“Hey there, ladies,” I said in a bad porn star voice. It sounded stupid, but I was going for laughs instead of seduction.
The girls didn’t disappoint.
“Did someone order a Chippendale?” Leah joked.
“Oh my gosh, yes, please,” Christy said.
They were sitting together on the bed, and Leah was in the middle of plaiting Christy’s hair into a French braid.
“I dunno about Chip and Dale,” I said, “but I’ve been a good little squirrel.”
Christy laughed and Leah frowned.
“I don’t get it.”
“He’s been a good little squirrel,” Christy said over her shoulder. “He saved up his nuts.”
I cupped the nuts in question and jiggled them. My semi-hard penis flopped like an elephant’s trunk, albeit a pink one from some species of pygmy pachyderm.
Did you just call me small? the little head griped.
Yes. You were having delusions of grandeur. Now, pipe down.
“Seriously?” Christy said. “Now?”
Leah wrinkled her forehead. “Now what?”
“He was talking to his penis.”
“He does that too?” Leah laughed. “I thought Mark was the only one.”
My opinion of Mark went up another notch.
Or ten, the little head added.
“Stop!” Christy laughed. “Just… stop.”
“What was he saying?” Leah asked. “Could you tell?”
“Something about size. He does that sometimes. He’s very self-conscious about it.”
“Size in general or his dick?”
“Both, but probably his penis.”
“For real?” Leah said. “What is it about guys? Like Mark, this afternoon. I mean, you heard him.”
Christy nodded, and Leah resumed plaiting her hair.
“Paul’s always been self-conscious about his size,” Leah added. “Not so much his dick—he’s always been bigger’n other guys—but in general. He used to be kinda chunky. Did he tell you that?”
Christy nodded.
“Then he went the other direction,” Leah continued. “He was skin and bones last summer. He looked… gaunt. We kept trying to get him to eat.”
“I remember,” Christy said. “He’d lost, like, a ton of weight.”
Leah surveyed me with a critical eye. “You’ve probably gained ten pounds since then.”
“More like fifteen,” I admitted. “But it’s mostly muscle.”
“Well, you don’t look like a bodybuilder or anything. I mean, you do, but in a good way.” She said to Christy, “I’ve never liked meathead guys.”
“Me neither.”
“I don’t care about penis size, either. Really, I don’t.”
“I do,” Christy said, “but only ’cause Paul’s is perfect.”
“I’m sure it is,” Leah said with a grin.
I gyrated my hips and made my dick swing in a circle.
“Now that’s impressive!” Leah laughed.
“Quit showing off and join us,” Christy said.
“Yes, dear.” I climbed onto her side of the bed, stretched out, and propped my chin on my fist.
Leah finished plaiting Christy’s hair. She removed a ponytail band from her wrist and snapped it around the end of the braid.
“I love your hair, especially the color,” she said. “And the waves! I wish mine had more body.”
“No! It’s beautiful.” Christy turned and gushed, “It’s so dark and silky and exotic. Oh my gosh, I wish mine was long and soft like yours.”
“You really like it?” Leah said in surprise. “I’ve always thought it was too plain. I mean, it’s straight and basic black. How boring. And I can’t do anything with it, unless I wanna spend an hour and use a whole can of hairspray.”
“Oh, no! You could do all sorts of things.” She tilted her head and studied her. “What do you think about a braided chignon?”
“Braided? I usually just twist it up…”
“It’s much nicer this way,” Christy said. “Your hair’s perfect for it, especially with your bangs. Here, I’ll show you.”
Leah turned to face me, and Christy began running a comb through her damp hair. Leah smiled wryly.
“We’ve come full circle.”
“How so?” I wondered.
“Last year? When you showed up on my doorstep?”
“Which time?”
“The one where you looked like crap.”
“Oh, yeah. Not my best day.” I’d been dirty and tired, worn out from too much self-loathing and self-inflicted abuse. I’d also been living in my car for a couple of weeks, although that wasn’t strictly true. I’d been living in bars and sleeping with random women almost every night. I didn’t have very clear memories of the time, for obvious reasons.
“Right after the new year?” Christy asked.
“Yeah,” Leah said over her shoulder. “How’d you know?”
“He disappeared for, like, a month. We didn’t know where he’d gone.”
“It wasn’t a month,” I said, a familiar refrain. “More like a week.”
“He came to my house,” Leah said. “Obviously.”
“And you let me stay in the guesthouse,” I added. “You cleaned me up and put me back together again.”
“Like Humpty Dumpty,” she agreed.
“He didn’t tell me about that,” Christy said. “What happened?”
“Nothing much,” Leah said. “I mean, I gave him a shave and a haircut…”
“Two bits,” I joked in a lame attempt to lighten the mood.
The girls weren’t having it.
“No, it was free,” Leah said. To Christy again, “Then I made him tell me what happened. I’ll spare you the details, but he bared his soul. He even told me he wanted to kill himself.”
“I did not!”
“Yes, you did.”
Christy’s eyes flicked to me, and her eyebrows rose. My face flushed hot at the memory, and she had her answer.
“I think that’s when I started to fall in love with him,” Leah said to her. “I mean, for real. I’d always had a crush on him, but our timing was horrible.”
Christy finished combing Leah’s hair and admired it for a moment. Then she gathered several strands and began a thin braid on the left side.
“I hope you don’t mind me saying that,” Leah said tentatively. “That I love him.”
“I don’t mind. He feels the same about you.”
“I knew you’d understand.”
“I do.” She even smiled at me when she said it.
Leah fell silent. “I don’t know why I’m telling you this. I mean, I have a bunch of questions I wanna ask, but…” She shrugged. “I guess it was when you started combing my hair. It made me think of that time, back in our guesthouse. It was… special. Like… our first time.” She stared into space and laughed, softly and to herself. “In a way, it was, our first time… as real lovers.”
Christy nodded and finished the braid she was working on. She started another one just like it, a couple of inches higher.
“I know I’m not making sense,” Leah said. “But… this feels like when Paul did it. We made love afterward, and… it was really nice.” She fell silent and relived the past. Then she turned. “Do you hate me?”
“No, of course not,” Christy said.
“I didn’t think so, but…” She shrugged. “Then, do you mind if I ask you something? Why don’t you like Gina?”
“I don’t dislike her,” Christy hedged.
“But you don’t want anything to do with her.”
“No.”
“Then… why’m I different?”
Christy spent a long time thinking about it. She finished the higher braid and started another on the right, just above Leah’s ear.
“I suppose because you didn’t try to take him from me,” she said at last.
“Is that all?” Leah laughed.