You arrive at his house on the appointed day. Your bags are packed up in the back of your car. You like your car better than his because it’s higher off the ground. You told him during the planning session that you like the feeling of safety it gives you and he shrugged and said okay.

You hadn’t cut your mullet yet because you didn’t believe he’d cut his beard horns. He’d grown them in protest, in a desire to push the edge, yet again, of what was fashionably acceptable and what wasn’t. You liked to think you did the same, but you’re fairly certain it was never the same as him. You can’t believe you’ve both been allowed to keep the styles for this long.

You’re surprised and a little scared when he comes out of his house hornless, holding a pair of scissors.

“We had a deal,” he mutters, grabbing your hand and dragging you behind him to his front steps. He sits and pats the step below him, between his legs.

You’re reluctant to trust him, given his history. “Do you know what you’re doing?”

“Not really.” He shrugs.

You wince, but because you did have a deal, because you have the money to fix it later, because it’s Chris and he’s touching you, you let him drag you down to the stairs, let him position you between his legs. You rest your elbows on his knees, tilt your head back, and hope for the best.

He runs his small fingers through your hair, straightening it as much as he can before he takes the scissors to it. You can hear him singing under his breath and you’re not sure if you should be amused or scared. He’s singing “Bye Bye Bye” to your hair.

“How much are you taking off?” you ask, made scared and nervous by his song.

“Enough,” he says and takes the first snip from your hair.

You wince, but not enough to move your head. You don’t move again until you hear him say, “oops.”

You jump away from him, standing up, your hands flying to the back of your head. The bottom line of your hair is gone, the edge uneven. He’d taken more of the left than the right.

“What are you doing to me?”

“I’ll fix it. Technically, I’m not done yet, so I’m allowed some mistakes.”

“Mistakes? What else did you do?” Your hands pull at the back of your head, searching for the mistake, the missing piece. You can’t feel anything.

“Nothing,” he says. “Sit down.”

You stare at him a moment longer and because you’re really looking at him for the first time today, the first time since he’d lost his horns, you can see his neck. You can see the fresh scab on his neck where he nicked himself with the scissors as he cut off the fashionably weird part of him that you so objected to, however silently. You reach out a hand and cup his chin, running your forefinger over the spot where he’d hurt himself for you.

You nod and sit and though you’re still a little scared, you trust him.

He takes a little more off the back, doing with a pair of safety scissors the job he should be doing with a razor. You watch inch-long curls fluttering in the wind on his sidewalk and you wonder how much you have left for him to take off.

“You done yet?”

He nudges you in your ribs with his knee. “Not yet.”

He grabs your chin and moves it sideways, combing his fingers through the top part of your hair.

“What are you doing?”

“The back’s too short for the front now. I’m evening.”

You sigh and let him go. It’ll grow back, you can wear a hat, you can get it fixed. He moves to the other side.

He’s muttering “almost done” in your ear when he nicks it. You yelp and jump up, hand clapped over the little cut.

“You cut me!”

He scowls. “I didn’t mean to.”

“But you cut me!”

“Let me see it.”

You move your hand off your ear and let him look.

“Dude, it’s tiny. It’s already stopped bleeding. Wuss.”

“Shut up.”

While you’re both standing he reaches up and cuts the last long bit from that side of your head and says “done.”

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