SAM
I look at the box of dye in my hand, and then pour the contents into the bathroom sink. Plastic gloves, a tube of dye, and instructions—it looks pretty straightforward.
I run a hand through my light brown hair. “It’s going to be goodbye to this for a while,” I say to the mirror me.
I slip on the gloves and pick up the tube—
There comes a knock from the front door. “Just a second!” I drop the dye and shove on a shirt as I go to answer the door. I realize I’m still wearing my gloves when they make a noise as I twist the handle.
Morning sun stretches into the hall, smelling of perfume and outlining Jeremy’s mum. Carole looks at my hands and smirks. “Can I come in?”
“Jeremy’s left for school already.”
She nods and walks past me toward the kitchen, her heels clopping over the floor. “Yeah, I know. I wanted to wait until he was gone.”
“Is something the matter?” I ask, now concerned. I try to think back to when Carole has come to me to talk about Jeremy and cared whether he was around or not. I can’t think of a single time.
“Nothing’s wrong, exactly,” she says, slipping into the chair Jeremy always uses.
I sit opposite her. She points to my gloves. “I hope you’re not dyeing your own hair.”
I hurry to peel them off.
“Get someone else to do it. I once tried those packets and my hair was splotchy for months because I didn’t do it right.”
“Maybe I’m going for splotchy.”
She laughs. “What color?”
“Black.”
She groans. “Don’t let Jeremy get any ideas. Didn’t you get over black back in school?”
“Why are you here, Carole? You’re making me nervous. Is Jeremy going to be okay?”
She laughs. “Um, yeah, he’s going to be okay, alright.”
“Then—”
She must see my frown because she sighs. “Look, I just thought I should talk to you about something I saw. I want you to be prepared in case Jeremy wants to tell you someday soon.”
“Prepared for what?”
“The possibility our son is . . . gay.”
I scratch the back of my head. Carole isn’t making any sense to me. “Gay?”
“And this is why I wanted to talk to you. We need to be sure we have the right reaction, Sam, not sound like we’ve never heard the word before. We have to show him that we support him one hundred percent. That we love him just as we always have.”
“Carole, get back to the gay thing. Jeremy’s gay? How do you—”
“I accidently caught him and Steven making out on our couch. I don’t think they know I saw them though. They did move apart like lightning on speed.”
I don’t know what to say. I’m surprised, mostly. It was the last thing I expected to come out of Carole’s mouth.
“Get the gaping mouth thing out of your system. You can’t do that in front of Jeremy. He won’t know what to think. He’ll worry you don’t accept him.”
“What? Of course I’ll accept him! He’s my son. I’ll always love him.” I push back my chair and pace into the kitchen. Blindly, I grab 2 cups and heap 4 teaspoons of instant coffee in each.
“Good,” Carole says. “I didn’t think you’d have a problem with it. I just want you to be ready.”
I stare at the instant powder in the cups. “Should we . . . I don’t know, say something to him?”
Carole shakes her head. “Let him come out in his own time.”
Suddenly, I laugh, thinking of how I’d worried about that end-of-year party Jeremy wanted to go to. Carole looks at me curiously, and then I tell her my thoughts, “Guess it’s not the girls we have to worry about anymore.”
She laughs. “I thought it’d be more of a relief than it is. Now I’m scared of him getting hurt by anyone for his choice of lifestyle. I guess there’s no end to the worrying.”
“I doubt it.”
“Sam?”
“Carole?”
“There’s something else I want to mention. It’s . . . well I’ve told you a little about it in passing before, but now . . .” She looks up at me and her face is glowing with a smile, eyes dancing in the light. “You know how I’ve quietly been seeing Greg?”
“Guy from work?”
She nods. “Well, I don’t think it’s going to stay quiet much longer. Greg, he, well, he’s made it known he wants a future with me. I’m ready to tell Jeremy about him. Get them to meet each other.”
“So you’re really moving on with your life,” I say, reaching over and touching her hand. “Good on you, Carole. If he makes you happy, you deserve it.”
“Thanks, love.” She looks out at the garden and grips my hand back. “And I’m sure there’s someone amazing out there for you too.”
