Her Husband’s Gift

To say Kelly felt out of place in the barbershop that Saturday afternoon was an understatement, but she refused to give into the part of her soul that wanted to run out the door as if she had never even attempted this.

Staying where she was, in that moderately comfortable plastic chair, she grasped the numbered plate in her right hand. The handsome barber had been glancing over at her ever since she arrived, at first registering complete surprise, maybe even concern that something was wrong, and then letting that fade into confusion when she took her place in the queue. Surely she couldn’t have been the only woman to come in that day, but she did have to admit that she was probably the only one without some children in tow, or the only one wearing a tight sundress that left her slender shoulders free, or, last but not least, the only one with cascades of gorgeous, dark brown hair like hers.

He hair, her crowning glory in every sense of the word, was, for better her worse, her defining trait in many people’s eyes. She’d always worn it long, never having its voluminous waves shorter than their current mid-back length. Half the reason she wore the sundress – in addition to the way it complemented her pale skin and cornflower blue eyes – was so she could feel her soft tresses brush against her skin whenever she turned her head. She loved how it felt, and always had.

And yet here she was, in a barbershop. Here she was, wondering whether she’d have the guts to follow through with her plan.

As it was, she was extremely lucky in just how damn cute the barber was. Working solo, he looked he could either be a very young child of the 80s or among the older children of the 90s, with stunningly sharp features and a jawline that she already wanted to nibble. His name tag read ‘Tom,’ and, fortunately, that was a name she had always liked.

She twirled the ends of her hair around her fingers as and watched Tom work and make light, casual conversation with the clients that paraded to his chair. He was a natural at it, and that was a characteristic she’d always admired. But it wasn’t hard to notice just how often he was looking her way. Eventually, he noticed that she noticed, not that she was trying to hide it. After that, he started forcing himself to hold back.

She gave him half credit for trying, at least, though it was easy to notice the side of his neck tense when he almost gave in to the desire to take another glance.

Eventually, he ran out of customers before her. After cashing out the sharp-looking young man who had occupied the seat, the barber turned to the waiting area. Two older men who had come in after her looked to Kelly, and she held up the little numbered plate that demanded Tom stop trying to avoid eye contact.

“Are you sure you’re in the right place, Ma’am?” he asked.

Kelly raised an eyebrow. “Ma’am?”

“Well, there goes any chance he had,” one of the older men muttered.

Tom smiled a bright, disarming smile that was no less that what Kelly expected a natural talker like him to have. He nodded a silent apology and gestured toward the red, leather charge that dominated the small shop. “Can I ask what brings you in today?” he queried, a nervous tinge to an otherwise charming voice that rode its way down the curve of her back and quickened her heart.

She glanced around as she set her numbered plate on the register counter and turned to face him, stepping backward toward the chair. Her fingers rose to slide through her soft, silky, freshly-washed locks, letting a healthy cluster fall in front of her right shoulder to hide one eye. “Well, I always assumed these places were only really good for one sort of thing.”

Tom smirked, shaking his head as if in disbelief.

One of the old men leaved toward the other, “I love when a girl shows some sass.”

The barber half-turned toward the old man, but Kelly recaptured his attention with a smile as she slid down into the large chair, brushing down the hem of her sundress as she crossed her legs. “I’d like a haircut, please,” she confirmed, glancing at her refection in the large mirror that ran the length of the wall before her.

“Fair enough.” The barber’s reflection appeared in the mirror, for a moment looking like he had no idea how to approach the situation.

“My husband has been asking me to try something short almost since the day we met, and it’s our tenth anniversary today, so I figured this might be the place to try. I wanted to surprise him.”

Tom’s gaze did not hesitate to find hers now, his brow furrowing in either confusion or disbelief. In turn, she quirked her eyebrow even as her heart started to race, knowing there was little chance she’d be escaping this chair with her gorgeous tresses intact. Even more so, she hadn’t the faintest idea of how they’d look at all.

“What did…” His voice cracked, and he took a moment to clear his throat. There was a long silence; although she couldn’t identify them herself, it seemed there were a dozen or more thoughts bouncing off one another behind his warm, brown eyes. “Did you have a style in mind?”

She shook her head slowly, keeping her eyes locked on his. “I think I failed to do my research in that regard, but I was thinking you could probably come up with something he’d like.”

The half-smile returned, this time framed by reddening cheeks. She loved knowing she could still have that effect on men.

“I could certainly try,” he replied, finally reaching out to gather her hair back behind her shoulders, letting it falls against the back of the chair in between taking long, slow strokes through the silky locks. He gathered them into a thick ponytail of lazy, graceful curls, and used it like a boat’s rudder to gently turn her head left and right. “I’m not going to pretend you don’t have gorgeous features, and probably the finest jawline and cheekbones I’ve ever seen. But you’re sure you’re ready for this?”

