Page 19 of The Challenge

“It’s not that you don’t mean well. You’re just…follicularly challenged.”

I chuckled again. “Follicularly? Did you make that up?”

“It’s a real word. Like hair follicles. Follicularly challenged means you can’t do hair. You can’t do hair.”

I bent down to kiss her on the cheek. “Try to get some sleep. We’ll get up a little early and figure it out.” Nothing like making promises you weren’t sure you could keep.

“Okay.” Effie sighed, placing her book on the nightstand and getting under the covers.

She didn’t believe in me when it came to this task, and she had no good reason to. Effie deserved better, but all I could do was try. I shut the light off in her room on my way out.

Later that evening, I set up my laptop on the kitchen counter while I prepared Effie’s lunch for the next day. I put on a YouTube tutorial about how to French braid and glanced over at it in between arranging items in her lunch box.

“What the fuck?” I muttered as I watched. “You’d need three hands for that shit.”

“Looks like we both had the same idea…” I heard Chloe say from behind me.

I turned, and she faced her cell phone toward me. “I was watching a tutorial, too.”

“You don’t need to worry. I’ll handle it.”

“Oh really?” she challenged. “It’s getting late. Could you do the braid right now if you had to?”

“Sure,” I lied.

She pulled the elastic from her ponytail and fluffed her hair out. “Prove it.”

Chapter 7

CHLOE

The look on his face was priceless. Evan knew damn well he needed practice.

I flipped one of the chairs around and straddled it. Looking over my shoulder, I chided, “Any time now, big guy…”

He took a seat behind me and let out a long breath that I felt at the back of my neck, the hairs there stiffening. After several seconds, Evan ran his hands through my hair to even it out. That brief touch sent what felt like a jolt of electricity through my body. While I couldn’t be certain, this might’ve been the only time he’d ever touched my hair. I couldn’t have predicted it would happen like this.

“Okay, I know you don’t really know how to do it yet. This isn’t about you proving anything,” I admitted. “But I figured you could practice on me until you get it right.”

Those words reminded me of how much I’d wanted to practice things on Evan way back in the day. I shook the thought from my head.

To my surprise, Evan didn’t argue. Instead, I felt his hands in my hair again, pulling sections as he followed along with the instructions in the online tutorial.

“Left over middle. Right over middle,” the instructor said. “Good job.”

“This woman is talking to me like I’m a fucking idiot,” he snapped.

I snorted. “No comment.”

“You’d better not.”

While I wasn’t able to see behind me, I felt a lot of tugging. I hoped that meant he was getting the hang of it. It was a good thing he couldn’t see the permasmile on my face. I was all too amused by this scenario, and tickled that he’d agreed to go along with it.

“You have way more hair than the model,” he complained. “It’s not really fair. Makes it harder to do it tightly.”

“That’s your excuse?” I scoffed.

“That’s my story, and I’m sticking to it.”