He shrugged a shoulder and grinned somewhat sheepishly as he approached her with an outstretched hand holding a cheap plastic comb. “Help.” He dropped the bag containing his old clothes on the ground next to her.
Unable to hold it in any longer, Kaylee laughed. “There’s nothing wrong with the way you combed your hair, as long as you were going for the Charlie Chaplin look.” Another round of laughter as she took the comb from him.
He rolled his eyes as she stretched up on her tippy-toes to better reach his hair. Lowering her arms, she said, “It might be easier if you stoop down or sit on a chair.”
He sat in a nearby chair. After just a few strokes of the comb, Kaylee shook her head and handed it back to Blayne. “I think this will work better without the comb, and without the part.” She wiggled her fingers through his dark, wet hair. The slight waviness and short cut of it made it the perfect candidate for the “messy” look, even without any hair product to put in it.
She realized she’d been running her fingers through his hair for far longer than necessary, yet she continued to do so for several more seconds. She looked down and her heart fluttered. Blayne’s head was tilted slightly up, his eyes closed, and his face more relaxed than she’d ever seen it. She had the sudden strong impulse to lean down and kiss him. She shook her head and pulled her hands away, standing straight and stepping back.
Blayne’s eyes opened lazily and searched for hers. “You could keep doing that for, like, an hour if you want.” His smile lit up his eyes and his words made her fingers tingle with the desire to run them through his hair again.
She swallowed. Her salivary glands seemed to be working overtime just now. Afraid to speak, she rolled her eyes and crossed her arms. She’d known from his beautiful eyes that he had the potential to be cute—but she was completely taken aback by his movie star looks. She chided herself for thinking such shallow thoughts, but deep inside, she knew she’d felt some sort of attraction to him for a while before this physical transformation.
“Okay, okay.” Blayne stood. “I get it. We need to go to the unemployment office now. Do I look presentable?”
Kaylee inhaled sharply and sucked some over-produced saliva into her lungs. A coughing fit of disastrous proportions ensued. The ugly kind—where she couldn’t catch her breath, couldn’t speak, and, she knew, her face would be bright red, tears spilling from her eyes, and her throat would bulge out like a bullfrog’s with each harsh, man-like cough.
To make matters worse, Blayne rushed to her side and threw an arm around her hunched shoulders, causing her already taxed heart to go into overdrive as her skin tingled where he touched her. “Are you okay?” he said. “Can I help? Call an ambulance?”
She shook her head and drew in a breath, which just made the tickling in her throat ten times worse.
“How about a drink of water?” Blayne suggested.
Kaylee nodded, thinking maybe she could get herself together a little while he rushed to get her a drink. She leaned over, propping her hands on her knees, and inhaled, slower this time. She wiped her cheeks, hoping her “waterproof” makeup was truly waterproof.
“Here.” Blayne shoved the paper cup of water under her nose.
She straightened up and took another tentative breath before taking the cup from his hand. She took a small sip of the room temperature water. “I think I might have aspiration pneumonia.” Her voice came out rough and skipped like a bad-coverage phone call.
Blayne’s eyes widened in concern.
“I’m joking, sort of. I’ll be fine, everyone chokes on their own saliva sometimes, right?”
“Riiight.” He tilted his head. “So, does your reaction mean that I do not look presentable?”
She laughed, shaking her head. “No. Just the opposite actually. You look,”—multiple words passed through her brain at the speed of light: amazing, fantastic, devastatingly handsome—“great. Really great.”
“You mean now that I don’t have Charlie Chaplin hair?”
“Yes. That was definitely not presentable.” She jerked her head toward the door. “Should we get going?”
He grabbed his bag of old clothes and walked next to her toward the door.
The Colorado Department of Labor and Employment was surprisingly empty compared to the two shelters they’d been to that day. Kaylee sat next to Blayne facing across a desk from a man named Derick.
“Well, Mr. Ellis, at least you know what your Social Security number is. We can at least get you started with that, but if—when—you get hired, your employer will need a copy of it before they can pay you.” Derrick tapped a pen on the edge of his desk.
“I’m working on that for him,” Kaylee said. “Do you have any suggestions on how to get a copy of his card without him having an I.D.?”
They told Derrick about Blayne’s situation. He shook his head and looked intently at Blayne. “I’m afraid the only option in this case is for you to contact your parents and see if they can send you either your Social Security Card or your birth certificate.”
Blayne sighed and dropped his head, whispering, “I can’t do that.”
“I can.” Kaylee didn’t dare look at him. “I’ll contact your parents. They can send it to my address.”
“No.” Blayne continued to bow his head. “I don’t want them to know I’m in Denver. I’m not ready.”
Kaylee thought for a few seconds. “I’ll have them send it to my parents’ house in Pueblo and they can forward it to me. I’ll explain to your parents that you aren’t in Pueblo.” She placed her hand on his, which was lying on top of his bouncing knee. “Can I tell them you’ll be in contact with them when you’re ready?”
He flipped his hand over and curled his fingers tight around hers, still refusing to look up, still bouncing his knee at warp speed. After a