She nodded, wondering whether this would be the last ponytail she ever had.

“Without any set style in mind?”

She smiled, noticing but not drawing attention to the way he untucked his shirt to let it fall loosely around his very fit waist as if it were the most natural thing in the world for him to do. Her gaze moved from him, though, falling instead on her long, voluminous locks as he released her ponytail and let the soft curls fall free in front of her shoulders. She licked her lips and took a deep breath. “I trust you, Tom.”

He smiled at her reflection, forcing her heart to pitter-patter over a beat or two it should have taken. She forced her eyes closed, chewing the inside of her lips as a huge, white cape fluttered down over her. He tugged the cloth over her shoulders and then gathered her hair to fall over one shoulder. Working with a slight awkwardness that confirmed he rarely worked with heads of hair like hers, he did eventually manage to get a small paper strip fastened around her slender neck. She’d be left to wonder whether the liberties he took in brushing the backs of his fingers against her bare nape were truly necessary, but she hardly felt the need to complain.

Eventually, the cape imprisoning her in the unfamiliar chair was fastened as well, and the handsome barber began combing the length of her gorgeous mane, suddenly treating the soft locks with a gentleness Kelly hadn’t quite expected, and one she doubted he called into play very often – at least not during business hours.

With a clink, Tom set the comb into a jar filled with clear liquids and pulled a pair of shining, silver shears from his shirt pocket. He ran his fingers through her brunette locks one more time, spreading them out on the cape before her, and asked, “Nice and short?”

“As short as you’d like,” she assured him.

She bit her bottom lip as he nodded, gentle fingers cupping her chin and touching her crown to tilt her head to the left. His left hand dipped into her wealth of tresses, fingertips brushing against her ear as he captured a thick lock between two fingers. His shears met the generous lock eagerly, and with a soft rasp that sounded so loud and so unfamiliar to her, they cleanly sliced the long lock away right at the corner of her jaw.

Kelly watched the long, dark lock fall away, gliding down the white cape to curl in upon itself in her lap. There was a moment of hesitation as the barber watched her reaction. Her vision watered a little bit, but she reminded herself how much she wanted this, how much she wanted to do this, and it took only a moment to force the tears away. Then her smile was back, couple with a crinkled nose and a silent giggle of disbelief.

The barber smiled in return, gathering another thick lock and seemingly savoring the task of slowly slicing it away from her beautiful mane. Again and again he did so, taking his time as if this was something he’d rarely get to do, if ever again. Kelly tried to savor it, too, knowing she had already condemned herself to years of patient waiting if she wanted her beautiful hair to regain the glory it had just a few short breaths ago. Again and again the scissors rasped, agains and again a collection of beautiful, graceful curls fell away to reveal more of her long, elegant neck.

A neck that was a recipient of constant touches, soft, barely-there caresses by the barber’s warm hands as he gathered her hair for its merciless shearing. Kelly couldn’t be sure it was purposeful – she’d never had anything like this done before – and part of her wished it wasn’t, despite having let everyone in the shop already know she was a married woman. And maybe that was part of the excitement, having let them all know, and still feeling every electrical touch of the handsome barber, being unable to hide the flush of her cheeks as he doted on her in such a public place.

It was something new to her, and certainly something she didn’t mind.

Mostly, Kelly kept her eyes on her lap, contemplating those first curls that had gathered there, but occasionally she risked a glance upward to watch Tom work, to observe his focus and intensity as he clipped away at her trademark mane. If he had the same reaction to the contact of their skin, he was doing a fine job of hiding it, showing nothing out of the ordinary save for the uncharacteristic silence as his blades danced so close to her hairline at the nape of her neck.

Eventually, he guided her head to lean toward the right, and he was once again gathering and sacrificing the silky locks that had framed her – as he put it – gorgeous features.

When the last bit of her hair that could in any way be considered long had been kissed away by the silver blades, left to follow gravity’s call to gather in her lap and lay in sharp contrast to the white cape, Tom asked, “Doing alright?”

Kelly looked at the reflection of the woman with the short, sharp, unruly and uneven bob, and nodded. The woman in the reflection nodded, too, the ends of her soft, wavy hair swinging freely but no longer bouncing in graceful curls. The woman’s features, despite the flushed cheeks, looked exactly like her own, but, unlike Kelly, she had such a beautiful, long, elegant neck and it was just completely naked, bared to the world without a hope of being hidden.

Tom brushed the back of a finger against that naked, vulnerable expanse of pale skin, his own body positioned to hide the gesture from the old men in the waiting area. “Not used to seeing so much of this, are you?”

