Chapter 31 #2
He applied dye to the last few strands of her hair and set the bowl aside. “You should hang out with Daisy more. She’d love if you popped by unannounced.”
“That sounds like horrible advice.”
“I’m being serious. That’s how we became friends with her.”
“Hmm.”
“Roxie, too,” he said. “Her sarcasm rivals yours. Now, don’t move. If you do, it’ll be a giant mess. Thirty minutes.”
Hazy set a timer, rinsed the bowl and brush in the sink, and found a fancy mud mask in his skincare drawer.
(Yes, he had a skincare drawer. Sunscreen is important.
Everyone knows that). He stood in front of Livy and applied the clay mask to her skin with newly washed fingers.
He finished the application with a boop to her nose.
“Want another drink?”
She handed him her empty glass. “Please.”
Hazy took his time in the kitchen to escape the stifling heat of the bathroom.
He couldn’t get the dirty thoughts about Livy out of his head.
What the hell was happening? How the hell had he gone from considering her a sister to considering what it would be like to fuck her?
It was fucked up. She was his best friend.
The platonic love of his life. And she was dating the other platonic love of his life.
He ran a hand down his face. Fuck. Before he returned the liquor to the freezer, he took a deep pull. Disgusting, and too little to get him tipsy. But maybe it would help him calm the fuck down.
Livy greeted him with a grin, and he checked the timer. Twenty-four minutes to go. So much for killing time. He’d stopped in her room to grab some nail polish options. He handed her the drink, then showed her the colors he’d chosen.
“Which one do you want?”
“Those are all blue.”
“But they’re different shades of blue.”
“What if I wanted pink to match my hair?” she asked, but pointed to the lightest shade.
“If I’m painting, I’m choosing.”
He sat cross-legged on the floor in front of her, thankful for his housekeeper who kept his floors clean enough to eat off. Livy sat her foot in his lap and he painted a thin coat of polish onto each toenail.
“Tell me about Lover,” he said.
“He’s your best friend. You two are attached at the hip. What new information could I possibly tell you?”
Hazy tapped her foot and she switched it out for the other. “I know you. And I know Lover. But I don’t know you two together. When I’m around, you two snuggle and watch whatever I want. We have dinner. What else do you do? What do you talk about without me?”
Livy lifted her cup to take a drink, but missed the straw with her mouth. She stuck her tongue out to find it. It was fucking adorable. He loved her so much.
Fuck. Get it together.
She had a boyfriend.
“I don’t know. Stuff, I guess.”
“Stuff.”
“Yeah. Stuff. Music and movies and hobbies and jobs, and families. Our dreams and goals. All the stuff you already know about both of us. We’re getting to know each other.”
He finished a second coat on both her feet, then handed her the bottle and stuck his foot between her legs, resting it on the toilet lid. She set her drink aside and painted his toes without question.
“We’re going to match!”
He hated himself, but he had to ask. “Have you two...?”
Tipsy, she didn’t fill in the blanks.
“Have we what?”
“You know.”
“Ooooh. Fucked. You want to know if we fucked.”
Her hand wavered, and she swiped blue polish onto more than his toenails.
Hazy cleared his throat. He forgot how blunt she got when she drank. It’d been so long since they’d indulged together. “Have you?”
She rubbed away the excess paint on his toes, then wiped her fingers on her bikini bottoms. Those things were beyond ruined, destined to forever be hair dye and painting clothes.
“Nope. He’s a perfect gentleman.”
He switched feet when she finished her paint job on the first one. “You’ve been on like ten dates. He hasn’t made a move?”
She looked up from her task and met his gaze, laughter dancing in her eyes. “I didn’t say that.”
“You’ve done other stuff then?” Was it any of his business? No. Did he need to know? No. Regardless, he couldn’t let it go.
Livy took a quick sip of her drink, then refocused on painting his toenails, her brow furrowed in concentration. “Why do you want to know?”
He feigned nonchalance with a shrug. “Curiosity, I guess.”
She put the cap on the nail polish right as the timer went off. Hazy grabbed a washcloth from the linen closet. He ran the tap as warm as it would go and soaked it, then wrung it out.
Holding her chin in his hand, he wiped the dried mask from her face. It forced her to meet his eyes.
“We haven’t done anything.”
Hazy didn’t know if that was the best-case scenario or the worst.
“How do you feel about that?”
With the mud washed away, he set the warm rag aside, then moved behind her and lifted her hair away from her skin.
