Page 43 of Triple Play

“Oh,” I say belatedly. “Feels nice.”

“Are you gonna…” He motions to the clippers. Because I’ve been cupping his jaw without actually trimming his beard.

So I guide the clippers up his jawline. Strands of his beard fall away onto the pool deck. I work my way around his jaw, careful at his sideburns and on the edge of his top lip. It’s the kind of task that requires a sort of mindless concentration—familiarizing myself with the shape of his face, with the texture of his hair. With the way he’s looking up at me like he wants to say something.

“Here, lean your chin up,” I say.

He does, and I apply the clippers to his neck. After a second, he laughs.

“You good?”

“Just tickled.”

“Sorry?” It comes out a question.

Felix smiles. “Not your fault.”

“Do you want me to keep going?”

He catches my wrist in his hand, his thumb and forefinger settling over my suddenly racing pulse. A flake of black sits on his thumbnail. What I thought was a bruise, but that could be nail polish. Guys sometimes just wear nail polish, not for any particular reason. Felix seems like someone who doesn’t care what other people think about him. Not like you…

But I don’t pull my hand away.

“Is something about this bothering you?” he asks.

Yes. But not how he means. “I’m good if you are.”

He hasn’t let go of my wrist. Even using the largest guard on the clippers has revealed the shape of his face, the plushness of his lips. “If it was bothering you…” He slides the pad of his thumb against the skin on the inside of my wrist, a question.

One he can’t be asking me—or if he is, one I certainly can’t answer.

Panic warms the back of my neck. A panic I haven’t felt since I was eighteen and another guy at some baseball showcase said You wanna? and curved his fingers into a circle like I could mistake his meaning. A panic I haven’t felt since I meant to say no—had every intention of saying no, really—but what came out was yes.

And then, please.

After, I never saw him again. Baseball’s one of those sports where everyone knows everyone else. I’d know if he was still around. Maybe if I met him now, he’d shrug and say Yeah, game wasn’t really for me.

Or maybe someone along the way made it clear that the game didn’t have a place for people like him. For—I swallow around the thought—people like me.

Now Felix is asking with a certain plausible deniability. Or maybe you’re reading too much into this and panicking over nothing.

Words seem impossible to manage so I shake my head. “I’m switching to the number seven guard.” There. What we actually need to do.

Felix releases my wrist. He’s giving me the same look as when I eased Shira off my lap, a disappointment I don’t know what to do with.

So we work our way to smaller and smaller clipper guards, each round of shaving revealing more and more of Felix’s face. I’m being careful—if I concentrate on the buzz and clip of hair, I won’t think about anything else—but I nearly take off his sideburn when Shira walks out.

She’s in cut-off shorts, a bathing suit. No, not a bathing suit—a white crochet bikini that’s mostly string.

Felix looks over to where I’m staring. His eyes widen, then he forces them down to the deck like he doesn’t want to be caught staring.

Look at her. The thought rises before I can stop it. Not enough people in her life seem to see her. He helped her with her math. He admires her without leering.

“She’s beautiful,” I say.

He glances to me like either agreeing or disagreeing could be a trap. “You’re lucky to have her, I hope you know.”

“You giving me your blessing?” I ask, and Felix is opening his mouth to respond when Shira pads over to us, flip-flops clapping against her heels.

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