I snapped my mouth shut, forcing myself not to blush furiously. I couldn’t figure Sean out. It seemed that last night’s stint hadn’t changed his ways and, although he had left my room in a bit of a tizz, he certainly hadn’t carried it over to today.
Chapter Thirty-Six
The smell of cooked onions and barbecue smoke stinks!
After everyone had gone home I jumped in the shower. I lathered my hair into a soapy beehive, singing into my Pantene bottle as Eric Carmen’s ‘Make Me Lose Control’ blasted from my little radio. I was squealing up a storm until I heard pounding on the bathroom door.
“Amy, I beg you, stop!” Adam’s muffled voice yelled through the door.
“What? Don’t you like my singing?” I shouted back.
“Sounds like you’re strangling a cat in there.”
“Pfft, whatever, I know I’m fabulous!” I snapped my finger like a diva and would have almost sounded convincing … if I hadn’t started choking on Pantene bubbles.
Oh God, gross!
I dressed and walked through the hall with my hair twisted into a turbanesque towel piled on top of my head. I smiled a small, secret smile – the strip of hallway between Chris’s and Adam’s rooms always smelled like overpowering aftershave as they got ready on any given night before they went downstairs. Had for years. It was a fascinating behind-the-scenes case study, and I was the only one privy to it. Would girls ever know the lengths they went to? Sometimes I wondered who was worse at taking forever to get ready, me or the boys. I paused at Adam’s open doorway and watched him apply a styling product to his hair.
I wolf whistled as I turned to enter my room. “You’ll break all the girls’ hearts tonight.”
He sighed. “It’s the burden I must carry in life.”
I sat on the edge of my bed, towel drying my hair, when Adam called out, “Hey, do you have a hair dryer?”
Oh God, it was official – the boys were worse than me.
“Um, yeah.”
He stood in my doorway. “Not for my hair – my shirt didn’t dry on the line and the collar’s still damp.”
“Well, wear another one.”
“I can’t, this shirt’s the one; I’m in a navy shirt mood tonight.” Rolling my eyes, I grabbed my hair dryer from my lower bedside cupboard.
“Here, but it’s a boomerang, all right? It comes straight back.”
Adam looked at the hair dryer warily.
“And hurry up before my hair dries.”
“Why don’t you let your hair dry naturally?”
“Because it goes all wavy and mental,” I said. “We inherited the Henderson kink, remember?”
“Ah, yes,” Adam said gravely. “The generational curse of the Henderson kink.”
“Exactly, so hurry up.”
Adam went to leave but paused, as if thinking carefully about what he wanted to say next.
“This is completely out of my forte …” He shrugged. “But why not try not straightening your hair to within an inch of its life?”
“What?”
“Well, I know that’s what chicks do, but I don’t know, I think it looks too …”
“Sleek? Shiny? Silky?”
“Severe.”
“Oh.”
I looked in the mirror, chewing thoughtfully on my lip, watching my long hair beginning to dry into the foreign waves I had always fought against.
I sighed. “Well, I’m definitely going to need some hair product.”
Before I could back out of the thought, Adam disappeared and returned with a lime green tub.
“Try this.”
I took it from him, eyeing it sceptically. “Let it dry naturally, huh?”
Adam shrugged, like he really wasn’t that emotionally invested.
A slow smile spread across my lips as my eyes flicked from the tub of hair product then back to Adam.
“What?” Adam went all broody.
“Thanks, Adam, you’re like the sister I never had.”
“Shut up!”
“No, really, it’s a beautiful thing: you borrow my hair dryer and give me hairstyle advice.”
“All right, I’m out of here.” He threw the hair dryer on my bed, making a quick exit.
“Aw, come on! Don’t be like that. What about your shirt?” I laughed.
“I’ll wear another one.”
***
Seeing as I was trying something different, I opted for a smoky eye shadow and thought about walking into Adam’s room to ask if it made my eyes pop, but then thought better of it. He’d probably kill me if I did that.
I patted my lips with a clear lip gloss and pressed them together, staring at the long waves that cascaded over my shoulders. With a bit of hair product I had aimed for the tousled look and, I had to admit, it didn’t look too bad.