Due to some work issues and my shifts next week, I am posting early. Happy Easter y'all xx
Chapter Two – Bronzed
Abigail stepped out, one bronzed foot at a time. She took a moment to catch her breath. That was one of the most satisfying showers she's had in a while, "what a rush!" she thought. She grabbed the towel from the radiator and tiptoed over to the centre of the room to dry herself off. Kenton knocked. "Come in!" she says in a sweet tone.
Kenton opens the door halfway and pokes his head inside, he sees that she's bent over, with her back to him, naked, drying her legs with the towel. He whips his head back out of the room, "oh jeez, sorry!"
"No, it's okay."
"That's weird, she usually hates it when I walk in on her half-dressed", Kenton thought. He stays behind the door. "How did you get on?"
"Fine darling, a lovely refreshing shower."
Kenton is puzzled by her calm nature, it's like she's forgotten why she went in. "How are you feeling?"
"Good- will you just come in, stop hiding behind the door!"
He slowly opens the door and sheepishly walks in, refusing to make eye contact. "Well, whadya think?" She stands with one leg bent, pushing her hip out to the side, her arm stretched out with the towel in hand. Giving Kenton a full view of her Brazilian... wait why is she shaved, he thought.
He points, "you shaved?"
"Well, of course, I just had a shower, silly. I always shave in the shower!"
Kenton knew that wasn't true, she did usually trim her bikini line, but she never shaved everything off. Sometimes she didn’t even bother to trim her bikini line and he'd often make jokes, saying that he was gonna be marrying Chewbacca.
"And your tan!" Abigail turned and looked in the mirror admiring her deep caramel skin. "I know! We need to get another holiday booked ASAP or this is gonna fade even more."
"No …. It’s gotten darker!" exclaimed Kenton.
"Really?” She examines her colour in the mirror. Running her hands over her arms and lifting up her leg on the side of the bath, running her fingers down the smooth tanned legs, examining that this is an all over tan, she had no bikini lines.
“To be honest I thought it had got a bit orangey, but that’s because I keep having to top it up” she gestured over to the fake tan bottles that now were atop the bathroom cabinet.
“Kenton, babe, can we book a week in Ibiza for a top up? Please!”
He ignores her request.
"No, stop, it’s definitely darker since you stepped in that shower and weirdly your hair looks a bit longer.”
She shakes her head, "Nah, I've been much much darker than this. Remember that field trip to Mauritius last year, most of the grad students thought I was a local, some of the locals thought I was local", Abigail giggles at the thought. "So yeah, I’ve been darker, hun", she says with a condescending tone.
https://imgur.com/a/S3sJUkD"Hun? She never calls me that." Kenton thought. "But you burned on that trip, I distinctly remember helping you apply that cream for weeks!" Abigail searches her mind but any memories of getting burned have disappeared. She shook her head.
"Nope, never happened, must have been another girl."
She then walked over to him and grabbed him by the shoulders, smiling at him, she starts to push him backwards out of the room. "Now go and get the wine ready, I want a cuddle when I'm done. Shoo, shoo!" Kenton gets a closer look at her; the tan has covered all the familiar blemishes she had. Her skin was now flawless, every mole, every imperfection had been washed away. Her skin was smooth and was now so dark she could easily be of Italian or Spanish origin and maybe even as far as Caribbean, so deep was her skin tone.
As he looked at her caramel hands on his shoulders, he swore he could see the mud under her short nails disappear before they started to grow a touch longer with perfectly rounded edges, still natural, but looking like the result of manicure.
She finally gets him out of the room and closes the door behind him. He hears music start to play, sounds like the Spotify urban dance charts but Abigail isn't usually into that. Somehow the music choice just seems to reinforce the strong mixed-race vibe that Abigail was exuding,
He starts walking to the couch, dazed and confused. "What is going on?! Ten minutes ago, she was freaking out about a patch of dark skin and now she's fine with a tan that’s so deep she doesn’t look totally white anymore. I swear her hairs got longer too. I need to sit down." He collapses onto the couch much like Abigail did earlier. "Am I hallucinating or something, is this some batshit dream, she doesn't have a tan, does she? And her nails, what's the deal with them? God, I gotta stop watching reality tv at night. I’ll sleep well tonight, and everything will be back to normal, I hope"
***Meanwhile, Abigail has finished drying her body, has put her nightie back on and is now drying her hair in the mirror. "What is up with Kenton, he looked so confused, like, what's wrong with my tan?"
