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I hop out of bed, still in his shirt, but since it’s so large I don’t feel self-conscious. Several minutes later I’m standing over Ethan as he sits on a chair pushed up to the sink in the main bathroom so that I can wash his hair before I cut it.
I put my fingers under the running water to make sure it’s warm enough.
“You only need to give me a trim,” he tells me.
“God you are such a Vain Wayne, aren’t you? If I was your age I wouldn’t give a shit what my hair looked like anymore.”
“Ah, but you don’t have my hair,” he retorts with a teasing grin. “And you don’t need to be my age, you clearly already don’t give a shit.” He makes a show of eyeing my short, choppy hair.
“You cheeky bastard! I’ll have you know that the not-giving-a-shit look is very in right now.”
“Well, you do seem to pull it off,” he accedes, placing his hand affectionately on my hip for a moment.
I glance down and he moves it away. Friendship is definitely going to be a difficult task for us. I tell him to lean his head back into the sink, as I fill a jug with warm water. I pour it over his hair, before glancing down to see him with his eyes wide open, watching me. His hair feels like the purest silk beneath my fingers.
“Do you do that with all of your hairdressers?” I ask.
“Do what?”
“Stare them out of it like a creep.”
“No. But I’ve never had a hairdresser quite like you.”
“I am very talented,” I agree with a smirk.
“And pretty.”
For some reason, his flirtation irks me. On the one hand I want us to get along and be friends, but on the other I feel like he doesn’t deserve to just decide when and how he can treat me nicely. “And a whore only out for what she can gain,” I add cuttingly. I promised myself I’d never let him take back those words, and I won’t.
“I was angry when I said that to you. Sometimes you don’t even realise how much you’re infuriating me, and that just makes it even more infuriating.”
“I might be infuriating, but you’re confusing. You call me a whore, you call me a beautiful girl in such a pretty language. I don’t know what to think sometimes.”
All the while I’m saying this to him, I’m lathering some shampoo into his hair. We are so completely dysfunctionally functional.
He raises his hand to my arm. “I might not be human, but I am fallible. I should never have said that to you. I’m truly sorry for it. But let’s not talk of it. I don’t want to fight with you tonight.”
I don’t want to fight with him either, so I let the matter drop and continue washing his hair. Sometimes you’ve just got to pick your battles. Ethan and I are making headway in our quest to get along. Bringing up old arguments isn’t going to help.
I pour more water over his head to rinse out the shampoo. He’s still watching me, but I don’t comment on it. I take a clean towel off the rack and use it to dry his hair a little. He’s smiling as I do so.
“What? What are you smiling about?”
“You’ve got a caring side. Who would have thought it,” he grins at me.
“I’m not the cold-hearted bitch you’ve come to believe I am. I can be very caring when I want to be,” I say defensively.
I take a comb and begin brushing out the tangles in his golden locks.
“You’ll make a good mother some day,” he says, completely out of nowhere. Well, it wasn’t out of nowhere, the caring comment was leading into it. Still, it takes me very much off guard. It’s not so much the statement, but the way he says. The way he looks at me when he says it, like he’s imagining me pregnant or something.
“Not sure I can see myself ever having kids,” I reply, letting his long fringe drift through my fingers.
“Wait a few years and you might change your mind.”
Suddenly, I think of something I’ve never even thought of before, as I ask him, “Have you ever had kids?”
His dark eyes move to mine. “I have had four.”
