Tell Me It's Real(55)

By the time I was done in the shower, I had worked myself back up into a mini freak-out. I wiped away the foggy condensation from the mirror and stared at my wide-eyed reflection. My eyes looked blown out, like I was witnessing something so shocking that I’d never be the same. And, to be fair, I was getting ready for a date with the hottest man I’d ever seen, so it wasn’t too much of a stretch.

“What am I doing?” I whispered to myself.

Reflection Paul didn’t respond except to grimace at me like he was nauseated. Which he just might have been. I know I was.

Then I made the mistake of trying to do my hair. And, of course, every time I ran my fingers through it to smooth it out and let it do what it normally did every day, it would start sticking up in random spots. I would smooth down one and another tuft would pop up as if my very follicles were mocking me. I scowled at my hair as I squashed it down with both my hands and then it was sticking up everywhere, and Sandy must have heard the sharp buzz of the hair clippers and figured I wasn’t trimming my pubes and was able to stop me before I shaved my head.

He made me sit on the toilet, removing anything sharp from my immediate vicinity, nodding slowly as I babbled at him how my hair was out to destroy me. He put his hand on my chin and made me look up at him, eyeing my hair with an empirical look. He turned and dug through my cabinet and wouldn’t answer me when I asked him what he was doing. Then he whirled around and assaulted me. Well, I said he was assaulting me, and he said he was just applying some kind of gunky, pasty crap that he’d found on one of my shelves. I told him in a very clear voice that I didn’t like gunky, pasty crap in my hair because I was now thirty, not some douchey twenty-year-old who thought I was better than everyone else. He responded that he was well aware I was thirty because parts of my hair were falling out while he was trying to style it. It took him five minutes to calm me down after that, telling me to just breathe, that he was just joking. I called him the evilest bitch who ever existed, and he preened at what he considered a compliment. I told him our friendship wouldn’t continue on past tonight and that I was pretty sure there was a special place in hell for him. He smiled at me and made me stand to look in the mirror. And somehow, someway, he’d been able to make my plain, old, boring hair look like it was the greatest thing that ever existed. It had this trendy, spikey, faux-hawky thing going on.

“Holy shit,” I whispered.

“Right?” he grinned. “Stylish. He’s not going to know what hit him. Now, let’s go get you dressed. We don’t have that much time left after your meltdown.”

“That wasn’t my fault. You told me I was going bald!”

He didn’t even bother responding, instead grabbing my hand and then pulling me back to my bedroom, which was still somewhat of a disaster area. “Now,” he said, “I couldn’t find any sexy underwear, so this will have to do.” He threw a pair of black boxer briefs at me.

“Sexy underwear?” I asked, somewhat bewildered. “Sandy, what about me suggests to you that I would wear sexy underwear?”

“Everyone should have at least one pair of sexy underwear,” he replied, as if that was totally obvious. He turned away.

“Why?” I asked as I dropped the towel and slipped on the boxers. “And what the hell is sexy underwear?”

“Like, skimpy briefs.”

“Gross. I don’t want to wear that. Well, okay. I would if they had like X-Men or Transformers on them, but that makes it sound like I’m a pedophile, so I think I’ll just stick with the underwear I have.” I snapped them up and Sandy turned back around, giving me a critical look up and down. You want to know what it means to be self-conscious? Try being slightly overweight and standing in nothing but black underwear while your best friend, who is the skinniest person in the world, stares at your crotch as if it holds the secrets of the universe.

“Your penis looks good in those,” he said finally, giving me a nod of approval.

“Oh joy,” I muttered. “It’s a good thing that’s what I was going for. Penis fashion is all the rage these days.”

“Judging from your wardrobe, you wouldn’t know fashion if it fucked your mouth and came on your face,” Sandy said with a glare. “I didn’t realize how appalling the state of your closet had gotten. This’ll all be rectified very shortly, so you may as well accept that now.”

“You’re gonna be rectified,” I snapped lamely.

“Ouch,” he said. “Put these on.” He tossed me a pair of jeans he’d bought for me on a trip to Austin two summers ago. I’d never worn them because I always thought the ass pockets looked like they’d been bedazzled. And not in a good way. Well, come to think of it, I don’t know if there is a good way for something to be bedazzled.