Chapter 3Cody
3
Cody
“It’s this or bangs.”
Bree’s shoulders slumped, but she volleyed one last effort to change my mind. “Why are those the only two options? What about a new piercing or…,” she trailed off as she eyed my decade-old board shorts. “A wardrobe overhaul.”
I smirked. “Witch.”
Her eyes crinkled in mirth before she drew in a deep, audible breath that sounded like resignation.
I knew it well.
“Okay,” she finally said, the word coming out a bit shaky before she squared her shoulders and repeated, more confidently, “Okay. I can do this. Liem has some clippers in the bathroom cabinet. They must be the good kind, because he keeps that buzz on half of his head pristine. I’ll go grab them and meet you on the back patio.”
“You sure he won’t mind us using them?”
She tilted her head to the side, studying me for a beat before answering. “I’m sure. We have joint custody of most of our hair-care items.”
My hand balled into a tight fist à la the Arthur meme we used to love so much. “Why does that make me jealous? I cannot believe my plan backfired last year. Or, I guess, worked too well.”
Bree frowned. “Plan?”
I huffed before making one of my confessions. I was tired of concealing shit, and I knew how much of a hypocrite it made me that I’d been doing that. “Remember before I left for the ship in September, when I told you that I had eyes and ears all over the casino?”
Her eyes went distant, and her expression pinched, creating a row of creases down her forehead. “Vaguely. But I probably assumed you meant your dad, since, ya know, he literally has eyes and ears around the casino from the cameras he monitors from his office.”
“Ah.” My lips flattened. “I can see why you would’ve thought that.”
She put her hands on her hips. “What did you do?”
I studied her face. “You have an obscene amount of freckles. It’s almost vulgar.”
She lifted her gaze to the heavens, searching for strength there, and I took the opportunity to glance at Liem’s bedroom door even though I knew he was already gone this morning. He wouldn’t overhear what I was about to say, though I wasn’t sure if I would’ve minded if he had. It’s not like he didn’t know.
“I trusted someone to look out for you. It was probably the best decision I made last year, and maybe one of the only good ones too.”
We were both quiet for a moment, the levity of the morning flowing closer to melancholy. I could only hope the ebbs between lightness and remembering lengthened the longer I was home and the further away we got from… everything.
Bree eventually broke the silence. “We’re going to talk more about that later. Now get on outside,” she commanded, forcibly turning me around and swatting my ass. “I’ll meet you there.”
“Frankly, now that we’re out here, I’m worried this is a cry for help.”
I turned my upper body where I was sitting in the patio chair in the cottage’s backyard and lifted my eyebrow. “This can’t be the first time the thought crossed your mind.”
Bree nervously turned the stainless-steel clippers in her hand. “Well… no,” she admitted on a sigh. She flicked the clippers on once and jumped at the sound before quickly turning them off. “Okay, okay. I can do this.”
“Hey. Look at me.”
Her gray stare met mine, and I held it for a long moment.
“Do it, Cher.”
“I’m scared.”
“DO. IT.”
She flicked the clippers on again and, thankfully keeping her head, buzzed a strip of my dirty-blond hair off from just above my ear instead of straight down the middle as I probably would’ve done.
A gasp sounded behind us, and we both jumped. Bree—once again proving her superior mental fortitude—clicked off the clippers.
“ Heavens,” an angel’s voice breathed at the same time as a much deeper, more stoic one grumbled, “I can’t pretend to be shocked.”
I resisted the urge to turn toward the angel and kept my eyes on the hair that had fallen to the ground as Liem addressed Bree. “Princess, I thought we were in agreement that our personal grooming devices were to be used for good and not evil?”
I bristled at the nickname, but at least he hadn’t called her “best friend.”
She squeezed my shoulder as she answered, her voice solemn. “I know we did. But just like he did for me in high school, I am supporting Cody in his post-breakup ritual of choice.”
And that was when I let my gaze wander to Liem, my breath catching when I found him looking directly at me. There was so much compassion swimming in his dark-brown eyes that my throat tightened, officially ending my ability to breathe.
“I’m sorry, Dezi,” he said seriously.
My gaze traveled over him even as I lost oxygen. No matter how kind his eyes were, the rest of Liem was….
He was something else entirely.
The person I’d gotten to know as “LL” over a semester of instant messaging continued to be a patient teacher after that morning on the pier. I’d sought him out many times under the semi-loose pretense of seeking help on assignments, and he quickly became someone I considered a friend.
And I assumed that Liem would be the same.
