright, smarty pants, you got me there. But I know how important your first post-divorce kiss is, given how many fucking times you’ve brought it up this month. I’ve seen the way you look at Noah—”
An oily feeling settled in Aspen’s stomach. “I haven’t been looking at him like anything! There is a huge amount of platonic love between us, but there’s never been anything more, especially not while I was married–”
“Woah, woah,” Blair said, holding up her hands and clicking the razor off. She grabbed the bottom of the chair with her foot and swiveled it around, so they were facing each other. “That’s not what I’m saying. I’m not trying to imply anything about your marriage, or your vows of monogasty—”
“Monogamy,” Aspen said, stifling a smile at the way Blair said monogamy and chastity so often, she sometimes combined them into one word.
“Whatever. I wasn’t trying to imply that there was anything un-to-ward–” she overpronounced every letter of the word, which finally did make Aspen crack a smile.
“I’m just saying that since you moved out, it seems like you and Noah have gotten really close, in ways you weren’t before.
Maybe there’s some potential there to explore more, whether that be some post-divorce kisses or more monogasty—”
“Sweet gay Jesus,” Aspen murmured.
“That’s totally up to the two of you, and obviously, consent is sexy, so get that first. I’m just saying, I think confidence is also sexy and I’ve been watching you blossom like a lil’ disgusting butterfly for months and I think you’re finally ready to emerge.”
Aspen gave her a wry grin. “You’re the only person I’ve ever met who thinks butterflies are gross.”
Blair shrugged one shoulder and lifted her foot back up, placing it on the chair right between Aspen’s legs to spin it back around to face the mirror.
“I won’t apologize for being right.”
Aspen took the opportunity to shake their head, while there wasn’t a blade being pressed against it. Maybe if they shook it hard enough, they could dispel all the wild thoughts she was trying to put in their head.
“I have a tattoo above my ass that says butterflies are hot as hell,” Aspen said.
“Do you really have a tramp stamp?” Blair screeched, frantically grabbing at the cape.
“That’s none of your business!” Aspen said, slapping at her hands until she gave up.
“Fine, I’ll just leave that for Noah to find.”
Aspen groaned and tipped their head back, staring up at the chrome lamp hanging above Blair’s workstation. “Why are you shipping us so hard?”
“Because I’ve listened to you whine about how you can’t wait to get out there on your newly single steed and try having non-cis, non-heteronormative sex. Now that you’re finally single, you’re clearly nervous about it, so why not just pop your divorced-sex-cherry–”
Aspen tried to stand up, but Blair pinned them back down with both hands on their shoulders, a Cheshire grin on her face. “With someone else who is also–” she dropped her voice to a whisper. “Not cis, incredibly kind, and from the way he looks at you, more than willing to help.”
All the fight left Aspen, and they deflated like a holiday balloon past its season.
Was that…true? Did Noah really look at Aspen any sort of way?
“What if I ruin everything?” they whispered, and Blair’s smile fell. Aspen closed their eyes and, in the darkness, they were confronted with the fear they’d been carrying around with them for months. “Just like I ruined–”