She grabs her brush and starts combing it through her hair, as she brushes it, it seemed to lengthen even more and begins to straighten, with the loose curl that she’d had since childhood starting to drop out. She hesitated, is this real, is it happening?
She brushed it again and a few more times. With every brush, more of the natural curl dropped out and the sides lengthened. The chin length cut gave way to long grown out bob flicking under her chin and brushing onto her shoulders, whilst after a few more brushes it finally reached down to her chest. In all it was about 8 or 9 inches longer than it had been, just an hour before. “This is crazy, what’s happening to me?” she called for Kenton, but he doesn’t hear. He took his opportunity and put the football on in the background while examining the bottle.
“Oh, damn it, I will dry it and then talk to him about what’s going on.”
She picked up her drier and turned it on.
She leant forward letting her now long hair hang loose in front of her face to make it easier to get the brush through as she heated it. The brush swept through her hair at the front and as it did, two subtle blonde streaks formed at the front on either side of her parting. They stood in stark contrast to the rest of her hair. The more she heated it, the less subtle the streaks looked, until they appeared artificial and bleached out.
She straightened up and looked in the mirror, parting her hair with her fingers, her face was now framed by the two peroxided streaks that are about an inch wide and ran the entire length of the front of her hair. She ran her fingers over her brows which were now perfectly shaped and trimmed.
“Shit, I look like an e-girl” and then so out of character, she smiled to herself at the thought of looking like one those fashionable first years she kept seeing around the Campus.
https://imgur.com/a/z9KQkvAShe felt a tingling wave of pleasure rise up inside her body, she dropped the hairdryer which clattered to the floor and she slouched forward, hands clasping the edge of the shelf in front of the mirror, she threw back her head and closed her eyes and moaned. “Oh yes!” , she rubbed herself under the robe, loving how smooth she was and feeling the power of her sexuality as it changed her memories.
Memories of mentoring her first-year tutor group flooded her brain, but she was no longer the stuffy and perpetually serious academic sat behind her desk stressing to her tutor group the importance of studying. She could now see herself sitting cross legged amongst the students, laughing, joking. She wasn’t the odd one out in the group anymore, in these new memories she was wearing Doc Martens or Converses and ripped jeans. Then came visions of standing in the student bar with them. Memories of being trendy, of wanting to look edgy, of loving attention, tore through her previous conservative attitudes, her shyness and self consciousness faded replaced by a social confidence and awareness of how she looked good.
Her eyes opened and she stared at her reflection.
She saw what she now perceived as her familiar tanned face and her edgy home dye two tone blonde/brunette hair reflected back at her.
She looks like a typical trendy student, indistinguishable from all the rest of her tutor group or any of the other fashionable students on campus. “Looking fly, Abigail!”
She glances at her neat manicured hands and realises that she can’t find her engagement ring.”Fuuuuuuuck” she mouthed to her self. She knelt down and started scrabbling around on the floor.
As she does so, she fails to notice that the remainder of her hair is slowly losing its natural brunette colour taking on the same bleached look as the two streaks. The bleach works its way from the two streaks filling out more and more of her hair, moving around the sides past her ears and to the back. When the 2 waves of peroxide get to the rear of her head they stop before the finally meet, leaving a brown clump of hair about 3 inches thick at the back of her head. As a style it is almost a homage to Debbie Harry in her 1970’s punk prime.
It’s a typical student bathroom dye job and the evidence of bleach and half empty toning kits and numerous hair dye colour packs are all around the hand basin of her bathroom. Its colour is yellowing and comes complete with long dark roots, which as well as being part of the look but also reflect the fact that her focus is still mostly on her studies and not in having perfect hair.
It’s both a statement of rebellion but also tells everyone in the department that Abigail Williams doesn’t mind attention and is going to be a very different type of professor.
After a good 10 minutes scrabbling of the floor there is no sign of the ring, and she stands up and again looks again at her reflection in the bathroom mirror.
She ran her fingers through her bleached hair, which is now all the same colour of blonde. All her recent memories of having two streaks have faded and been replaced by a lifelong love of peroxide.