I think of Hannah from work. I like her and she’s fun for sure, but would she be that someone? I shrug. “We’ll see, I guess. How are you going to break it to Jeremy?”
Carole bites her lip. “I don’t know. But soon.”
* * *
Carole leaves 5 minutes later, at the same time Luke arrives.
I pull him into the kitchen, still somewhat hazy with my surprise over Jeremy. I lift a finger to tell him not to say anything. Then I pace in front of him. I’m bursting to share this new revelation with someone because I want to make more sense of why I suddenly feel off-kilter about my son being gay.
It’s not because I’m upset about it. It’s something else inside that squirms a little bit.
Luke folds his arms and watches me carefully. “You okay?”
I nod. “Yeah. I’m fine. Really. I am.”
“You sound it.”
I stop pacing and laugh. Then, taking a breath to calm myself, I offer him a cup of coffee.
He shakes his head. “Not until I know what’s up with you. Is it something about Carole? Has she met someone? Is she getting married or something?”
I move over to the counter where he leans, and I do the same. “Nah, it’s not that.” I swallow and look at him from the corner of my eye. “Jeremy might be into guys. Carole just told me she caught him making out with Steven.”
Luke stills, and for a second I wonder if I should have said anything at all. “And,” he says slowly, “is that a problem?”
Ineloquently, I try to get to the root of the jumbling feeling in my stomach. “No. I guess not. I just . . . I don’t know.” I scrub my face with my hands and then give a half-laugh. “Maybe I don’t really get it, you know? I mean, I love him and whoever he’s into is fine by me. I just . . .” Something. I just something.
Luke slowly pushes away from the bench and turns on the jug. His back is to me as he talks. “I think I get it. It’s just nothing you’ve ever considered before and it seems . . . foreign to you.”
I’m not sure that’s entirely it, but it’s close enough for now. “Maybe.”
I watch the way Luke reaches into the cupboard and brings down two mugs. There is gracefulness to the way he moves, and comfort in the way he knows my kitchen better than I do. I am thankful he is reacting well to my news. I’m so thankful I can trust him to be open like this.
It’s not really something we do—we have an unspoken bro-gap rule—but sometimes I want to hug the guy and tell him how much he means to me. I always leave it at a thought though, and hope somehow he can just sense it.
“How come you’re so calm about all this? Do you have kids come to talk to you about it in school sometimes?”
Luke looks at me over his shoulder; his voice seems a little rougher than usual. “Something like that.”
He finishes making me my second coffee in 30 minutes, and we drink it together at the table. Luke sees my discarded plastic gloves lying to the side and picks one up. “What are these for?”
His face lights up as I tell him my plans to dye my hair.
“I like your hair the way it is,” he says. “But I do admit to being curious how this will look.”
“Will you maybe help?” I suddenly ask as I pluck up the second glove. “Could be a lark.”
He looks up at me, and for a second he worries his bottom lip like he’s not sure if he wants to.
“Come on,” I say, getting up and inclining my head for him to follow me into the bathroom. “Let’s make it a memory.”
“In that case . . . ”
Close behind me, Luke snaps on the one glove he has. We enter the bathroom and I grin at him in the mirror as I dangle up the other glove for him to grab.
He nabs it and slides it on. “You know, of the two of us, it should be me dyeing my hair.”
I turn and look at his hair. It’s thick and dark, and if it were my hair, I might not consider dyeing at all. “No way.”
He comes closer, touching one spot near his temple. “See that?”
“See what?”
“There are, like, five strands of grey there.”
I look, but I can’t see anything. “You’re imagining it.”
“Well, there will be some soon anyway.”
He’s only 36! “Come on, you’re not that old.” I shrug out of my T-shirt and check out my stomach in the mirror. But it’s too soon to see if the running and lifting weights have done anything. I still look a bit too lean. I shrug it off and glance back up to Luke and his hair. “Besides,” I say, “you’ll pull off grey. It’ll be hot on you.”
Luke frowns and looks down at his gloved hands. “You think that?”
“I think everyone will think that. Now . . . how should we do this?”
