Page 79 of Wilde's End
“So …” I wasn’t planning on bringing this up, but I need a subject change. “The brothers want you to work for them.”
He goes unnaturally still, and his lips pull tight.
“Do what you want.”
Ziggy rolls his eyes and crosses over to his couch. He drops onto it, body sagging forward, elbows on knees as he drags his hands through his thick hair.
“Hey … what’s wrong?”
There’s a moment of indecision before he speaks. “Kennedy is … he’s, umm …” The flush that creeps up Ziggy’s neck finishes that sentence for him.
“You’re attracted to him?”
He scowls, but the way his body tenses tells me I’m right and he’s as happy about that as I am about my thing with Hudson.
“At least he’s not an asshole.” I sigh my way through. “Apparently.”
Ziggy’s gaze hesitantly finds mine.
“I’m fucking Hudson.”
The judgment in his eyes echoes everything I’ve been thinking.
“Yes, he’s a dick. I get it.” That said, after yesterday, I don’t know if I completely believe my words. I have a lot of issues with his confession about dealing drugs—prescription or otherwise—because I have no time for that. It’s a very hard line I’ve set for this town, and we’ve had two people leave because they wanted to bend those rules.
From everything he said before I got thrown back into the past, he’s stopped that life, but knowing he was so close to going back to it before he came to Wilde’s End has me wary. If things get hard here, will that be his solution?
“I’m conflicted,” I finally admit. “I know what they’re doing here. I know that their goals go completely against ours, and if they succeed, everything that we’ve built here will disappear. But I can’t turn off that little voice telling me to go see him. To draw him out. To fuck him again.” I don’t even know what I’m hoping to get from this conversation. “I’m just saying that I know what it’s like to be torn. If helping them with those houses gets you time with Kennedy, well, you won’t get judgment from me.”
He taps the place over his heart, and I do the same back.
It’s not exactly an I love you, but an I appreciate you. I see you. Thank you. All rolled into one.
“Right.” I look down at the shaver. “Guess I should probably …”
Ziggy stands suddenly, strides toward me, then takes my arm and tugs me back over to his mirror. It’s only just large enough to make out my whole face in it. I can’t remember the last time I looked directly into a mirror. I don’t own one. Checking my reflection isn’t something I think about anymore, and the first thing that hits me is that I don’t recognize myself.
There are lines by my eyes where there didn’t used to be lines, and that’s basically all I can see of my face.
Ziggy opens the second drawer I pulled the shaver from and grabs an attachment that he sets on the end. Then he plugs the thing in.
“You’re going to shave me?”
He nods, slings a towel across my chest, then grabs a pair of scissors. He turns my head back toward the mirror and tugs my beard down with one hand. It reaches past my collarbones and might be the longest it’s ever been.
Ziggy sets the scissors against the end, maybe an inch from the bottom. It’s probably around where my choppy job would have started. Still long, still hidden, not enough of a difference for anyone to notice.
I huff, hating that I’m this torn over something so insignificant.
“Shorter.”
Ziggy moves the scissors up.
“Shorter.”
He keeps moving until the scissors are just below my chin. A “there” makes it past my lips before I can talk myself out of it, and Ziggy brings the scissors together. He cuts a rough line across the front, removing all the excess, and I have to look away.
I don’t watch as he works, thebzzzof the shaver filling the air. We have solar batteries hooked up to the grid here, something that took years to accomplish, but while we have access to electricity, no one in Wilde’s End uses it much. The point of being off the grid is to live off the grid. Most of us don’t have TVs. Don’t bother with lights when candles work just as well. I use my stove when I don’t have the time to start a fire, but that and my fridge are basically it. We have a lot of freedom out here, and doing things manually, providing for ourselves, is a part of Wilde’s End.
