“I’ll come build your bed,” Benson offers.
He usually ends up fixing whatever they’ve broken, since they tend to do a shitty job at fixing it themselves. Not that they can’t fix it, it’s just the fact they love to annoy me to the fullest extent.
I grin while leaning against him a little more. He always smells so good. “Thanks, but I’m going to make them do it. They broke it, after all.”
He narrows his eyes at me, and I mimic the motion. He rolls those eyes before looking back down at his plate, and I push my food aside as I finish eating.
“I notice I have a distinct lack of facial hair,” Liam says, eyeing the fifteen or so other men. Yes, it’s me, Aunt Penny, one baby-smooth skin Liam, and fifteen-ish beards.
“Get used to it,” I grumble. “I was fifteen when this started,” I add, gesturing to everyone, and once again tugging on Benson’s beard, ignoring the sting when he reaches back and pinches my side in punishment. “That was nine years ago.”
“When what started?” Liam asks curiously.
“The beards. All the fucking beards,” I groan. “It’s a town-wide challenge. The first one to cut their beard has to swim naked across the lake during the summer. That lake stays cold. Like really, really cold. Even in the summer.” I gesture around like I’m pointing to the current season we’re in. “So they all look like mountain men.”
Benson chuckles, and I roll my eyes.
“You all grew those for a challenge?” Liam asks, pointing at some of the hideous bushes they wear with pride.
“A true Tomahawk man never backs down from a licensed challenge,” my uncle says with an affirmative nod.
A few grunts follow that, also sounding affirmative.
I half expect the men around the table to start beating their chests like gorillas at any moment.
“Licensed challenge?”
No one answers that, because, well, Liam is an outsider, after all.
“They’d rather their faces look too similar to Sasquatch than worry about bothersome things such as ever getting laid again.”
“I get laid,” Tim pipes up.
“You’re married,” I deadpan. “And God bless your wife.”
They all chuckle.
“So I have to grow a beard?” Liam asks, his lips twitching.
“No. It doesn’t apply to anyone who comes in now. Not that it matters. Only one person comes to live here every ten years or so. But it seems like it doesn’t matter to the now corrupted young ones either. A guy hits puberty, and he joins in on the challenge, even though it’s years’ old.”
I glare at my uncle, the douche nozzle who instated the challenge and put it to a vote with the committee. He flashes a toothy grin at me through his beard.
“Did I mention I hate beards?” I add.
Benson bristles beside me.
“Your pretty, smooth face will be very much sought after,” I tell Liam.
Again, Benson bristles.
Liam smirks before shrugging. He’s cute, but neither of us is interested in the other, and there’s zero chemistry between us. I’m cool with that, even though it’s terribly tragic to pass up such a perfectly smooth face that would feel good to rub all over.
I burrow into Benson a little better as I try to pinpoint what’s not working for me with Liam.
My girly parts haven’t perked up and paid attention to him, so it’s their own fault they’re being deprived such a beautiful specimen.
“All the smart girls love beards,” Paul says across from us. We went to school together, yet he looks like he’s ten years older—because of the unkempt beard.
“Ha! Yeah. I’m sure that’s why all the single women—myself included—don’t touch the scraggly beards here. You guys don’t even trim them. You can barely see your eyes. It’s not enticing.”
“No trimming allowed,” my uncle goes on. “Not until someone loses.”
“To be fair,” Paul inserts, “no one thought the challenge would last this long. I was fifteen when it started. I’m twenty-four now.”
I look to Liam, while still leaning against Benson, who is now a little stiffer than usual. Maybe he’s mad about me insulting the beards.
Despite what they say, they’ve all gotten attached to the unruly wiry hair on their faces.
“I can remember my fifteen-year-old brothers standing in front of the mirror and willing their beards to grow. It was just patchy stubble for the first few years for them, but they were in it to win it.”
“So you’re telling me the women—”
“All twenty of us who aren’t married and under the age of fifty,” I butt in.
“—are so shallow as to not like us because of the beards?” Joey—a guy two years older than me—asks as he strokes that long, blond beard.
“We’re not shallow for expecting normal grooming habits,” I point out. “You can’t see anything but a lot of beard. We don’t even know what half of you look like.”
“That’s shallow,” Paul pipes in.
“No. It’s not. It’s not unreasonable to ask you to trim the damn thing. Would you want to touch a girl who had hairy legs she showed off with pride? Legs so hairy that you could hide popcorn in them?”