Atelophobia (Love is Misery)

then

"Stop moving." I rolled my eyes and ignored him, keeping on shaking my head to the music. But then, he took my face with both hands and stopped me himself before kissing me and adding, "don't blame me if I mess it up."

"It's alright, I'll mess yours up as well" I smiled.

"Hell no you won't."

I laughed and stopped moving my head. We'd gone to the drugstore before that. It wasn't far of a walk, and we just needed hair dye. Bleach, actually. And he was bleaching a strand of my hair—trying to, I mean.

He took me in his arms and kissed me many times until I giggled and pushed him playfully. Then he got closer to me and placed his hands on my hips. I frowned until he kissed me again and lifted me to sit me on the bathroom counter.

"Stay still, will you?"

"Make me." He smiled and kissed me again before turning my head and taking the strand of hair with his delicate fingers.

"I think your hair will turn blonde enough," he said, referring to a prior conversation in which I had told him I thought my hair would turn to a piss yellow. A conversation that had ended with him laughing at me and me complaining about having thick and dark hair, much thicker and much darker than his.

"Wanna bet?"

He smirked, "no thanks, I'll pass."

"Why not?"

"I'll never live it down if I'm wrong, you'll make sure of it."

"Am I really that horrible?" I asked genuinely.

"We're talking about your hair, Andrea. You will remind me I was wrong every single day until you dye it another color. And even after that, you'll keep saying it's my fault you had to do so."

"Because it will be!" I laughed, "but even if I love my hair very deeply, I love you more. Just don't ruin it. Please."

He grinned and took the brush. And he started drowning my hair in bleach, then wrapped it in aluminum paper and left it be for me to bleach his. So I took the brush and spread it on the portion he had chosen. It was sort of fast. He didn't have very long hair, at least not as long as mine. And again, his was much thinner. It was obvious he would get a faster result.

After being done with his hair and doing the same as mine, we had twenty to thirty minutes to waste. So he carried me down the counter and kissed me. Then, he took my hand and took me to his personal library—as he loved to call it.

"Let's stay in my personal library and read." See?

"Yes," I said, almost running to the book I had left on the little table near the pouf chairs the last time we went there to read. He ran after me and wrapped his arms around my waist and sat down in my pouf chair, taking me with him.

I was on his lap, and I couldn't go away or even move so much since his arms were still around me, not wanting to let me go. I took his face with one hand and said "you're an asshole, you know that?"

He smiled widely before trying to kiss me yet again. I escaped by putting my hand on his face. So he kissed my hand instead, then he kissed all the way up to my arm, shoulder, neck and cheek. And finally lips. And he kissed me like he missed doing it in the few minutes it took us to go there.

"I know."

He gave me my book and took his. And we started reading, both reading different books in each other's arms. But he was close to me. And he was so pretty. And he smelled really good. So I closed my book after a while and rested my head in the crook of his neck, watching him turn the pages closely, paying attention to everything he did and the rate of his heartbeat. I loved doing that. I loved feeling his heartbeat, especially when it started beating faster when I was close.

"Are you not in the mood to read, my love?" he whispered.

I smiled, "my love."

He brought me even closer and kissed my forehead, "my pretty girl. What is it?"

"Nothing. I just..."

"You just?"

"I can't really concentrate like this." He moved a bit to give me more space and I clung onto him, "no, I didn't mean it like that. I'd rather hug you."

"You don't have to."

"Oh, I know that, don't worry. I want to."

He slowly brought me closer again and I rested my head in the same place as I did previously. And I just kept watching him. Reading, kissing my head every few minutes, tilting the book in my direction so I could read, too, if I wanted. But I was a slow reader. Very slow, in fact. So I could only catch a few sentences here and there on the pages. And a word piqued my curiosity. A few words, maybe.

"Ethen?"

"Mmh?" That sound made his throat shake a little. It felt like one of those massage tools.

"Sorry to interrupt you but what's catharsis? And abience?"

He smiled and kissed my head again, "abience is an urge to avoid a situation or an object. Like when you avoid a situation because you fear conflict or disapproval" he said, "and catharsis is the purging of emotional tensions. Like when you cry things out, or when you have a good laugh. It regulates your emotional balance." I nodded and stayed quiet, and he added, "and you have nothing to apologize for, by the way."

"What is the book about?" I asked, knowing very well that if I replied to him instead of ignoring what he said, he would have, once again, told me that I shouldn't apologize because I didn't do anything wrong.

"Psychology." So he was learning about human behaviors and the brain. If he kept reading those psychology books, he would soon understand everything there was to understand about me. And I would soon become a boring mystery he would end up solving.

"I love psychology. It's so interesting" I told him.

He looked at me, "yes, it really is."

I wondered what he meant by that for a while, and then it was time to remove the aluminum paper and rinse our hair.

I removed his and put it in the trash. A very light and pretty blonde. Then he removed mine. A decent blonde. Well, not everywhere...

"I told you this would happen!" He laughed.

We rinsed our hair and he applied some more bleach to mine. But the blonde only got a bit lighter after that, so we went to the store the next day to get hair-whitening shampoo.