Chapter 7

“She’s gone!”

“Yeah I know she’s gone,” Danny replied with a grin. He loved getting one over on his girlfriend. “I just had her go out and get some milk. I wanted her to experience being bald in public. She’ll be back in a few minutes. The gas station really is just down the street, you know.”

“So you had her write this note to mess with me?” Felicity slumped in obvious relief, the paper she held falling onto a nearby table. “That’s kinda cruel,” she added with a smile.

Danny just about dislocated his neck, turning it so quickly. “Note?” He asked, hoping he’d misheard.

Felicity tensed again. “You didn’t put her up to this?” She asked quickly, her burgeoning smile gone.

Danny was on his feet and had the note in hand as if by magic. He read it. He read it again. All it said was, ‘I can’t do this. Felicity will hate me. Cum Dump’, then the name had been crossed out with a single line and replaced with, ‘Diane’.

“Fuck!” Danny growled. “I knew we were going too far. Damn,” he said as he slumped back into his seat.

“Why the fuck do I listen to you all the time?” He accused Felicity, but as soon as he said it, felt guilty and apologized.

“She said I’d hate her. How could I hate her? Anything that makes you happy, makes me happy too,” Felicity said in confusion, ignoring Danny’s accusation and almost ignoring his apology. “I’m really sorry, Danny. It wasn’t supposed to be like this.”

“What are we going to do?” Danny asked, more to himself than Felicity.

“You could go see her?” Felicity suggested.

“I ... I mean we ... said that if she left that’d be it. She’s made her decision.”

“It’s all my fault,” Felicity insisted. “She said I’d hate her but I wouldn’t! What was she thinking?”

Felicity slumped into the couch opposite Danny.

Diane sat in her car, running her hands over her bald head, crying. She wasn’t crying for the loss of her hair. She was crying about what Mr. Meyers had said before he’d asked her to go get milk and as she replayed the events her crying worsened.

“I’m sorry about what we did to your lovely hair, Diane,” Danny had said when it was just the two of them alone. “I don’t know what got into me. I think Felicity gets a little crazy sometimes and she just drags me into her world. I promise I’ll make it up to you. I’ll ... I’ll get you a wig or something, okay? I’ll definitely make Felicity sorry she talked me into this.”

“It’s really okay, Mr Meyers. I knew I should have refused. It’s my fault,” she replied, knowing inside that she would never refuse a request from either of them. She’d enjoyed being bald for ma’am and Mr Meyers until he’d apologized. Now she felt ugly AND stupid for agreeing to have her head shaved. To top it off, Mr Meyers had now said he’d do something to ma’am. Being ugly was okay with her, but causing something bad to happen to ma’am was more than she could handle.

“You know, you really do look good, Diane. Your eyes look absolutely stunning. I bet if you went out in public all dressed up, you’d make guys drool.” Danny tried to convince Diane that others would feel the same way he did when he looked at her.

Diane had pasted a smile on her face. It was easy to do. She’d been doing it for years, especially after Beth had recently finished with her and her dad happened to ask how she was doing. Her thoughts went to her bitch of a sister. Why did she have to be like she is? Why couldn’t she be a good sister instead of being so evil? Why couldn’t she be more like ma’am?

Danny saw her smile and knew everything was okay. She just looked so beautiful when she smiled. He was glad he’d said something. Maybe it was a good idea to set her loose in public so she could see for herself what others thought of her new look? Maybe he could ask her to get something out of his truck, but what? Hell, going to the truck even in daylight would probably be a wasted trip. There weren’t many people in the secluded neighborhood anyway. It’s why he’d been okay with her getting his purchases out of her truck while naked.

“Diane, would you like to do me a favor and go get some milk from the gas station?” He asked, proud of his inspiration.

Diane, still smiling, asked if he wanted her to go there naked. After getting over his surprise, he suggested she could wear her own clothes or have a look for something in Felicity’s closet. Shaking his head in disbelief at her question, Danny left her alone. Diane went straight to Felicity’s closet to find something she’d fit into. Something of ma’am’s that she could wear.

It was as she was on the way back from the gas station that she fell apart completely. The actual trip and interaction with the guy at the gas station had been anticlimactic. He’d hardly even looked at her as she paid for the milk. What she didn’t know was that he’d been watching her intently from the moment he’d seen her and felt sorry for her, thinking she was going through chemotherapy, wondering why cancer seemed to always hit the pretty girls. He’d just been too shy to make eye contact.

With the thought that she was now even plainer than she’d been with her mane of red hair, Diane left the gas station. Her thoughts turned to what Mr Meyers had said about making Felicity sorry for what she’d done.

Diane was becoming more and more agitated about thoughts of Felicity being punished and then hating the bald lollipop girl for it. She just knew Felicity would hold her responsible for whatever Mr Meyers did to her. She’d rather leave the two of them to each other and step aside than be the reason for Felicity being punished and hating her. She just didn’t know whether she could bail on the pair. She was at the house with the milk again before she knew it.

Diane had sat in her car thinking. Thinking how worthless she was, thinking how much Felicity would hate her. Thinking about how much trouble she’d already caused the pair and becoming more and more depressed by the moment. Eventually she knew what she had to do. It was either leave or let Felicity hate her, which simply wasn’t an option.

She had slipped back into the house, put the milk in the fridge, went to Felicity’s closet and with a huge amount of regret, returned Felicity’s tee shirt and shorts to the laundry hamper, taking a moment to savor the scent of the older woman, before finding her own clothes and dressing again.

The note she left before slipping outside unseen once more, simply asked Mr Meyers not to punish Felicity and make the Amazon hate the worthless librarian. Unfortunately, in her emotional state, the meaning of the message got screwed up because of a few missed key ingredients.

“Did you say anything to Diane before she left for milk?” Danny asked Felicity.

“I didn’t even know she was gone! Did you? Say anything, that is.”

Danny got a little flushed as he replayed the conversation he’d had with Diane over in his head, which told Felicity he had indeed said something.

“What did you tell her?” Felicity demanded, a little too loudly.

“I told her how good she looked,” Danny admitted.

“And what else? Come on, spill it big boy.” Felicity insisted.

“I ummm. Well I kinda apologized to her for letting you cut her hair off and I promised I’d make it right.”

“DANNY! What the fuck! So you apologized for doing something you wanted to do, even though the whole idea was to do anything you wanted to do? You must have confused the fuck out of the poor girl. But why would she think I’d hate her? If she thought I’d hate her for leaving, why didn’t she tell me to my face before she did it? Do you think I’m such an ogre I wouldn’t talk to her about it? Shit. Fuck! I’m gonna call her. She’s probably all messed up right now.”

Diane’s phone began to tinkle in her purse. She ignored it. Eventually it stopped, yet moments later, it began merrily tinkling again. Diane couldn’t ignore it a second time. She just didn’t have it in her to ignore a caller, whoever it was. Sniffing and trying desperately to get herself under control again, she simultaneously reached into her purse to find the source of the distraction. Her eyes couldn’t focus but they didn’t need to, in order for her to slide the bar across and connect the caller.

Diane never even got a chance to get the phone all the way to her ear. Felicity’s distraught voice was already yelling at her, asking where she was and trying to tell her how worried they both were.

“I’m sooo sorry ma’am,” were Diane’s first words even as Felicity cut her off by telling her everything would be all right.