Except he almost… wasn’t. Because Liem Lott in person? He was like a bad-boy jump scare. If LL’s voice had put me at ease, then Liem Lott’s appearance did the opposite. Ink-black hair that was half shaved to the scalp on one side, the other half long and—I assumed—silky, now ending past his collarbone. Delicate line tattoos were etched across the fingers of one hand, and more black lines and small bursts of color were scattered up his arm. My gaze trailed up his arms and over to the curve of his shoulder, all the way to….
“You got a new piercing?” I asked without thought, riveted by the way the bar through his eyebrow lifted as he smiled. I shut my mouth, mortified to have discovered it had hung open for everyone to see, and discreetly inhaled through my nose.
“Ah, yes,” he said, his smile so warm, I could almost feel the pulse of his aura soothing me. “A few. You could say they were one of my post-breakup rituals.” His shoulders undulated back and forth slowly as he spoke, as if his body preferred to move with the Gulf breeze rather than against it.
But then I heard it. “Breakup?” I asked, my voice higher than usual and my focus rapt on him, barely noticing Bree as she left my back and made her way to Vinh.
My throat was tight again, but in a different way. I’d heard enough from Bree while I was gone to deduce that he hadn’t been dating anyone.
Liem kept his attention on me, his dark eyes keen. “Yes. With a few places.” He raised his eyebrow, the metal bar catching in the morning light. “All contained inside a certain casino and resort.”
The easing inside me was so abrupt that I shifted my weight in my seat. I had lost my mind while I was gone and, ironically, hadn’t been able to find solid ground since returning to land. Maybe it was that I just didn’t want more surprises after an extended absence. That made sense. And Liem suddenly being tied to another person who I’d inevitably be forced to tolerate would be exactly that. A surprise. An unsettling and unwelcome one.
Bree laughed as she pulled back from hugging Vinh. “I told you that you can still go to Fortuna. I won’t hold it against you.”
Liem nodded and smiled fondly at her. “I know.”
“You can wear your Fortuna merch too,” she added. “I really do miss your visor and clogs.”
Liem hummed, clasping his hands behind his back as he subtly shifted on his feet and made no reply.
I moved my gaze over to Vinh just as he reached down and took Bree’s hand, seeming content to wordlessly watch her exchange with his brother.
Bree narrowed her eyes on Liem. “You’ve already given them away, haven’t you?”
“Yes,” he admitted immediately, his guilelessness so at odds with the mischief that was always brewing beneath the surface. “To the enchanting Ms. Bettina.”
“Oh! The one who used to run the dance studio downtown?”
“The same,” Liem confirmed. “She was planning to wear them to the parade.”
The Mississippi humidity turned from thick to suffocating without warning. I could do nothing but watch as the three of them carried on the conversation that I couldn’t begin to contribute to, full of elements I didn’t understand. Regret filled me to overflowing at every subtle inside joke and shared look of understanding that I had no part in.
They’d created a family here while I was…. I didn’t even know what I’d been doing. Letting people down, mostly. But I’d been gone. I’d chosen to be gone. Standing up suddenly, I mumbled something that didn’t even sound like words to my own ears and went back inside the cottage, hating myself for it the entire way.
Besides the physical brawl I’d gotten into with AJ at the casino last year after finding out the bullshit that he did to Bree, I really wasn’t prone to outward displays of dramatic bitch.
I headed over to the fridge and busied myself with pouring a glass of water and then drank it slowly over the kitchen sink, doing my best to not let my gaze take in the cottage’s charming interior and inevitably find even more signs that life had happened here without me.
I wasn’t even sure who—or what —I was most jealous of; I just knew I couldn’t deal with more of it in that moment.
“Hey.” Liem’s soft voice interrupted my spiral.
Why did he have to sound like that? Unlike almost any other person on Earth, I could never snap at him. Could never take out my excessive negative feelings on him. It made my stomach hurt to even imagine it.
Setting the glass in the sink, I smiled tightly. “Hey.”
He crossed his arms and leaned casually against the doorjamb. “Would you like for me to finish your…?” He gestured to my head.
My eyes widened, and I reached up to feel the stripe of missing hair. “Shit, I’d almost forgotten.”
Liem’s eyes twinkled. “We wouldn’t let you.”
Bree and Vinh trailed inside then, and I didn’t miss the concerned look she shot my way.
Sighing loudly, I got ahead of it and offered her honesty again. “I was being a jealous bitch, but I’m good now.”
Well. Half of that was honest, at least.