Kelly closed her eyes and fought to control the shiver of pleasure Tom’s unexpected touch released, and shook her head. After regaining control to the point of trusting herself to speak, she remarked, “Looks a little uneven, though.”

Tom smiled. “Yes, it does. We can take care of that, though.”

A comb once again replaced the shears in his hand, and a water bottle appeared in the other. Kelly had always wondered how a barbershop like this would take care of shampooing a customer’s hair and now it was clear – they simply didn’t. The cold spritzes that dampened what remained of her locks and, to an extent, the pleasurable warmth that had built up from Tom’s teasing touches. Some remained, however, along with the unexpected excitement created by the just how quickly the tiny water bottle was able to soak all the hair she had – twenty minutes ago, even ten minutes ago, it might have taken a refill or two to get the job done, but now, with just a few deft squeezes of the plastic handle, her hair now clung to her cheeks and ears as rivulets of water ran down her neck.

Tom grabbed a towel, probably to wipe away the excess water, but Kelly quickly realized that was just for show. Sure, he still held the towel in his right hand, but when he slowly ran it up the length of nape and the sides of her throat, it was his gentle fingers that brushed away the water, reigniting those unexpected pulses that caused Kelly’s thighs to gently press together, rhythmically squeezing and releasing in the leather chair as she bit the inside of her bottom lip.

The towel was set aside. Kelly waited for the longer locks atop her head to be gathered up and clipped out of the way, but no such action followed. Instead, Tom tilted her head downward, her gaze falling toward the shorn locks in her lap as she struggled to swallow nervously. Knuckles cracked behind her, and then the sharp teeth of the comb trailed along from the crown of her head toward her nape, sweeping to the side at the last moment to capture a thick sheath of her wet hair, only to be replaced by Tom’s fingers as they lay flat against the curve of her head. A heartbeat passed, and then a loud crunching assaulted her ears. Tickling prickles fell against her bare nape, and then the process repeated again. The comb would trail and sweep, Tom’s caressing fingers would capture, and then the shears would do their dirty work and send who knew how much more of Kelly’s beautiful locks falling to the hardwood floor.

The rhythm of Tom’s work became hypnotic, the sweeping and the crunching and the caressing all molding together, until after a time Tom’s touch had faded from the process and only the comb kissed Kelly’s nape before each clack of the shears coming together. Slowly Tom’s attention moved to either side, and before long Kelly once again found her head tilted to the left, her hips involuntarily squirming as Tom softly brushed his fingers against the curve of her little pink ear, his breath boldly forcing shorn clippings aside once her ear had been completely bared.

In the brief pause as Tom repositioned himself to her left, she noticed the quick adjustment to make himself more comfortable as he passed behind the chair. It was no small relief to realize she wasn’t the only one being assaulted by unexpected needs. A quick glance in the mirror witnessed him licking his own lips, and revealed the complete devastation of her once-flowing locks that didn’t even touch, much less hide, her right ear anymore… No, devastation was a cruel word to use, because, if nothing else, she could see just how damn cute that naked little ear was, and how well defined the delicate line of her jaw suddenly became without a mass of curls and waves overwhelming it. And gods, her cheekbone—

Nope, no time to take in her cheekbone as Tom tilted her head to the right and set about the serious work of freeing her left ear from its cover. She could hear the heavy, wet locks fall against the cape after each crunching snip, and wished that it was Tom’s fingers teasing her ear again rather than the cold plastic of the comb, but it was clear too little length remained for the handsome barber’s fingers to be much help.

When he stepped behind her again, his hands gently lifted her head straight and kneaded the muscles of her shoulders in a clear expectation that she felt more nervous than she actually did. A muffled, embarrassing sound resulted, some sort of hybrid of a purr and a moan and a giggly squeal. Tom chuckled, his hands still moving to caress up and down her nape. He leaned in, probably much closer than he needed to, so his breath tickled her ear as he assured her, “Almost done.”

The spritzing bottle made a return, but there was no dampening her spirits this time. Her hair was soaked from crown to forehead again, and then Tom’s fingers, the comb, and the shears began another intricate dance that sent thick hanks of Kelly’s crowning glory to the floor and to the cape, an abbreviate waterfall of shorn locks that were becoming something of the past. The long, face-concealing locks were gathered up and back and then allowed to fall free time and time again, each time falling just a bit shorter than they had previously.

In something of a strobe effect, Kelly lost and regained the view from her right eye again and again, her breath quickening as her style careened toward an outright pixie-cut or a schoolboy’s haircut on a grown woman. She could already tell the middle parting that had allowed her soft locks to frame her face so symmetrically was a thing of the past, reshaped into a side parting, that, at the moment, lent itself to sweeping bangs that intermittently teased the bridge of her nose and hid her eye.