I decide to flip the toilet seat down and use it as a stool. I’m wearing only shorts, and the base of the toilet is cold where it touches my skin. “I think you have to smother that tube all over my hair. Then we wait half an hour before I can shower it off.”
Luke takes the tube, opens it, and is about to squeeze some onto his fingers, when I lift a finger in warning. “You might want to take off your shirt first. I wouldn’t want the dye to ruin it.”
He hesitates a second, his Adam’s apple bobbing as he swallows. Then he rests the tube on the edge of the sink and slowly peels off his top.
His stomach is gently defined with muscle and tapers nicely from his broad shoulders to his waist. “I want your body,” I say.
Luke makes a choking sound and I glance up to his reddening face. “You okay?”
“You want my body?” he repeats.
“Yeah. Trust me, I’m working on it.”
Luke just stares at me, his eyes darkening in the dim bathroom light.
I flick on the light, which I can reach from the toilet. “How long do you think I’ll have to use the weights before my abs show?”
He shakes his head suddenly and looks away over my shoulder and then toward the slightly tilted window. A breeze brushes his hair and little goose bumps pepper over his arms. “A while,” he says and snaps up the tube once more. He gives me a sharp smile. “Okay, let’s do this.” He squeezes some of the grey paste on his fingers. “God this stuff smells strong.”
I get up, open the window wider and then sit back down. Curling a finger at him, I say, “Come on then, you. Lather me up.”
He lets out a strangled laugh that makes me want to ask him if he’s okay, and he moves over to me.
He hesitates before lowering his hands onto me, and I wonder if he also realizes this goes against that weird bro-gap rule we have. That’s not to suggest we’ve never touched one another before because we have, but I can count the times on 2 hands—and 1 foot. It’s just that . . . well, I can count the times.
I shrug, as if to tell him it’s no big deal. Not on my part. I don’t care.
A clucking sound escapes him, and then his fingers are in my hair.
His first touch, working the paste onto my roots, sends a shiver through me—one that’s noticeable, because Luke asks if I’m cold.
“No,” I say. Because I’m not. It just feels nice having someone run their fingers through my hair and over my scalp. It’s been a while since I went to the hairdressers, but it’s always been my favorite part to have my hair washed.
Luke adds more paste and gently starts to comb my hair with his fingers. I let out an involuntary moan. I think about being embarrassed by it for a second, but then Luke does the same move again, and I don’t care what the hell I murmur. Luke won’t care anyway. He’s heard me do worse. Like the time I got stung 3 times by a wasp and I whimpered all the way out of the park.
“It feels good,” I say to Luke. “I could fall asleep. Or drool.”
He chuckles, and though I know he’s used all the paste, he continues to massage my head.
“Has to be in a half hour, right?”
I hum as he teases the tips of my hair.
“Is there a clock in here or something?”
“There’s a cooking timer in the cupboard,” I say, and grumble when his hands come off me.
He takes off the sticky gloves and drops them into the trash bin. Then he finds the timer. “Should I even ask why you keep this in the bathroom?”
I laugh and shrug. “Hot water isn’t cheap. Jeremy and I set it to five minutes so we know how long we’ve been in the shower, and when it’s time to come out.”
Luke blinks, startled. “Five minutes? That’s it?”
I sigh, and Luke mutters a “damn.” He washes his hands, and he looks upset. “Sometimes,” he says suddenly, eyeing me in the mirror, “I just wish you two would live with me. You could save on rent and most certainly have a longer shower. You wouldn’t have to work yourself crazy through the year, either. I don’t care how you justify it, working double shifts on the weeks you don’t have Jeremy and working the weekends he’s not here . . . it’s just too much.”
“It’s what pays the bills,” I say. “And thanks for the offer, but you wouldn’t want us as flatmates. We’d take up too much room. Besides,” I think of the mystery woman Luke hasn’t yet told me about up in Auckland. “I don’t think your girl would like that.”
Luke twists around, frowning, and folds his arms across his chest. “My girl?”
