Page 40 of I'll Look for You, Everywhere
Holding a smile back, I relax further into the chair and part my legs for her. ‘So forward, Magdalen. First my shirt and now you’re between my legs? Are you trying to seduce me?’
She steps into the opening, the summer heat radiating off her bare abdomen warms me and I’m practically clawing the chair to keep from touching her.
‘Save the flirting for Chiara,’ she huffs, standing up so that her breasts almost graze my nose as she gathers my hair and begins to cut.
I wet my lips. She’s so close that if I leaned just a few inches forward, I could kiss the space between her breasts, drag my tongue across her skin. I’m so lost in the proximity to her that I don’t register what she said about Chiara.
‘How did you know it was Chiara?’ I pull back to find her eyes, but she gasps.
‘Oh my god! You can’t just move while I cut your hair! That’s like haircutting sin number one.’
‘I don’t really give a shit about my hair. How did you know it was Chiara?’
She sighs, running her hand through my hair again so that her forearm brushes against my cheek. God, this is torture.
‘It doesn’t take a genius to remember you two. Chiara’s been talking about you since forever.’
I look up at her again and this time my lips do brush against her arm. ‘Is that so?’ I mumble against her skin, drinking in the softness, the sweet smell of sunshine and lavender that seems to come from somewhere deep inside her.
She pauses for a moment, eyes lingering on the spot where my lips connect with her arm, and takes a shaky breath in. ‘And Anika may have mentioned Chiara’s name.’
‘Ah.’ Smiling against her arm, I give in and playfully bite her. She gasps, laughing while trying to take a step back. My foot curves inward so that when she tries, she trips on the heel of my shoe and I grab behind her knees to centre her.
‘That’s the first time anyone’s bitten me while getting a haircut,’ she says breathlessly. My hands remain gripping the backs of her thighs and, when I notice, I let them fall.
‘Has someone bitten you in a different situation?’
I have no right to ask. No right to sound as irritated as I do. But thinking about someone else’s mouth on her is torture. Magdalen clears her throat, laughter dying. I was with Chiara only five days ago, doing a lot more than biting, and here I am jealous of the idea of someone that close to Magdalen.
The soft cutting of hair fills the silence.
‘I’m sorry.’ I clear my throat. ‘I shouldn’t have asked.’
She continues cutting my hair, a slight frown pulling in her brows. ‘Anika is the last person to have bitten me.’ She examines my hair and evens out the right side, looking unfazed by my invasive question. ‘I stole her push-up bra in year five.’ I can see the memory in the brightness of her eyes and my heart beats tenfold at the obvious love she has for my sister.
‘She’s the only ten-year-old I’ve ever heard wear a push-up bra.’
Magdalen tilts her head to the side, a smile on her lips as her hand brushes my neck to check the ends of my hair. ‘She stole it from my mother,’ she continues, recalling the day with warmth. ‘Except she didn’t know you had to stuff them, so they just looked like deflated balloons. That and it didn’t fit her, so it kept riding up to her neck.’
We both burst out laughing; the image of an even smaller Anika with two deflated lumps around her neck is so vivid it takes us several moments to catch our breaths. Magdalen hums with a smile and crouches to continue the haircut, so close that her breath fans my face. Sweet and floral. I should look away but it’s hopeless. I’m mesmerized.
‘What were you like in year five?’ she asks. Freckles dust the centre of her nose in perfect symmetry, the sun casting a glow across her cheekbones that makes her appear golden and dewy. Fuck’s sake.
‘I was at the school in Torino by year three.’ My voice comes out rough; the sweetness of her is difficult to drag myself away from, to relive those memories. Magdalen opens her mouth in shock, and I betray myself by sneaking a glance at her lips. Her upper lip is slightly larger than her bottom lip, and I quickly look away before images of her mouth, swollen and glistening around me, threaten to make this haircut painfully unbearable. Do not, Theo. I grab the chair tighter.
‘Oh, they told me entry was year six.’
She drags me from indecency to childhood. And that’s when I remember. How could I have forgotten?
‘Wait, you went to that school too, didn’t you?’
Eyelashes fluttering against her cheekbone, Magdalen shyly smiles. ‘Yes. I’m surprised you remembered with how... busy you always seemed.’ While she was reading chapter books in the library, I was doing god knows what in the teacher’s bathroom.
‘I was a fucking prick back then, wasn’t I?’ The wind seems to have vanished; the only sound is her breathing braided with mine. My fingers ache to touch her again.
‘Just back then?’
‘Hey.’ I poke her belly button and she giggles. It’s the cutest sound I’ve ever heard. ‘I saw you, Magdalen.’