Feeling genuine, true relief for the first time, she sighed softly when Tom stopped attacking those relatively long locks. Her breath, however, stopped again when she heard a loud pop and buzz from behind. With only one wide eye visible in her reflection, she met his gaze. There was a mischievous smile on that face of his, and he brushed the thumb of his free hand against her cheek. “You said you trusted me, right?”

It took a moment, but Kelly nodded and allowed Tom to guide her chin downward once again. The murmuring, rumbling clippers met her nape, and with a shocked gasp Kelly stiffened in the chair, unprepared for the rush of sensations the tiny machine’s nibbling teeth launched throughout her body.

“Jesus christ,” she murmured, feeling the weight of the cape and her sundress against her suddenly sensitive nipples. Tom’s hand sat on the crown of her head, holding her in place as the clippers nibbled and nipped their way up her nape and her thighs pulsed against one another. Oh, fuck, if only she’d known a haircut could feel this way, she’d have given in to those silly requests years ago… She began to wonder whether Tom would do house calls. Even if not, she was pretty sure she could convince him.

The clippers only moved up a few inches before Tom reset them at the base of Kelly’s nape, and then the process repeated itself, nudging Kelly toward a cliff she desperately did not want to leap off of with an audience in the waiting area. She kept trying to see whether the old men were still there, but every time she opened her eyes, Tom’s gentle touch would cause a feeling that demanded she close them and start to reflect on her taxes or the housing market of something to that effect; anything to keep from soaking the barber’s chair with her unbridled delight.

After a pair of especially difficult-to-ignore teasings of both ears as the clippers carved away the hair that remained, Tom finally quieted the tiny machine and set it down. His hands rested on Kelly’s shoulders, lifting away only to tweak and fix what remained of her once magnificent mane. She stayed quiet as he worked, absolutely adoring the intensity of his gaze as he made sure every lock was in its specific place. He then grabbed a mirror from behind himself, and showed her the nape of her neck, so completely naked and bare and vulnerable, just a vast expanse of soft skin begging to be nipped and nibbled in a surprise attack from behind like the rest of her neck. The hair above it – what little there was, looked like velvet, shorn down to about an eighth of an inch at its base before gradually lengthening toward the crown.

Kelly turned her head this way and that; the clippers’s work framed her ears, those cute, adorable ears her husband loved to tease, leaving them without hope of finding quarter beneath the protective swaths of her long, thick hair. Not for months, at least.

Tom undid the cape as she admired his work, sweeping it off of her and letting her stand and step toward the mirror. She ran her hand back through her sweeping bangs, gathering them back before they insisted on falling forward to hide her right eye again. The length there – just six or so inches compared to the two feet or more that once was – stood out in such contrast to the rest. Before she sat in the barber’s chair, Kelly assumed compliments on the beauty of her locks would be a thing of the past. It had been a sacrifice she’d been willing to make for her beloved, but, no – these long, contradictory locks showed off plenty of the shine and silkiness her mane had been graced with, not to mention the natural caramel highlights that were due to show up in the summer months.

It was a huge change. A massive change she couldn’t have possibly prepared herself for. And as the barber’s reflection lingered behind hers in the mirror, she realized she absolutely loved it.

“You do pretty good work, Tom,” she said as she turned to him. “I may have to make these visits a regular thing.”

He smiled, and she took a few slow steps toward him.

“Unless you make house calls?”

He grinned, subtly wiping his towel across the seat of the chair. “Only in special cases.”

She stepped closer still, taking hold of the collar of his shirt as she leaned close, close enough to feel the effect her little surprise had on him as it pressed against her thigh. “Oh, I think I can find a way to make it worth your while.”

His moan was quiet, but it allowed her to claim a small victory anyway. She giggled adoringly, and teasingly licked his lips before moving her own close to his ear. “Your mother took the kids for the night, so don’t take too long to clean up. Happy anniversary, baby.”

She then let go of his shirt, casting a long, wistful glance down at the piles of gorgeous, shiny curls and waves that littered the floor around the chair she had been sitting in. She couldn’t guess how many years it would take all of that to grow back, or even if it ever would. For all she knew, that brief ponytail Tom had gathered her silky locks into would be the last she ever had.

An hour ago, she would have found that idea ridiculous. This was going to be a one-time treat. But after actually experiencing it…

She ran her hand up her nape and shivered, just imagining what she had to look forward to when Tom got home.

Tossing a twenty dollar bill next to the register, she smiled at the old men waiting their turn. “Have a nice night, guys.”

Before the door closed behind her, she heard one of them say, “You know, Tom… maybe we’ll just come back next week. You probably want to get out of here.”

 

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