I look down at my hands resting on my thighs. I’ve been afraid of this moment, of hearing Luke admit that he met someone up in Auckland. I want to keep putting it off and ignoring it, but now I let it slip. “You’ll want to move somewhere else, start a family.”
Luke says nothing for a moment, and I can’t read his face. Coming over to me and crouching by my side so our faces are almost level, he says, “What the hell are you talking about, Sam?”
I suddenly wonder if I got it all wrong, and a warm thread of hope tingles somewhere in my gut. My breath comes out relieved. “You mean you’re not going to leave? Then what else was it you were trying to tell me?”
His eyes are laughing as he reaches out and touches my knee. His touch only lingers a second before he draws away again. “There’s no girl. And I’m not going to leave you.”
“Oh thank fuck for that,” I say, and reach out to grab his arm. I want to rest my head against it, but remember the dye in my hair just before it touches him. “Guess I’ve been worrying for nothing.”
“You were worrying?”
“Since the night you came home. I thought . . . but I guess you were just happy to be back here then?”
Luke laughs nervously. “Yeah, you have no idea.”
I look into his eyes, trying to work out why he’s so nervous. “You do have something to tell me though, don’t you?”
“How did you know?”
“I didn’t, it was just a feeling. But now I know for sure—something’s up.”
Luke stands. “I think it’s time to rinse out your hair.”
I stand too. “The cooking timer will tell me that.” He darts his gaze away from mine when I step closer. “Now tell me.”
“Fine.” He swallows, and then opens his mouth to speak, but shuts it again. He tries again. “Thing is . . . you know how I said my mum wants to see you? And maybe we could go up at Christmas?”
“Yeah,” I say slowly.
“Actually, I sort of promised her you’d come. It just slipped out, and now she’s making plans.”
Oh. “Damn. Luke, I really want to meet her too, but I don’t think I can get Christmas off.”
The timer goes off then, and Luke quickly twists to turn it off. “I should never have promised her to begin with. No big deal. My fault.”
I reach into the shower and turn on the spray. “Yeah, but I want to meet her too. It’s just when I asked Hannah out yesterday, I also talked to the boss. Putting a feeler out, you know. But he kept saying he can’t wait for his best waiter to be back. It’s barely been a day without me and he’s regretting giving me so much leave.”
I hook my thumbs into my shorts and push them down with my underwear. Luke turns around just as I do, and keeps going until his back is to me again.
“Sorry,” I say, laughing as I hop under the hot water. “Didn’t mean to give you an eyeful—I just want to jump in quickly. The dye is starting to make my head feel numb. I want black, not bald.”
“It’s . . . fine.”
Dye water runs into my mouth and I splutter to get it out again.
“You good in there?” Luke asks, and through the foggy glass, I can see him sitting on the toilet.
“Hope this dye looks better than it tastes.” I massage the dye out of my hair, and it feels nowhere near as nice as when Luke had done it. “Back to your mum for a sec,” I say, moving on to scrub the rest of me while I’m at it. “What if . . . I mean, maybe we could go up earlier? Or . . . or hey, why doesn’t she come down here? I haven’t really thought about how to celebrate the big 3–0.”— I cringe as I say it, and scrub harder—“But being around family sounds good. Maybe I’ll invite mine too.”
Luke hums. “You want my family at your birthday party?”
I open the door and poke my head around it, dripping water onto the floor. “Hey, Luke, sure I do. I really want to meet the rest of you.”
I feel for the tap behind me and turn it off. “Mind passing me a towel?”
Luke grabs me one. Before he lets go of it though, he asks, “You sure?”
I tug the towel out of his grip. “’Course.” I wrap the towel around my waist and step out.
“That’s . . . yeah, that’ll be great.” He lifts a hand to my hair and messes it. “I think it’s going to take some getting used to.”
I hair-dry it and then spike it up toward the middle with some product. “Does it look crazy?” I ask, turning to find Luke smirking and snapping photos with his phone.
“Crazy?” He laughs. “You’re going to be embarrassed looking at these photos in a few years. Jeremy will piss his pants.”
And I smile. Because that’s the reaction what I want.
Another thing I can cross of my 20s Must-Do List.