She now sports a dark brown root line that must be about an inch long. She examines it with her fingers, “Abigail sometimes you get so wrapped in in geophysics that you forget to do your roots, you need to get that sorted soon”
She tried to move the parting with her fingers to disguise the regrowth but failed and it only ended up making her look messier. In the end she just decided to shake her head and then threw it back. Letting her mass of blonde hair fall where it wants to.
Looking around for her glasses that she thought she’d left beside the basin, she saw only her contacts and proceeded to pop them in, all memories of preferring her glasses faded from her mind.
She gave herself a final check in the bathroom mirror, definitely now looking less like a prospective professor and more like a middle-class undergraduate with a thrown together vibe, tanned and with scruffy, roughly cut, bleached out hair.
Kenton heard Abigail come into the living room.
He called out and raises his head towards her, “I looked up the website on the bottle but- oh my god, you’re blonde!”
https://imgur.com/a/EDb0yKLHe closed his eyes and shook his head, “Did I just fall asleep there?” he said under his breath.
Her hair is now tied up in a messy bun and her nightie now sports the Chelsea logo on the front. She bounds over to him and sits down next to him cross legged, “you’re watching the match without me? I can’t believe it, and I’ve got my lucky nightie on as well” . She gave him one of her, I can’t believe you would do this looks.
He looked her up and down, she’s like a whole new person. Curled up on the couch, an air of confidence around her that he hadn’t seen before, at least when she wasn’t working or playing hockey. And where did that nightie come from, was it meant as a surprise for him? He thought she hated football. Now she looked like she had been a fan all her life.
“Babe, did you get the beer?” She quizzed.
“Wine you said, but Erm, no, I forgot.”
“Typical” she rolls her eyes at him, “doesn’t matter now anyway, But, doh it’s beer with the footie, always! .” She got up off the couch and made her way to the kitchen.
“Drink beer? You, beer?”
“What, like you’ve never seen me drink it before?
She walked the short distance to the fridge shaking her head in disbelief and smiling to herself at her boyfriend’s silly pronouncements.
Kenton tried to think back to any times he might have seen her drink it, but no, she was always more of a wine girl, maybe a cocktail on the odd occasion, but that was very rare.
She pulled two bottles out from the six pack and placed them on the counter, she pulled open the drawer and got the bottle opener and with two flicks of the wrist she took off the caps, expertly, as if she had worked in a bar before. She then used her hip to close the drawer as she made her way back to the couch.
Abigail handed Kenton a beer, “is Ramirez playing tonight, I love him.”
“Yeah, they’ve put him on the left tonight- since when do you watch football?”
“What are you talking about, I watch it with you all the time, my dad took me to games when I was little, remember?”
“No, I don’t.
She swigged a mouthful from the beer bottle and then gestured with it over his shoulder, “Trophy Cabinet” she said, before smiling and going back to watch the game.
Kenton turned round and looked at the shelves and bookcase, something looked different and that made him get up from the couch and go over and look. The books were all there as normal, but they were now joined by books about football and footballers’ biographies as well as old programmes from Chelsea matches at Stamford Bridge. In the corner leaning against the shelves was a single hockey stick and some battered old pads. There were other subtle changes from what he recalled was in display before. His eyes scanned the objects in front of him.
• Her framed acceptance letter to study her Masters at UCL.
• Her 1st Class Degree from Oxford University.
• Her graduation and A kevel certificates from Marlborough.
• Her Wiltshire County Hockey trophies.
• A photo of her and Kenton inside Stamford Bridge from 2019, both in their replica kits looking excited, a bit drunk, and holding a couple of plastic beer glasses up to the camera. Her hair was in a short cropped style and run through with subtle blonde highlights.
• A photo of her and her dad outside Swindon town FC, marked 2008-9 season, she must have been about 10 and looked like it was the best day of her life.
• A photo of her taken in 2012, she’s in Marlborough town shops with a group of her 6 best school friends, three of them including Abigail are making subtle attempts to conceal lit cigarettes that they have in their hands. One of them has a small bottle of vodka.
• A photo of her in action with the Oxford Uni Hockey 2nd 11 team.
• A poolside photo of their 2020 holiday to Menorca. Abigail is laying out in the strong Mediterranean sun, in a tiny neon yellow bikini, chosen to highlight the depth of her bronzed tan, she’s reading the Journal of World Geology.
