Noah
“Are you okay?” Rachel whispers into my ear, standing right behind me as I try to mix the hair dye for my client.
“Sure, why do you ask?” I say, and it’s totally not true.
I slept only two hours, and although I am usually fine with that amount of sleep, even after drinking bottles of wine with my best friend, this time my body has decided to completely go on strike, and I feel like I am going to die.
Anytime now. It’s coming. I can feel it.
“You look like a corpse.” She points out. “A very handsome corpse, but still a corpse.” Fuck you, Rachel.
“Well, thank you for the compliment.” I respond with annoyance and take the bowl of hair dye with me as I walk toward the break room door.
Rachel follows me, as she often does. Because this woman truly refuses to let things go.
She does it with men, books, gossip. Hell I am pretty sure she will eventually try to kidnap Kai again if he doesn’t appear on his own soon.
“What happened after you got that call from Leo?” She asks, trying to get more gossip out of me.
“We just watched a movie.” I try my best to sound boring, in hopes she won’t ask more.
“Just a movie?” She presses. Of course my efforts to keep her from asking more only made her more curious. That’s great.
“He might have also given me a blowjob during the movie in an empty cinema theater.” I say, trying to sound casual, and royally failing.
She grabs my arm and yanks me back, and the bowl of hair dye almost escapes and I manage to save it with just a little spill on my jeans.
I love this pair of jeans too. Of course the one day I chose to wear a light denim wash is the day I get black hair dye on it.
I can’t have nice things, and this woman is the reason.
I glare at her and she mouths a silent apology.
It takes everything inside me to not dump the damn bowl of hair dye on her head.
The only reason keeping me from doing it is the fact that I will have to fix the mess afterward, and I am truly not in the mood to deal with the curly mess on her head right now.
“I will pay for cleaning, now spill.” She tells me in a hushed tone, since we are in the hallway right behind the door that leads to the main area of the salon.
“Not much to tell, really. He bought me snacks, sucked my dick during the movie, and then drove me home.” I shrug.
“I don’t think I will see him again anyway.
It shouldn’t matter.” He didn’t even bother to say goodnight; he drove off the moment I exited the car.
I checked my phone this morning and no messages.
I am pretty sure he is ghosting me. I would get upset about it, but ghosting isn’t always about you.
He clearly has issues. I know this much from just seeing him last night, broken and ready to shatter in pieces at any moment.
If he never shows up again, it’s not about me. It’s a ‘him’ problem.
“What?” She yells. “Why?”
“He is emotionally unavailable, Rachel, and I don’t have time to break my own heart by falling for him.” I stir the hair dye with the brush to keep myself busy and remind her that I do have a job to do. “Can I go back to work now?”
“I would prefer not, but I do have a client to attend to as well.” She opens the door and allows me to walk out first before she does the same and heads for her station. I watch her through the mirror as she greets her customer and takes her seat. I push myself to smile as I turn to my own client.
“Let’s make you beautiful, sweetheart.” I say with a sweet tone, and the young woman in my chair nods in agreement. I love my job, and I usually don’t care if I am tired. I will still do my best on those days. Today, though, it’s different.
I don’t know why my mind went into the depths of everything that can go wrong the moment he dropped me at my apartment, but it did.
I couldn’t help it. I started thinking all the reasons he could be in this mental state before we met yesterday, and for the better part of our time together.
Then my mind went straight to the fact he still was horny enough to hookup while being clearly a mess mentally.
Which brought me right back to the fact that he was a mess, and I still don’t know the reason.
I chose not to ask because it wasn’t my business, and I assumed he would share eventually.
That never happened; the night went by in a flash, and I am still clueless.
The worst part of this is not the fact that I don’t know what tormented him up to that point, but the fact that half of today has passed and he hasn’t reached out.
As more time passes, I am convincing myself that I won’t see him again, and even though part of me is kind of relieved, another part shatters into pieces only at the idea.
So much for keeping myself from falling for him. This man will ruin me.