Wreckless (11 page)

“Oh. For
Tanner.
”

It was another dare. One dare after another. I don't know what had gotten into me that I couldn't seem to turn them down now.

I glanced at the clock again. “I’m skipping it.”

He reached for me, wrapping my long, long braid around his fist as he pulled me across the bench toward him until I was just hanging on to my side of the gearshift.

“I have some very specific ideas about how we could spend that time.”

I was trying not to die. I was trying very, very hard not to die of anxiety and embarrassment and nerves.

Very hard.

“I…uh…”

I used to speak English. I vaguely remembered the time…oh, about a minute ago.

“What?” I could barely breathe to get the word out.

“You're going to have to trust me even more for this.”

“More than getting naked?” I really needed to stop talking now that I refound the ability.

“I have a feeling this is the equivalent of getting naked for you.”

I highly doubted that. Unless...

“Do you? Do you trust me, Bridget?”

I could feel his warm breath coming across my cheek and I said the absolute truth.

“No.”

Jake just laughed and pulled back. “Smart girl. But you're going to have to for this next thing.”

He let my braid go, dropping it loop by loop until his hand was free to put the truck back in gear. He turned us off the main road, heading us down a smaller street until we came to a cluster of houses.

The lights were on in the one we parked in front of, and Jake pulled the keys from the ignition and hopped out.

“Come on.” He shut the door, his arm resting on the open window. “Scrounge up a little more of that trust.”

He came around the front, rubbing the head of a mutt who jumped on him in a way that said he was a regular here.

I still wasn't sure where this was going. Eyeing the house, I wondered if another hot older brother lived there.

Visual bonus, right?

At my door, Jake stuck his head in the window. “Well, charging forward or turning back?”

“From what?” I didn't like being kept in the dark about what was going on in my own story. But we’d had that warn-me-when-we’re-breaking-a-law rule, so at least I felt sure no cops would be in this equation.

“Jake? What are you doing dragging up to my house on a Saturday night?” A woman pushed the screen open as she flipped on the porch light.

He jerked the passenger’s door open and took my hand, pulling me out and down the front path behind him.

“Missy, I brought you a present.”

The girl in the porch light tipped her head to the side. She couldn't have been more than twenty-two, but I had no idea what we were doing there, so her age seemed even odder.

Jake kept my hand tucked in his as we climbed the front stairs. He focused that laidback, easy smile on the woman glaring at him from the doorway.

“This is Bridget. Bridget wants to donate her hair to Locks of Love, and we're going to a party.”

Well, that cleared up at least the next stop in our adventure for me. Jake apparently knew where a party was.

He finally dropped my hand to wrap this Missy person in a big hug, lifting her off the porch. The heat he left behind burned a warm tingliness running over my fingers and across my palm. I was smarter than that.

On the Sliding Scale of Boys, Jake Moore was in a group all his own. I'd thought Tanner had been out of my league. Jake made him look like a rookie.

Being attracted to a guy like Jake Moore was like signing your own death warrant. Start considering your last meal now, because you didn’t have long to go.

Missy looked me over, squinting in the dim light of the porch, and then asked, “Have you bleached it?”

“No ma'am.”

“Tell her not to
ma'am
me.”

“Bridget, don't ma'am the elderly lady.”

Missy took a swipe at Jake where he leaned against the porch railing, looking like James Dean come back.

“Let's see what you have.”

I reached back and pulled the elastic from my hair, unbraiding it through my fingers as I pulled it forward.

“Oh dear heavens, how long have you been growing this?”

“A little over three years. It reached just past my shoulders before.”

“It's like moonlight.”

Missy and I both turned toward Jake, surprised he'd spoken. My heart skipped and flipped over, the warm tingliness filling it now too. All because he’d said my hair was like moonlight—I wasn't sure what to do with that.

He seemed to snap to attention as we both looked at him.

“It's just, um, really…pale.”

“Um, yeah.” Missy took my hair and ran it through her fingers. “This is nice. Thicker than most silver blondes. Alright, come on in and we’ll give you a trim.”

