Page 52 of The Recovery Coach
“What’s that?”she asked.
“Not business casual, that’s for sure,” Connor said.He overturned the bag, and a mountain of fabric fell out.
“You wear business casual to everything.Didn’t you wear the same game-day suit to every event you went to for like five years?”
“Daisy beat the habit out of me.I wore a suit to a backwoods country barone timeand never heard the end of it.”
Olivia bit her bottom lip in a hopeless attempt to hide her amusement.
“You did not.”She stripped out of her office attire, agreeing that business casual wasn’t the move.
Connor rifled through the mound of clothing on her bed.“I did.”One side of his mouth hooked up into a smirk.“The ladies of that podunk little town loved it.Some of the gents, too.”
She threw her balled-up shirt at his head.“I’m sure they did.”
Connor caught the garment before it hit him in the face and dropped it on the floor.He held up a soft-looking emerald-green sweater that might fit her.
“Where did all this come from?”she asked.
“Don’t ask questions you don’t want the answers to,” he said.Hilarity danced in his eyes, and Olivia waved her own question away.
“Ugh,” she said.“I don’t want your weird hookup leftovers.”
“I washed everything!”
“What did these poor guys and gals wear home?”Olivia asked.
Connor shrugged.“Something else from the bag.Or something of mine.But you said you didn’t want that, so…” He stuffed items into the bag.Olivia groaned and snatched the green sweater before he could shove it away.
“Fine,” she said.“It’s better than whatever the hell all this is.”She waved a hand toward her nightmare of a wardrobe.
Dressed in an acceptable date outfit of the sweater and a pair of jeans one size too small to be comfortable, Olivia sat at the guest room’s desk, the contents of her makeup bag spread out in front of her.
Connor stood behind her and watched her in the mirror.He turned on the curling iron, and Olivia’s heart did a little flip.She ignored the useless butterflies and spread mascara over her eyelashes; her mouth popped open in an O shape.
He leaned his cane against the side of the desk and tapped her shoulder.She screwed the cap onto the mascara and vacated her seat so he could sit.Understanding his intent, she sat on the floor with her back to him.The position was so familiar they could have been transported back in time to her childhood bedroom.
When Livy was fifteen, she started cramping so badly she couldn’t function during her periods.Sometimes the only thing that helped was lying flat on the floor.During those bad days Connor lay on the floor with her and held an iPad directly above their faces so they could watch something while they waited for her to feel better.He always let her choose what to watch.They spent countless hours watching hairstyling YouTube videos.One night he’d asked, “Why do you watch these?You don’t even do the styles.”
Olivia had shrugged.“It’s fun to think I could do them.”
“We should try one.”
They ended up trying dozens of styles and colors on Olivia’s hair.Her own attempts mostly failed.But Connor’s were often perfect.He even did her hair for her first high school dance.He’d also saved her from her disastrous date and comforted her afterward with a bowl of Cocoa Puffs andPhineas and Ferbin their treehouse.
Connor ran a brush through her hair and followed each stroke with his other hand, smoothing it.“Your hair is super soft,” he said.
“I’ve been using your fancy shampoo.”
“That shit works,” he said.He separated a section of her hair and began weaving pieces together.
It had been years since anyone had done her hair.The last time had probably been before he moved away from their hometown.“Thanks for your help.I’ve missed this.”
“Me too.Funnily enough, doing hair isn’t a skill hockey players tend to need.”
“Hmm.”Olivia luxuriated in having his fingers scrape her scalp.She blindly grabbed at the pile of makeup on her desk.“It’s still a good skill to have.Maybe you’ll have a bunch of daughters someday.”She managed to locate a tube of lipstick and applied it without a mirror.She’d learned the skill around the same time Connor learned to do hair.
“One can only hope,” he said.
