Someone to Love by Addison Moore Page A

baby!” She
lets a couple of hearty whoops rip for added affect. “Now all you
have to do is sit under these lights for a solid thirty minutes.”
She pulls a set of octopus tentacles off the ceiling and surrounds
me with a spray of blue and red bulbs. Suddenly, it all feels a
little too electric chair for my liking.
    I look at myself with my muddied face, the
tiny follicular penis sitting erect on the top of my head and my
hair splayed out like a tinsel factory exploded. I’m betting the
electric chair is a tad less humiliating.
    “I’m gonna take a quick lunch break.” Boppy
snaps up her purse. “I’ll see you in a jiff!”
    She spins the chair around, presumably so I
won’t be moved to inflict self-harm should I gaze too long in the
mirror, and I’m met with a stunningly handsome, drop dead gorgeous,
very much aware of the fact I look like an ass, Cruise Elton.
    Just fuck.
     

Cruise
     
    Oh Shit.
    I should probably busy myself pretending to
look at paperwork, or answer the phone for the hell of it, or just
run out the fucking door because my mother’s incompetent salon has
just turned one of the most beautiful women on the planet into a
prime example of why other females should never set foot in the
establishment.
    A smile twitches on my lips as her mouth
opens in horror. Great. Now she thinks I’m laughing at her. I’d
better go over and say something.
    “Kenny?” I ask in the off chance it’s another
coed who’s mortified to see me.
    She closes her eyes, and a tiny whimper
escapes her throat.
    “Have I mentioned I’ve never been to a salon
before?” She squeaks.
    I can see why, but don’t say a word.
    “So”— she looks around as her eyes glitter
up—“tell me about school.” She presses her lips together,
presumably fighting off tears.
    A nervous laugh beats down my chest, and it
takes everything in me to suppress the crap out of it. The truth
is, I’m taken by her even in the Halloween garb she’s currently
imprisoned in.
    “I’m a graduate student,” I say, pulling up a
chair. “I’ve got my sights set on a fellowship, next year, with
hopes to teach at Garrison some day.”
    “Really?” Her eyes glow a beautiful
iridescent and my body feels as though it’s just fell through a
trap door, landed in a place where it’s just Kenny and me on the
other side.
    “Really,” I say. “Either that or I’ll run the
bed and breakfast.”
    She licks her lips, inspecting me. “You don’t
happen to know any computer languages, do you?”
    Computer languages? “I know some Java
Script, C plus plus, and C, but mostly that was for programming
when my solitary goal in life was to become the world’s most wanted
hacker. That, and trying to rob my father blind of his millions,
but in my defense, I was thirteen and he said no when I asked for a
new bike.”
    She belts out a lusty laugh, and soon, I
don’t see the circus around her beautiful features. All I see is
Kenny and the light that shines like a beacon from inside her
heart.
    “So you know three.” She relaxes for the
first time. “I actually don’t know any, so your father’s millions
are safe from me.”
    “How about you? What are you studying?” An
animalistic wave overcomes me, and I have the urge to do her right
here in the salon under the red-hot spot lights brewing from above,
tinfoil and all.
    “Well, I’m on the five year plan, plus I took
a year off. Outside of striking a name for myself as campus bimbo,
I’ll be taking up airspace in the liberal arts department. In fact,
I was supposed to have received my schedule this week, but I keep
forgetting to check my emails. I’m hoping I got all the classes I
wanted. Art, English 102, Finite math, and a class on gender
relations.”
    “Study of men and women in society?” I perk
to attention.
    “That’s the one.” She darts a freshly
polished fingernail in the air, and I imagine diving the digit deep
in my mouth, grazing over it with my teeth.
    “Bradshaw teaches