During the summer he decided he wanted to be daring.
I was at the house he stayed in with his mother. We were there alone, his mother and her new partner, Eric, and Noah had all gone out for the day but he refused to go. He refused to do anything that Eric was included in, he placed the collapse of his parents marriage on Eric's broad shoulders. I thought that was kind of unfair, but when he wanted to talk about his hate for the man I would listen without judgment.
We had just began eating, a whole double cheese pizza each, when he suddenly grinned at me.
"I want to dye my hair," he announced to me, a beaming smile plastered on his face.
"Not much I can do about that," I said through a muffled mouthful of pizza, the hot cheese scalding the bridge of my mouth.
"Actually..." There was a warm, mischievous glint in his eyes that I recognised. I sighed.
About half an hour later we were sat on his sofa with half a dozen boxes of multicoloured hair dye on my lap.
"Where did you even get all of these?" I asked in disbelief, sifting through all the pages of instructions.
"Some dodgy shop on the edge of town. Saw the boxes in the window - these weren't even close to being the most outrageous, just so you know - and I just thought that it would be cool to try them all out."
"All at the same time?"
"Yep."
"Mental," I muttered.
"I've always wanted to do something daring, and this is it," he chattered excitedly, flopping down next to me.
I snorted. "This isn't daring, this is crazy. You realise you're going to need to bleach your hair first to get these colours to even show up," I told him, running my hand through his dark hair.
"You mean, you're going to need to bleach my hair first." He pulled out another box, this time bleach, from behind his back.
"Do your parents know you're doing this?"
"Nope," he answered happily. "They would probably try to stop me anyway, which would only delay the inevitable."
"Right." I rolled my eyes. "Well, do you want to move somewhere else to do this? I don't want to get this all over the sofa."
"Nah, it doesn't matter, that's Eric's sofa," he replied venomously.
I pulled on a pair of plastic gloves, wiggling my fingers around to try and get rid of the air bubbles. I sighed again.
Much, much later on his hair was bundled up in a horribly patchy towel and we were sat on his bed. I expected it would look awful, mainly because it was cheap and probably slightly illegal hair dye, but also because when I asked him what he wanted me to do, he flippantly replied; "oh, just chuck it on anywhere."
"Wait out there while I dry it, I want it to be a surprise," he said, pushing me out the door and closing it loudly behind him.
I waited for around five minutes listening to the loud roar of the hairdryer before he opened the door, smiling shyly.
"How does it look?"
A lot of his longish hair was now a tealy green with hints of different shades of blue. As you got closer to his fringe, it turned darker into a purpley indigo colour. I though it looked like the ocean had been poured on his head, except the colour had stayed, and I made absolutely no sense because it looked really fucking good.
"You like it then." He smirked, but a pink flush crept up his neck.
I realised that my mouth was hanging open and I quickly closed it, nodding. "Yeah, it - I do." I managed.
"Thanks for this, Alec," he said, running a hand through his own personal ocean. "I think you're probably going to have to head home soon though, before my mum gets home and skewers you for my hair." He laughed.
***
"How did his-"
"His hair," I whispered, my hands tearing at my own hair, curls that he said turned golden in the sun. I could feel my eyes tearing up and I bowed my head. "His beautiful hair."
