Chapter 25 Playing Hooky #2
I figured the distraction wouldn’t hurt.
We reassembled ourselves and moved to my tiny bathroom.
It felt surprisingly normal. Yes, Leah could afford to pay someone, but there was something strangely intimate when we spent time just talking while doing our nails or hair.
We both spilled our deepest, darkest secrets.
“I’m feeling better now.” Leah organized the dye and tools on a towel she placed across the back of my toilet.
“Good,” I agreed.
She settled back before me.
I combed out her blonde hair and appreciated how easily her straight locks parted. “I just… it has been so incredibly long since I have felt so safe with anyone. Yes, I am very, very horny and should get off more. I should live it up, but… I need someone I can trust.”
I kissed her shoulder. “That’s okay. If it makes you feel better, you gave me the only orgasm I’ve had that wasn’t self-initiated in about three years.”
Leah turned, dumbfounded. “Oh my God, Lou! What the fuck? You always told me Gabe was—”
“He was. And then he wasn’t. He just gave up. I dunno. There was no incentive for him to do well, I suppose. It wasn’t like I had the confidence to leave him.”
“Hey, don’t talk like that!” Leah said sharply. “You are amazing! You’re a hell of a catch.”
I brushed her face. “You always say things to build me up, Leah.”
“Because I’m brutally honest.”
“No, you are nice. I am brutally honest.”
She kissed me sweetly. “Sure. But… I missed this. And you did, too, but you aren’t being honest.”
I groaned. “You know my life is a disaster. Now, turn around.”
She complied, but protested, “Did you forget my press disaster of a life? I can barely remember to put on shoes these days. Join the club.”
“Is this why you come here half naked?” I continued to piece through her hair.
“Yes and no,” Leah sighed. “It is hot as balls, one. Two, I didn’t want to mess up a shirt.”
“You are lazy.”
“I am me. You love me!” She pouted into the mirror. “Besides, you weren’t calling me lazy a minute ago.”
I rolled my eyes. “You’re a hot mess.”
“Oh, sweetheart, I know. But I want to go back to my most powerful—I want to be a ginger again.”
“Oh, good god! I will help you.”
She asked, “Hmm… do women like it, though? I’m off men.”
The more she asserted she was “off men”, the more I doubted her attempts to remain unattached. Leah was a conversational ping-pong ball wrapped in a rebound panic.
“Yes. If they are not blind, Leah. But you look good either way.”
Deep red hair suited her fair complexion and beautiful green eyes. I moved to finish pinning up the final sections
“Wait, do you like it?” Leah gasped.
I blushed.
“Oh my God! You thought I was hot from the start!”
“Still do, put your head down so I can section this.”
She followed my orders.
“Why did you dye it back?” I separated her hair at the back.
“To blonde?”
“Yes.”
“Rich hated redheads,” Leah answered. “He said he preferred me blonde.”
“So, let me get this straight. You’re dying your hair red again because a partner might find you more attractive despite learning this is a bad idea?”
“I much prefer Leah with the Ginger Hair, okay? My entire family is blonde. It’s appalling how alike we all look.”
“Must be the inbreeding.”
Leah mixed the peroxide and color. She shook the bottle and handed me a brush.
“Natch. Regardless, it lets me feel more myself—Leah Roughy, not Natalie Lyons, Jr. That shit gets old. Much as I love my family, I’m not just them. Anything I can do to feel more me right now is crucial.”
I piped out the color, brushed it on gently like paint at the roots towards the back of her head. I pulled it up, slowly working the color down her strands before flipping it over her natural part.
“Maybe you’re planning to get laid at the Tony’s?”
“Lou, Jesus! Can you think about anything else but sex right now?”
I tossed the mess in the bin. “She doth protest too much! It was an honest question.”
“Oh, Shakespeare little Miss RADA? Really?”
She deflected, taking the piss about my school of choice, but I sensed there was more to it. I worked in silence for a moment before she spoke, without sarcasm.
“It hurts me when you do that, Lou.”
“What? Am I pulling your hair or something.”
“No, you were and that’s the point.”
Confused, I locked eyes on her in the mirror.
“Lourdes, we just had fabulous sex and all you want to do is interrogate me about who I might want to fuck. Need I remind you that you’re the one with the date on the calendar, not me. Don’t make me feel used.”
It didn’t occur to me I’d done that. Leah wasn’t usually jealous. Our storied history suggested otherwise. But now? Something felt off. It didn’t occur to me she really wanted me. Or did she? I couldn’t tell.
“Leah, we both need to date other people. This won’t work. It has never worked long-term. Why would that change?”
Leah spun, leaving me to drip dye. I rushed to clean it up and returned to her face pulled in an odd expression. She looked uncomfortable as if torn between crying and shouting.
“Leah, I didn’t mean to hurt you. Only that you have a pattern as long as I’ve known you and we were never A Thing because of reasons.”
“Reasons that haven’t changed?”
I shook my head. “I wish I could say no, but the longer this divorce goes on, the more I need the money.”
“The world isn’t the same place it was ten years ago,” Leah said.
“Uh-huh. That is why your ex is painting you as the problem and the one who ‘hates family values’. Leah, we are still the villains to the press. Or, at least I am. You don’t care.”
I turned her towards me.
“I always care,” Leah whimpered. “But you’re right.
It doesn’t bother me so much. I let it roll off.
But when he brings my dads into it, I get irate.
I wish he hadn’t painted our entire family like some set of anti-family nutcases to win an election.
It’s like he’s trying to strike us from the record. ”
“Well, at least you have them, right?”
She shrugged. “I have them. You’re right in that I have so much to be grateful for. Now, remind me to show you all the pictures my sister sent. I cannot wait to meet the baby! He’s so adorable!”
And with that, she was back to smiling, buoyed by the family that loved and supported her.
If we stepped out together, she’d still be a queer icon loved by her supportive, surprisingly offbeat ancestors.
I, on the other hand, would only make things harder on parents who were already deeply disappointed in my divorce.
My mother never let up. I wanted to tell Leah that I loved her and wanted more, but I couldn’t bear to think of the consequences of trying and failing.