She bleaches her hair exactly how you’re not supposed to, lathering it like shampoo without the plastic gloves on. I tell her it’s going to get on her eyebrows. She says she’s been thinking about shaving them off anyway, it doesn’t really matter. 

I slip behind her in the bathroom mirror and pull a last dark strand out of the collar of her t-shirt, holding it out so she can gather it into the sticky purple of the rest and be unconcerned with how it’s 5 minutes darker. 

45 minutes later, 15 minutes longer than the box said, I’m next to her on the floor getting the water right while she leans over the edge of the bathtub. When the bleach comes off it’s a shock to see the lightness. I keep threading it through my fingers and saying “I can’t believe it didn’t all break off.” She says that she’s been thinking about shaving it all off anyway, it wouldn’t really matter. 

“You know you don’t need an excuse, right?” I ask, getting up and handing her a towel off the back of the door. “You can just shave everything off if you want to. You don’t have to try to mess it up first.” She says I must hate the blond. I tell her no, I love the blond. At least so far - we haven’t even seen it dry yet. She says “fine” and I say “fine” and she asks if we just fine/fined and we realize, oh,  we did. We laugh at us together to say shit, sorry, to say whatever you want, anything.  

Two weeks later the hair comes off, six-inch platinum strands swept off of the floor and dumped into the trash can. She decides to leave the eyebrows on and dye one. We spend 30 minutes scrubbing Virgin Pink Arctic Fox off of the bathroom counter. She looks cool as hell.