• A photo of her returning from her first research field trip to Mauritius in 2021, standing in her Doc Marten boots at Gatwick with her rucksack, deep caramel tan, looking elated and wearing a very tight “Oxford Geologists Rock” T shirt, under a well worn leather biker jacket. Her jeans are tight and have cut frayed out knees. Her hair is a mass of unkempt dark brown, almost black, curls with two blonde streaks at the front framing her bronzed face. She is so dark you could no longer be sure of her ethnicity.
• A photo of her and some girlfriends in the bar of a hockey club somewhere, she looked about 18 or 19, she had a beer and cigarette in hand. Her hair was brown but cropped short, you could clearly make out a tragus and double lobe piercing in her ears.
“What the hell” he said under his breath. He turned and looked down at Abigail and there under the strands of bleached hair falling out of her messy bun were the same piercings. And why did he never realise she smoked before they got to together. He was about to say something when he spotted another difference that stopped him dead in his tracks. Where the Chelsea team print has been on the wall just an hour or so ago was a signed Chelsea shirt from Reece Michaels, He got closer. There was a dedication on it, “sorry we couldn’t make the final Kenton , love your Chelsea Girl xx”
Shit, how much did that cost and I bet that won’t be there when I wake up from this dream, he thought to himself. A wry smile crossed his face.
He turned back and sat back on the couch with Abigail who was still sitting legs folded to the side and fully engrossed in the game. She gave his upper thigh a gentle squeeze as he sat down.
“The ref needs taking out and given a good talking too, that was definitely wasn’t off side, get VAR checked “ she screamed pointing at the screen.
And are we gonna address your hair?” Said Kenton, trying to tackle this evenings weird events again.
“I know, I know, it needs some work, think I’m gonna book an appointment tomorrow get it done professionally for once. Speaking of, maybe we should get you booked in too, it’s getting a little shaggy.” She rubs his hair, messing it up.
“I thought you liked my hair?”
She moves his hair behind his ears with her finger. “I do but maybe I’d like it a little more with it cut in at the sides., like shaved in with a really tight high fade to your skin above the ears and then go a lot longer on the top”. She ran her fingers through his hair and lowering her voice softly said “much longer” she winked at him.
“What... like Grealish?”
“Ooo yeah, that’s a good idea...” She bites her lip, “...like Grealish.”
“It’s a dream, it’s a dream”, he kept repeating inside his head.
They both settled back down to watch the game next to each other but were no longer intertwined.
Abigail finished her beer and tapping her fingers on her bronzed thigh spotted the tobacco pouch and papers at her end of the coffee table. The same ones that had been there since she came in from College. She leaned forward to grab them. Before Kenton had noticed, she’d rolled two thin cigarettes, found a lighter, well actually her lighter, down the side of the sofa, lit hers and taken a deep drag. She passed the second roll-up to Kenton along with her lighter. “Smoke babe?”, he took it without even looking or thinking and lit it. He shook his head and rapidly came to his senses, turning to look at Abigail who was just then exhaling through her nose. He just stared at her as she raised her left hand to her mouth and took another deep long drag. I’m not even going there he thought. She kicked her head back and exhaled through the side of her mouth. The final whistle blew.
“Fucking good result, wasn’t it? “She said to him, as she took another drag.
Completely confused and distracted and before he could mention the fact his fiancé was now a smoker, he looked again at her hand, “wait, where’s your ring?”
She drew her hand back and pulled a grimace, “I think I lost it.”
“How?!”
“I don’t know... I had my shower, went to do my hair and it was gone. Babe, please don’t be mad.”
“I’m not, just- where did you last see it?”
“Oh, baby, I can’t remember.” She was getting a little frustrated that he kept going on about it, she hated it when he would panic. She took a final deep inhale and stubbed her cigarette out in the ashtray.
“Babe, look at me, why don’t I make it up to you?” She uncurled her legs and moved closer to him and almost crawled on top of him, landing a massive deep kiss on his lips. She tasted of beer, cigarettes and radiated sexual energy , he pulled at her neck and brought her in tight, responding to her kiss. She hitched up her nightie and grabbing his hand placed it between her legs. He felt her, she was wet, he started to get hard. He didn’t want the dream to end.
Chapter 3:Dreamland? Is out now.