“What?” I could hear the panic in my voice. This stranger was just going to set me down in her kitchen and chop my hair off?

I don't think so.

“Yeah, that’s okay. I wouldn't want to put you out.” I tried to step back, but Jake's hand had settled on my lower back, so I couldn't go anywhere without jerking my hair away and diving around him toward the truck.

“Bridget, Missy's a hairdresser. She works over at the salon by the mall.” He was using that
don’t panic
voice again.

Missy let my hair go. Everything was much less threatening when someone didn’t have a hold of the rope that was attached to your head.

“I can give you a nice trim and just bring the braid in to work Monday for the donation.”

Jake’s hand stayed firmly placed on my lower back. He was waiting for me to chicken out. Again.

But this had been the plan. Grow the hair. Cut the hair. No big deal. It wasn't a rule or a safety blanket. It wasn't a red flag. It was just hair.

I hadn't been—or so I told myself—holding on to this since…

“Okay.”

I sighed like an oversized weight had shifted off my shoulders.

Missy smiled one of those really comforting smiles she probably had to practice on women all day.

“Don't you worry. You'll be fixed up just fine. It's not like we're cutting it all off.”

She took my hand and led me toward the front door as if I might bolt at any second. Jake reached out and held it open over her head.

“Where do you think you're going?”

“Inside?”

I loved that he didn’t sound that confident. It was nice to find someone who could put Jake in his place, even if that place was just out on the porch.

Missy shook her head. “I don't think so. Off you go.”

She pulled the screen shut behind us and led me toward the back of the house.

“Let me grab my stuff. Make yourself at home. Grab a drink or something.”

I settled in at the table, feeling awkward enough. I wasn't going to start going through her cabinets. The
tap, tap, tap
of her feet hurried up the stairs and then back down, slowing before she turned the corner into the kitchen.

“Bridget, you're sure you want to cut your hair?”

I thought about Jake saying any hair so long you could accidentally pee on it was too long. That seemed like as good a reason as any. Probably better actually.

“Yup. I definitely want to cut it.”

“Even with ten inches, it's still going to be pretty long.” She measured out the length she'd need to cut and wrapped an elastic band around it. It still came past the middle of my back. “We can take a little more than that if you want.”

I looked at the large mirror in the hall from the small one she handed me. The hair
was
still really long. I'd still have the longest hair in school. Of course, it wasn't like that was a source of pride. If it was, maybe I'd want to keep it, but the way my hair was now, I really couldn't have cared less about it.

“Can you give me a cut that looks good and isn't…” I didn't want to sound stupid. I knew most girls loved to do their hair.

“Isn't hard to do?”

I nodded, relieved she understood.

“What if we cut it enough that it looks done if you just dry it and brush it out, but you can still put it in a ponytail or braid?”

Who would have known there was all this thinking to do about a simple haircut?

“That sounds good.”

I crossed back to the chair and settled into it as she wrapped the towel around my shoulders.

“Wow, it's still wet. How long ago did you wash it?”

I started to tell her that morning, but then remembered a very specific time it got wet again.

“Not long ago.” Lies seemed to be coming easier and easier to me tonight.

“I'm going to take off the donation first and then we'll cut the style. Don't panic.”

There were those words again. Did I look like someone who panicked a lot? Probably. Of course, I
was
someone who panicked a lot.

Maybe not
panicked,
but worried.

The sound of the scissors hacking through the thick section of braid above the elastic was enough to have me rethinking that panic thing.

The pressure gave way, and I lifted my hand to run it over the rough, uneven ends of my shorter hair. She was right. It was still really long. But I only wanted to have to do this once.

“Great. I'm going to take another three inches. It will still come a few inches past your shoulders. You have beautiful hair.”

“It's too pale. I'm half Irish, half Swedish. There's no pigment in my DNA.”

Missy laughed. “No, Jake's right. It's almost the color of moonlight on water.”

I thought about the light glancing off the water earlier that night, about the sight of Jake wading to the shore and catching me more-than-peeking.

