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“It’s my fault,” Nathan said. “I pushed her into the pool.”
They all looked at him. I did, too. I hadn’t expected him to talk about it. My blush continued on my face, now waiting to see if Kota or Victor appeared angry that I went swimming with Nathan instead of coming over. Why I felt that way, I wasn’t sure.
Only they didn’t look angry. They looked surprised. “What happened?” Kota asked.
Gabriel brushed out my hair while Nathan explained about how he found me in the tree and how he’d pushed me into the pool, all the way up until we were standing at Kota’s door. He complimented my swimming. Again the warm, tender sensation washed over me. I appreciated how normal they were. We were talking and hanging around together. For the moment I was so glad they were forgetting about my problems. I tried not to look as excited as I was. I knew that Kota sitting on the floor a couple of feet away wasn’t feeling his heart thudding or even thinking about the situation in the way I was. Touching, talking, laughing... So this is what happens when people got together?
I was envious of the years they must have spent together to be so comfortable with one another. Would I ever be so cozy with them? Would there ever be a day when I wasn’t really conscious about the moment?
Gabriel patted my now smoothed strands of hair. Soft curls fell around my shoulders, still wet but now brushed. “Your color is amazing,” he said. “How is it so many different colors?”
I wasn’t sure how to respond. “It’s like a dirty blonde or something.”
“Or something is right,” he said. “There’s a little red in there. Various shades of blonde. It’s crazy.” He urged me up by nudging me in the shoulder. “Let’s go wash it. I want to blow dry it and see how it looks.”
I again looked at Kota, who only smiled a little sympathetically at me. Nathan was smirking. I think he was enjoying this. I was feeling silly but I stood up. Gabriel stood, grabbing my arm and pushing me toward Kota’s bathroom.
He shut the bathroom door and we stood alone in the enclosed space. I felt my breath catch, not expecting this. Flashes of my imagination went through my head of things my mom would tell me about when boys got you alone. If being in Kota’s room together with all of them wasn’t bad enough, here I was in a locked room with one who wanted to play with my hair.
Gabriel went to Kota’s shower and found a bottle of shampoo and conditioner. “These aren’t ideal for you but it’s what we have right now.” He made a gesture to the sink and then patted me on the hip. “Let’s get to work.”
My cheeks radiated and I moved forward to face the sink.
Gabriel stood next to me and twisted the knobs, testing the temperature with his fingers. “Tell me when you think it’s okay.”
I reached in, waiting for the water to warm. When it did, I nodded to him.
“Get in there,” he said.
I could hear voices from the other side of the door. I had a feeling it was about me and I was straining to hear over the sound of the rushing water.
When I ducked my head under the faucet of the sink, I couldn’t hear the voices. Just Gabriel.
“You’re going to our school, aren’t you?” he asked, his fingers combing through my hair again, rubbing along my scalp behind my ears and really working his fingers along the base of my head. The massaging motion relaxed me. He was good at this.
“Yes,” I croaked, not sure what to say. I was feeling even shyer now that he’d seen such an intimate side of me and learned the awkwardness of my family. He just met me and he knew the worst things so far.
“We’ll be in the same grade,” he said. “Going to sign up for art class?”
I laughed. “I can’t draw.”
“Neither can I,” he said. He moved behind me, I felt his hip meeting mine. Touching was impossible to get used to. I resisted the urge to leap away from him though it was difficult. “I hear you just show up and play with paint. There’s not much to it.”
There was the fragrance of soap filling my nose and his fingers lathered up my hair with shampoo. “So you want an easy grade?” I asked.
“They don’t offer the classes I want to take.”
“What do you want to take?”
He finished rubbing the shampoo in and then pushed my head a little until I was further under the running water. He cupped his hand into the water to redirect the flow to run over the base of my neck. “I wouldn’t mind learning bass. I already play guitar. There’s one class at... um... another school.” His fingers smoothed over the locks of my hair. I thought I felt him curling some of the strands but it was hard to tell.
His hesitation confused me. “Another school?”
“Just one of the private schools.”
“Are you considering going to the private school next year?”
His hands moved away from my head and he was silent. I thought I might have said something wrong but I heard a bottle being squeezed and he was rubbing something between his hands. “Might.”
“Is there a requirement to get in?”
He moved his fingers through my hair again, taking time to work the conditioner through every strand. “There’s always a requirement for a private school, sweetie.”
The endearment made my breath catch. People don’t call other people sweetie up north, not unless they were sweethearts. I wondered if there was a hidden meaning or if that was just how people talked here in the south like I’d seen in movies.
“So it means you won’t be going to my school if you go to the private one,” I said softly.
“Maybe,” he said. “Victor’s so mean, isn’t he? Did you see him kick me? I was trying to be nice and fix your hair and he’s kicking me.” Was he dodging the question or was it obvious?
“He’s not so bad,” I said, thinking of the day before of how he had held my hand on the way out of the mall and of the sheet music.
“No, he isn’t bad. He’s just a pain in the ass sometimes.” He finished the lather and then had me dunk my head into the water once more.
When I was finished and dripping into the sink, he found a towel in the tiny bathroom closet and held it out to me. I wrapped my hair into it while he dug around in the cabinet und
er the sink. He pulled out organized blue bins, reaching deeper inside for one near the back.
“So how do you know everyone?”
“Huh?” he asked, pulling an older model brown dryer out from under the sink.
I swallowed and tried to stage whisper. “I mean, how did you meet Kota? And Victor? When did you all become friends?”
He pushed the blue bins back underneath the sink and plugged in the dryer. He snapped his fingers and pointed at the closed toilet seat. When I was sitting, my head came up to his stomach. He flipped on the dryer and started combing his fingers through my hair. “I met them all in kindergarten,” he said. “We went to the same elementary school. Everyone but Silas and North.”
“Who’s North?”
“Another one of the guys,” he said. “There’s me, Kota, Victor, Nathan, Silas, North and Luke.”
“Who’s Luke?”
“North’s brother.”
I blinked. Seven of them.
Gabriel reached for the hair brush on the counter and started smoothing out my hair. “You see, everyone except North and Silas grew up together. Silas didn’t move here until maybe when we were ten. North came about a year later.”
“Where was North?”
“He was living with his dad in Europe,” he said, brushing my hair up against the wind from the blower. “They live with their uncle now.”
“Do they stop by here often?”
“You’ll see them sometime,” he said.
A silence grew between us as he focused on fixing my hair. With the way I was sitting, I couldn’t see what he was doing to me. Mostly it felt like he was just drying it out, but he was doing a twist thing to add a little volume. It was more than I ever bothered to do.
There really was no reason for me to do more to it. I usually never saw anyone but my own family. Marie would trim my hair for me. She wasn’t very good but with my hair pulled back, no one noticed.
When he was done, he put down the dryer and the brush onto the counter top. He smoothed his fingers through my hair. “Your hair is soft. I was right about the color, too. It’s chameleon.”
“Huh?”
