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I push past him, drop the bag on the table, and start pulling out options.
“Where did you get all this stuff at short notice?”
“I already had it,” I say, waiting for his response.
“Why?”
“It’s fun to pretend to be someone else sometimes. Do you see anything that grabs your interest?” I keep pulling out things, fake facial hair, beards, stubble, sideburns, and even eyebrows. I have wigs, too, and I line them up side by side.
He picks up a stick-on beard in dirty blonde. “It’s like real hair.”
“Yep, these are stage quality. My parents are in the theater, so they can get them for cost. This is the same color,” I say, passing him a wavy, dirty-blond wig.
“I’m not sure this is a good idea.”
“Going out or dressing in disguise?”
“Both.”
“Come on. Haven’tyou ever wanted to pretend to be someone else?” I know I have. It’s why I have all this stuff. You can put on a wig or a goatee, and instead of being Jase Thompson, I can be Zach Brown, a surfer chasing the waves who’s just passing through. It’s a good way to ensure you’re hooking up with zero intention of seeing them again. Parker Lane isn’t the only one not wanting his whole life out on display. But he doesn’t need to know that.
“Try it on. If you don’t want to wear it, you don’t have to, but we’re going out no matter what.”
He slips the wig out of its netted pouch and pulls it over his head. The front of the wig is off-center, and I smile, reaching out to adjust it to the right place. His skin is warm under my fingers, and I try to keep my focus on the edges of the wig and not on the light freckles that dot his skin and the tiny mole that looks like a heart above his right eye.
“I’ll do the beard, here,” I say, taking it from his hands. I pass him a wipe from the packet on the table. “Cleanse your face so it’ll stick properly.”
He wipes over his clean-shaven face, nervously biting at his lower lip when I move in to place the facial hair.
“Keep your mouth closed for this bit.”
He closes his lips, and his eyes while he waits. The size and color are a great match for him, and I press lightly with the tips of my fingers above his top lip to set the hair in place.
When I’m done, I step back and take him in. He’s wearing black jeans that hug every curve of his thick legs and a blue, long-sleeved Henley. The dirty blond wig reaches just above his shoulders and looks way better on him than it ever looked on me. The facial hair, too; light stubble with a slightly longer beard. I wonder if his natural hair would look like this if he grew it. He’s always clean-shaven, in every game, every team photo.
“How does it look?” he murmurs through closed lips.
“Amazing,” I say, and his eyes open. “I mean, you look great. It suits you. Here, take these contacts.”
He smiles, blushingslightly, before he grabs them and heads into the other room.
“I look…”
“Great is the word you’re looking for,” I call back as I pull on the Toby, a black, spikey wig that screams ‘90s boy band. The wigs are all named after the persona I become when I wear them. It helps with letting go. Becoming someone else.
He steps out smiling, the bright green contacts so different from the gray-blue his eyes normally are. My stomach does a weird flippy thing.
“You did that quick, I thought for sure you’d need help with those.”
“I wore contacts for years before I got Lasik. Ohh, didn’t you know that?”
“I’ll update your file tomorrow.”
Parker’s gaze moves to our reflections in the floor-to-ceiling windows of his apartment and the two very different men than we were only minutes ago.
“Okay, what the hell? I’m in.”
I grab the glue. “Let me just set the edges of the wig in place so it doesn’t come flying off on the dance floor.”