“I don't think I even want to know what that blush is.” Missy came around to the front and started pulling my hair out in front of me, making each side even as she cut more small chunks off. “Are you dating my cousin?”

I couldn't believe she was actually asking that. How could she take a look at us and believe there was a chance a guy like Jake would be dating someone like me? She obviously wasn't taking a close enough look.

Still, it was the easiest question I'd had all night. “No. Not dating.”

She ran the brush through my hair again, catching a few snags before taking a comb to the part down the middle.

“Not yet?”

I laughed. She was persistent.

“Not at all. I highly doubt I'm the type of girl Jake would go for.”

Missy gaze dropped from my hair to look me the eye. “You're exactly the type of girl he should be going for.”

She straightened, going back to my hair. “That last one, she was just hoping to raise a little hell, and he was just hoping...”

She stopped when all I wanted her to do was finish that sentence. What was it Jake Moore had been hoping for from his last girlfriend?

“Just the cut?”

I snapped my attention back from the danger zone.

“Um, yes?”

Missy laughed. “No idea what else you'd do, huh?”

“Well, I'm not sure what else I'd want. I mean, nothing that involves curling, waving, drying, or anything other than washing. Washing is about as much as I can manage in the morning.”

“So nothing funky, like color.” She shook her head. “Your hair's so pale, it would hold color real nicely.”

“You mean, make me a redhead or something?”

“No. Just something fun, something temporary. What if we tipped it?”

I had no idea what that meant. The girls at my school were mostly natural-in-a-completely-fake-looking-way. Like, they would have
really
obvious blonde streaks in dark hair and call it “highlights.” As if the sun only highlighted your hair in half-inch chunks.

“What's tipping?”

“We'd just add a fast color to the ends in the back. It will look cute. With almost white hair, you'll take color like that.” She snapped her fingers.

I started to say no, then rethought it. This was more than a change. It was a new beginning.

“What color?”

Missy smiled and headed back to the little box she'd pulled the scissors out of. “I've got red, pink, blue, and lavender.”

Lavender sounded soft. Daring, but still girly. Not punky.

“Okay. Do it. Put the lavender in.”

She wrapped most of my hair in a sloppy bun on top of my head with a clip. “You're going to love it.”

I tried to laugh, but it came out as this sick sound.

“Here's the deal,” she said while she mixed some smelly stuff in an odd plastic bowl. “We're only doing about an inch in the back. If you don't like it, come back tomorrow night and I'll cut it out. No one ever needs to even see it at school.”

Ok, that sounded good. I could do that. Be a little daring tonight and decide tomorrow.

She used a little brush to add the smelly stuff to the ends of my hair and wrapped them in aluminum foil.

“You're all set. We just need to let it sit for a bit.”

“Great.” I know I sounded less than enthusiastic, but this was a huge change for me. It was the one thing so far that lasted more than tonight, except for...

I glanced at the clock. Eleven thirty five.

“Can I borrow your phone?”

“Sure, hun.” She unplugged her cell and handed it to me. “Be careful with those foils.”

I glanced out the window as I waited for one of my parents to answer. Outside, Jake was tossing something in the back of his truck. When he was done stowing it, he glanced up and saw me in the window. He raised a hand, not really a wave. Just a hand saying he saw me and was watching me again.

I'm such an idiot. It's just…he was
so
easy to look at.

“Hello?”

Oh. Reality. Right.

“Hi, Mama. It's me.” I took a deep breath. It was five minutes after my curfew, and I was about to lie to my mother. “Sorry I'm late. We had to get to a spot with reception.”

“That's okay, dear. We figured that was probably it. Are you on your way home?”

“Actually, I'm going to go stay at Leah's.”

“Alright. You'll be home in time for church.” It wasn't a question. And man, did I feel bad bringing God into this.

I'm really sorry, Lord.

“Yup. I'll definitely be home in time for church.” I paused, feeling the cold damp of my short hair across my neck. “Mama? I think we're going to cut my hair.”