“No more giving the dog poisonous substances,” he says. “Now take your shirt off and sit your ass in a chair.”
“My hair is such a lovely shade of brown, though.”
“Now it’s going to be a…” He glances at the box. “Hunky honey blond.”
“I hate you for saying that because I’m positive it doesn’t say that.”
He just grins at me as he tears the box open and pulls out the gloves. He tries to snap the gloves as he turns to me with a wicked grin on his face. “Bend over and cough for me.”
“Ha. Ha. Unless you’re going to make this night fun, I’m not bending over for anyone… will you forget about bleaching my hair if I do? I feel like I might just take one for the team to keep my hair.”
“Nah, I like hearing you cry. It gives me joy, if I’m being honest,” he says as he starts mixing stuff.
“What if I pay you off?”
“You have no money. Now take your shirt off.” He must immediately decide I’m not fast enough because he starts tugging at it until he manages to yank it free from my body. Then, when I try to flee, he gets a good handful of my hair and pins me down. “You trust me to keep you safe, do you not?”
“I… do. But with my life, not my hair!”
“Then you need to trust me. We need to make you at least look a little different. It’s this or a buzzcut.”
The thought of me with no hair is horrifying. “Fine. Okay. Yes, we’ll do this.” I take a deep breath. “Do it now!”
He squirts a huge glob onto the top of my head and pats it in.
“Oh god, no! This is horrible,” I realize.
“Well… unless you want to look like a skunk, it’s too late,” he says as he smacks the bleach around like he has no idea what he’s doing.
“Have you even done this before?” I ask.
“Oh yeah, of course,” he says nonchalantly. “You know, me and Tony would just sit around smoking our cigars and dyeing each other’s hair. Typical Friday night for us.”
Why do I even try with this man? “You shouldn’t have an open flame around hair dye,” I say dryly, which just makes his sarcastic ass laugh.
“Yeah, I literally have no idea what I’m doing. I’m not really a read directions kind of guy.”
“If you fuck up my hair… I’m gonna…”
“Fight me?” He sounds delighted about this.
I am definitely smart enough to know I won’t win that. “Do something horrible to you… so horrible I can’t even say it out loud.”
“I’m scared,” he says as he keeps globbing shit around on my head. “I found my new calling in life.”
“Herding sheep?” I ask.
He’s quiet for a moment, clearly trying to comprehend what I just said. “What?”
“Shepherd… your name…”
“That was absolutely stupid. For that, I’m leaving a big spot in the back brown.”
I groan, unsure whether it’s out of desperation, sadness, or just a loss of the will to live. “You’re allowed to harass me all the damn time, but the moment I try to harass you back, you turn to violence.”
Shepherd seems overly proud about this for some fucked-up reason. He finishes up after nearly asphyxiating me with fumes and I stand up, glad to be free. I grab the second box of hair dye that looks like the same color my hair originally was.
I stare at it for a moment before looking up at Shepherd. “The issue with this theory is that there’s still one blond one and one brown one.”
Shepherd stops in the middle of taking his shirt off, bare stomach exposed which I can’t help but appreciate. “Huh… I suppose I won’t dye my hair then so we’ll both be blond.”
I’m horribly convinced I heard him wrong. “Excuse me?”
He’s grinning now. “Funny enough, we could have just both been brown-haired if I’d dyed my hair instead! I always kind of wanted to be brown, so it’s a shame I can’t dye my hair.”
For a long moment, I stare at him as he beams at me. He’s loving every moment of this as I contemplate murder.
“Shepherd… let me punch you,” I say as I start moving toward him.
“Go ahead.”
I wasn’t expecting that and now I’m not sure what to do to punish him, so I toss the brown hair dye box at his gut. He catches it with ease.
He waves his hand in front of his face. “You’re kind of