Page 41 of Alone With You in the Ether

Not that it mattered. He rarely slept, and she’d already been in all his other places, anyway.

He let her in, holding the door open for her, and she crept in quietly, carefully, as if she might disturb something. Don’t worry, you’ll fit perfectly, he thought. Don’t worry, there’s nothing here for you to break.

She straightened upon entry, glancing up. “High ceilings.”

“Yes,” he agreed.

She nodded, sparing a brief look around, then turned to him.

“Do you have, you know. A shaver?” she said. “Clippers? I don’t know what they’re called.”

He arched a brow. “Should I be worried about what you’re going to do to my head if you don’t even know what the tool is called?”

“I really couldn’t make it worse, believe me.” She fixed her gaze on his again, surveying his hair. “It’s really bad. And you haven’t cut it since I met you, so…”

She trailed off.

“Bathroom,” he said, gesturing her towards it, and she pulled her shoulders back, nodding. She had a distinct ability to take up space, he thought. She made her surroundings part of her dominion, her atmosphere bending to the strike of her stride. Aldo, on the other hand, was typically subjected to the laws and customs of the room.

She vaulted herself onto the counter upon entry, watching with her usual keen-eyed observation as he dug around for the hair-cutting set he’d gotten one year for Christmas and never touched. He half expected to blow a layer of dust off the case.

The moment he’d slid it out from one of the drawers, she leapt down again, reaching for it.

“Okay, now—” She glanced around, frowning. “Sit,” she said, gesturing at first for him to straddle the toilet, but then she stopped herself. “No, wait. First your shirt.”

He glanced down at it, then back at her. “What?”

“Well, I’m guessing you don’t have one of those capes. Or whatever.”

It took a moment to register that she wanted him to take it off.

He complied with a belated shiver, cold air meeting bare skin, then dropped it on the floor to sit as she’d requested. She, meanwhile, shifted around his bathroom, picking a blade length and scrutinizing a pair of scissors. She silently made her selection, plugging in the clippers, and then came up behind him, eyeing the back of his neck while he watched her in the mirror’s reflection. She was frowning in concentration; her hands rested lightly above the scars on his shoulder (road rash, permanent) before running through his hair, measured it out between her fingers. Her nails scraped lightly across his scalp and he allowed his eyes to close, soothed momentarily by her touch.

When his eyes opened, he found her watching him in the mirror. She didn’t look away, her thumb drawing a line gingerly from the nape of his neck to the top of his spine.

Then she exhaled swiftly, glancing down to draw her attention back to his hair.

He wasn’t sure what he’d expected. She seemed methodical, in a way, with a plan of attack, or at least some sort of sequential geography. She’d said art was precise, and he believed her. He was sure now that she was an artist, whether she believed herself to be or not. She was constantly in the midst of an underpainting, imagining things as they could be before steadily making them true.

Focus looked right on her, vibrant and bright. She had her lip caught between her teeth, pink tongue slipping out every now and then in concentration, and Aldo was so fixated on her that he didn’t notice what she’d done to his hair until after she’d stepped back and looked up, meeting his eye in the mirror.

She’d cut it short enough that it was more tousled now than curly, trimmed safely away from his eyes and forehead. He hadn’t necessarily cared about the outcome, but he found the results satisfactory; he’d been right to trust her eye, running his fingers over the subtle fade.

“There,” she murmured to herself, mussing the cropped waves atop his head and smoothing them back to eye her handiwork. “Now it looks like somebody cares about you,” she said, and her hand stilled, eyes rising up to his in the mirror again.

Aldo leaned his head back against her torso, resting it there for an experimental moment. In response, Regan ran the pad of her thumb over his temple; then lower, brushing the bone of his cheek. He slid a hand behind him, curling his fingers around the back of her knee; she ran her own through his hair again, her breath quickening beneath the weight of his head.

He let his eyes close, then open.

“What time?” he said.

She looked relieved. “Seven?” she suggested. “I’ll drive.”

“What do I need to bring?”

“Um.” Her fingertips dropped to brush his clavicle, dancing along the narrow bone. “A jacket? Slacks? Do you have those?”

“I have a suit,” he assured her, palm running down her calf to let his index finger brush her ankle. Then he slid his hand away, retreating to the safety of his own space. “I’ve had to interview for things, Chuck.”

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