“It doesn’t bug me,” she replied. “We aren’t serious. He’s fun to be around.”
He furrowed his eyebrows in confusion, unsure how to interpret her lack of interest in a physical relationship with her supposed boyfriend. She took his cue and stood, leading him to the bathtub where she sank to her knees.
For the briefest moment, a vision of her kneeling before him for a different reason crossed his mind. He shoved the idea down as he’d been doing with every unwelcome stray thought.
She tilted her head over the side of the tub. With water cold enough that it almost hurt, he rinsed her hair until the water ran clear. He set the shower head aside and lathered his hands with shampoo. Livy loved this part, so he took special care to massage her scalp.
She groaned at the attention, and the sound sent blood rushing directly to his dick. He froze, and she whined. “Don’t stop, that feels nice.”
Panic coursed through him, but he kept going, doing his best to power through and calm the fuck down. He rinsed her, then repeated the process with conditioner. Her soft sigh made him drop the shower head, and it flailed about the bottom of the bathtub, shooting icy water straight at Hazy.
That’s one way to kill a boner.
They both struggled to catch the wiggling shower head. Somehow a soggy, giggling Livy managed to get it under control. She flipped her hair so she could stand up straight, flinging water and conditioner tinted with pink dye over the walls and floor.
“I wasn’t done!” he said.
“Oh, sorry.” She held her arm at an awkward angle, keeping the spray of water in the tub.
Hazy stripped off his freezing shirt and wiped the water off his chest with it.
Her eyes tracked the movement. Water dripped from her nose and clumped her eyelashes.
Mischief sizzled in her gaze. She bit her lip.
Suddenly his dick didn’t care about the ice bath he’d just endured.
His affection for her set off a deep ache in his chest.
In a moment of weakness, he took a step toward her. She turned the hose on him.
After a split second of shock, he rushed her, trying to balance wrestling the shower head out of her hand and keeping them both from slipping. It felt impossible as he struggled to breathe through his laughter.
When he won control of the tap, he increased the temperature and said, “I wasn’t done,” again, trying to sound stern.
She didn’t hesitate to say, “Yes, sir,” and bend over the tub again, back arched, ass up, still laughing.
“Fucking hell,” he muttered. Maybe getting her drunk hadn’t been the best idea. He rinsed the conditioner out of her hair.
Just when he thought he had regained his composure, she said, “Your bathtub has great water pressure. I could be best friends with this shower head.”
It took him a second for her words to register, but when they did, he let out a startled laugh.
“Oh my God, Livy!” he said, squeezing the water out of her hair. “Did you just make a masturbation joke?”
She giggled. “Yeah. I’m funny as fuck.”
“You certainly are.”
He wrapped a towel around her hair, and she stood.
“Let’s do the rest in the kitchen. I need a snack.”
He agreed. Maybe in a more open space he’d be able to get his ridiculous notions out of his head. She went ahead of him, and he did his best to mop up the water on the floor while he got his arousal under control.
They set up in the kitchen and Hazy made her another drink before combing her damp hair.
“Do you want bangs?”
“Oh no. Is my life so bad the situation warrants bangs?”
He shrugged and offered her a cheeky grin. “You’re changing everything else. Why not?”
She sighed. “Do what you will. But you don’t get to laugh at me when I get sick of them and spend six weeks clipping them back in a stupid early-aughts pouf.”
He bit his cheek to suppress his grin. “I’m definitely not agreeing to that.”
Livy narrowed her eyes at him and gulped her drink. “Fine. Cut it off. Surprise me. I don’t care.”
“You’ve probably had enough alcohol then.”
She stuck her tongue out. His brain unhelpfully presented the idea of leaning down and licking it.
Hazy used the fancy shears he’d purchased for trimming Lover’s hair to cut a few inches off Livy’s hair and add choppy layers, following the exact steps a stylist on the internet advised.
He also cut her bangs. She’d be annoyed by them in two weeks.
But they’d be adorable, and she’d ask him to style them for her when she wanted to feel pretty. Win for him.
As soon as he finished the cut, Hazy joined Livy in drinking. They danced to party music while he blowdried and styled her hair. It was past midnight, and they were both at the perfect level of inebriated by the time he got to do the reveal.
Her reaction was to throw her arms around his neck and squeal in delight.
“After you retire from hockey, you should go to hair school. You missed your calling.”
He returned her hug. She hopped up to cling to him like a koala, and he carried her to the couch. They’d probably fall asleep in the living room. Both of them would wake with pounding heads and cricks in their necks.