“We’ll feel better after we have our fight,” Bree assured me.
Understanding passed between our gazes, and the storm passed.
Vinh leaned down and kissed Bree’s temple. “I’m going to go get some work done. Start thinking about what you want for lunch, and if you change your mind about going alone, tell me. I’ll be close by.”
Bree leaned into his embrace. “I will. Love you.”
“I love you too. See you soon,” he murmured quietly, then slung his laptop bag over his shoulder, nodded at me and Liem, and made his way out the front door before closing and locking it behind him.
Moving my gaze from the door, I met Bree’s eyes once more. “I’m a jealous bitch again. The most jealous bitch to ever bitch.”
She snorted, but before she could say anything else, I asked, “Where are you going?”
“To the nursing home to visit Grandmother. It has been a fiasco, dealing with everything. They’re set to demolish what’s left of her house sometime, maybe, I guess, and I’m still going back and forth with insurance about the fire and with the bank about the house and about paying for her care. It’s a mess.”
My heart sank. Bree’s grandmother had—maybe, allegedly, probably—set her own house on fire a few months back, but the investigation was ongoing and so far, inconclusive. And would probably remain so, as Miss Barb had a massive stroke on the same day. She’d since “woken up” but had yet to be lucid or coherent, so there would likely be no answers from her.
It was a horrible situation, and I knew it had to be stressing Bree more than she let on.
“I had no idea it was such a hassle still. How can I help?”
To my surprise, she actually thought it over for a few moments instead of outright dismissing the offer. “You can let me finish shaving your head. It’s giving me the creeps.”
I narrowed my eyes.
She served me a fond smile but traded it for a grimace as she took her phone from her back pocket. “Speak of the devil. It’s the bank.”
Liem, who’d been quietly watching our exchange, spoke up. “Don’t worry, Princess. I’ll take care of him.”
Inexplicable goose bumps trailed my spine at the words, and I had to steel myself to not show the reaction.
Bree glanced between us, but then her phone buzzed again, so with one last smile in thanks and agreement, she hurried out of the room to answer it.
Liem disappeared into the bathroom and returned with a pair of hair shears, then tilted his head toward the door. “Come on, let’s cure Princess of her ill feelings. Which, by the way, is the only cause that could prompt me to participate in this wretched endeavor.”
Following him back out to the patio chair, I sat heavily and asked, “You think it’ll look that bad?”
Liem picked up the clippers and paused, seeming to mull over his response. “No. You’ll be just as charming without your hair.”
I flushed, not expecting the outright compliment. “I’m not worried about being charming.”
He nodded. “Good. You shouldn’t be.”
He tapped the back of my neck in a silent cue to scoot back, and I followed his direction, mentally shrugging off another flurry of goose bumps.
Once I did, he tapped again and murmured, “Lean back.”
And again, I complied, somehow managing to relax into the seat. He wasted no time in getting to work, using a combination of scissors and clippers. When he started to hum softly, I let my eyes fall shut for several long minutes, utterly soothed by the sound.
I sank deeper into the small sensations of it all, imagining his tattooed fingers when I felt a graze to the shell of my ear, or a brush on my temple. The snip of scissors. The buzz of clippers. The later-winter birdsong and the faint smell of charcoal.
“All done.”
I blinked slowly back into the morning, sure I’d misheard him. Awareness came back to me in pieces as my vision focused on an upside-down Liem watching me from above, framed by puffy white clouds.
I reached toward my head and ran my hand over my scalp experimentally, my body partially collapsed in the chair. “Wow.”
Liem graced me with a soft smile. “I agree.”
Bracing my hands on the chair, I heaved myself upright and surveyed the piles of hair scattered by our feet. “Uh, should we clean this up?”
“Hmm,” he said thoughtfully, toeing a fallen piece of my blond hair—lightened from its usually dirty blond after months aboard the ship. “Did you have any product in your hair?”
I ran my hand across my scalp again, marveling at the lighter feeling but surprised to feel longer strands on top. “No.”
“In that case, we can sweep it into the yard and let the birds use it for nesting. Just in time for spring.”
His simple enthusiasm was contagious, and paired with my fresh hair cut…
It felt like a new beginning.
I caught the new best friend of my best friend’s gaze and held it, hoping that sincerity would be a good place to start.
“Thank you, LL.”
A faint breeze ghosted my skin as his pupils expanded, making his gaze even darker. He brushed his hair behind his pierced ear. The corner of his mouth lifted almost shyly, and he took a deep breath before responding, “You’re so very welcome, Dezi.”