Pete laughs as he tries to dry off. His hair is drenched like everyone else’s. But whereas my locks are cropped pretty short, Pete’s got more hair than most sororities combined. The guy looks like a damn caveman as he wrings out a fistful of hair with one hand and mops up his furry chest with the other.
“Dude, you should swing by the carwash on your way back. Pretty sure you need an industrial dryer.”
Pete looks up at me, brow quirked as he drops the towel he was holding and gives me the middle finger.
“Look who’s got jokes, Van,” he grumbles.
Van dumps his water-logged S’more into the little trash bin they brought along—suburban moms, I’m telling you—and chuckles. “He’s got a point, though. Do we have a hair dryer at the house? Somebody’s got to, right?”
“We don’t even have a vacuum,” Pete grouses.
“Mickey’s got one,” I volunteer. I figure if the guy can raid my closet on the regular, I can offer up his hairdryer for a friend in need.
Pete’s returned to drying the hair on his head, but once again, he drops the towel. “You’re shitting me. There’s no fucking way Mikalski has a vacuum.”
“Nah, he’s probably never even used one. But he does have a hairdryer. It’s a good one, too, I think.”
“Yeah, but am I going to be able to find it?” Pete asks.
It’s a legit question. Mickey’s room is probably a health hazard—even more so than the rest of the house. His ADHD makes it hard for his brain to remember things or organize things. And the fact that he ditches his meds half the time doesn’t help. His room is a maze of half-empty cups and laundry piles that cover up Christ only knows what. I guarantee there are at least three TV controllers somewhere under those piles.
Van shrugs. “Norris has a point. Mickey’s kinda obsessed with his hair. Makes sense he’d have some state-of-arthairdryer. He’s always borrowing my fucking deodorant, but I’m pretty sure he’s got a whole drawer of hair shit.”
“His sister’s a stylist,” I tell them. “She just finished beauty school and now she’s doing some course on facials and stuff. When I visited this summer, she gave me a killer haircut and put some crap on my face that cleared out my pores. That’s a good thing, apparently.”
“Maybe we can get her to give Pete a trim,” Van teases as Pete holds up another middle-finger salute.
“Fuck you, pretty boy. Your hair’s just as long as mine.”
Van pulls the hair tie from his man-bun, letting his curly hair down. It falls past his shoulders, just like Pete’s. “Yeah,” he concedes. “But all my hair’s on my head.” He turns to me. “You think Mickey’s sister…what’s her name? Brooke?”
“Bridgette,” I supply. “Everybody calls her Birdie, though.”
“Yeah, that’s right. You think Birdie would wax this guy’s chest? And his back? And…”
“Fuck no,” Pete protests. “No one is getting near me with hot fucking wax. And if I ever bend that rule, it sure as shit won’t be for Mikalski’s sister. Jesus. I love the guy, but if she’s anything like him, she’d probably forget what she was doing and wax my damn eyebrows off.”
“Dude, it would take more than one pass to erase those fucking caterpillars,” Van says, munching on dry graham crackers.
I bite back a laugh. “Nah, she’s really good. It’s crazy because they’re twins, right? But Birdie is Mickey’s opposite in every way. She’s super organized. She put herself through beauty school and then she’s gonna get a business degree, I think. Wants to open her own salon someday.”
Van’s eyes bug at the prospect of anyone related to Mickey being that together. “That’s wild. Maybe in the womb or whatever, she got all the parts of the brain that organize shit and he got all the athletic traits? Or is she akiller athlete, too? Tell me she’s like a figure skater, or something.”
I wince inwardly. I love Birdie like a sister, and over the past year, I’ve become almost as protective of her as Mickey is. “She doesn’t skate much. Pretty sure school and her job as a hair stylist keep her busy enough. Plus, she keeps me and Mick looking sharp. That’s gotta be a part-time job, at least,” I joke. The truth is that Birdie’s a pretty solid skater. She used to compete back when they were kids, according to Mickey. But the twins aren’t only opposite in personality. Birdie might be damn near as tall as her brother, and she might have the same green eyes and reddish-brown hair. But that’s where the similarities end. Mickey’s one of those lean guys who has to eat his weight in food just to keep his body fueled. Birdie, on the other hand, could get a side gig as a plus-size model. She’s fucking gorgeous, but her body is not one of those lean willowy, figure-skater types. She’s built like their dad, who was a linebacker in school, whereas Mick takes after their stick-thin mom. It’s just genetics, but it’s also a lot more than that. I think it’s fucked with both of them, to be honest, but looking at my family tree, I have no business analyzing anybody else’s.
“Dude, you got any marshmallows?” Ollie springs up out of nowhere, like an over-sexed whack-a-mole. His hair’s a wreck, and if I’m not mistaken, there’s beard burn on his chest. He looks back over his shoulder where Aven and the brunette are sprawled out on a lounger, and mouths something I can’t quite make out.
Van hands over a bag of marshmallows. “Your little water battle fried the S’mores machine,” he grumbles.
“Sorry,” Ollie says, not sounding apologetic at all. “Hey, is that chocolate syrup?” He asks, peering into their never-ending bag of supplies.
“Yeah, it’s for mud?—.”
Ollie nabs the bottle and mutters a hasty thanks before Van can finish his sentence.
“Lucky fucker,” Pete says, shaking his head and watching Ollie return to…whatever the hell those three have going on.
“It’s still early,” Van says, packing up. “You guys want to hit Wolfie’s on the way back? There’s a band playing, I think. Play your cards right, Pete, and you could go home with a groupie tonight.”
