Chapter 3
JULIA
Drumstick purrs from my lap while I sip my orange juice, trying not to drown in the quiet of the house that my husband left before I woke up this morning.
Picking him up beneath his front legs, I lift the cat to press a smattering of kisses to his cheek.
He lets out an excited trill, making biscuits in the air with his paws.
The faint scent of baby shampoo clings to his skin to tell me that Tripp bathed him either last night or this morning before he left for his shop.
Drumstick dives off of my lap when the doorbell rings, trotting toward the front door.
Before we adopted him, I’d always thought that cats were afraid of everything – ‘scaredy-cat’ and all.
He’s the antithesis of that, though. On the rare occasion that we have company, Drumstick is the first to greet them – or to use his claws to try to steal the food off of their plate, especially when it’s a slice of pizza.
“There’s my favorite chunk of chicken,” Aislin coos as I open the door, reaching down to pat the cat’s rear end as he happily flicks his thin, wiry tail back and forth.
“You’re worse than his dad,” I laugh, slipping my purse over my shoulder.
With kisses blown to Drumstick, we step out of the house and onto the driveway where Aislin’s Mini Cooper is waiting for us. The exterior of it is pristine – a crisp, clean white which she keeps well polished and always glossy.
The interior is a better glimpse into the woman that I call my best friend.
Emptied cans for fruity-flavored energy drinks fill her cup holders, with a few others crushed and strewn across the back seat.
Several pairs of oversized sunglasses join them, none of which does she put on when we climb into the car.
I would bet all of the cash in my wallet that before she left her house, there were fast food bags somewhere on the floor of the car, but she decided to ‘clean it out’ before coming to pick me up.
And somehow still, in spite of her messiness, the woman can make a masterpiece for just about any person who sits in her chair.
We’re greeted by name as we step into the small and newly-renovated supply shop. Pushing a shopping cart in front of us, we walk through the aisles to restock the things that we need most in the salon, like conditioning treatments, dye brushes, and more bowls than I can possibly count.
It’s never busy in here, and today is no exception. The only other shopper seems to be another stylist who is pushing a cart of her own. A pudgy, smiling baby sits propped up in the seat, dressed in a long sleeved onesie covered in small sketches of elephants.
Big, brown eyes are complemented by a set of long lashes. A dusting of hair coats the top of his head, which wiggles side to side with his body as he brings a chubby hand to his face, sticking his fingers into his mouth to munch on them.
Scrunching up my nose, I use my index finger to wave at him, and the woman with him, who must be his mother – her eyes are the same tint of brown and they share the same nose – turns toward us with a smile.
“How old is he?” I ask her.
“Seven months.”
Her palm grazes the fine hairs at the top of his head, coming down to press a fingertip into his cheek to make him giggle. A warm smile spreads across her face as she looks adoringly at him and his mostly-toothless grin, save two small white nubs poking out at the bottom of his gums.
“He’s beautiful,” I smile.
“Thank you,” she tells me, beaming. “You two have a great afternoon.”
“Oh, you want one of those so bad,” Aislin teases, jabbing me in the side with her elbow as the woman strolls away from us.
“Yeah, can you imagine?” I chuckle against the weight burying itself in my chest. “With the cost of daycare anymore, instead of an apron, I’d be walking around the salon wearing a Babybjorn.”
A skeptical brow raises, her lips pursing as she reaches to the shelf in front of her, lined with an array of foil designs. Aislin opts for a leopard print design, while I reach for the same soft pink foils that I’ve always used.
While each of us shop, occasionally pulling our phones from our purses to record video clips to post to our social media pages, we gossip.
Maybe we shouldn’t, but a weekly debrief while we restock our supplies helps to keep the sanity after dealing with some of the clients that walk through our doors.
Most of our regulars are fine – they’d be fired as clients, otherwise. Of course, everyone has off days, and I’ve been snapped at on more than one occasion, but it’s the walk-ins that usually cause the most issue.
From trivial things like a young woman who came in earlier this week, crying her eyes out to me because I’d given her the layers that she’d asked for and now her hair isn’t one length when she ties it into a ponytail; to things that I think may haunt me for the rest of my life, like the little girl whose hair was so matted that I had no choice but to make a call to family services after she’d left.
I spent all day and well into the evening working the mats out of her hair with three other stylists, all the while, unable to understand how it had happened.
I learned to style my own hair by the time that I was seven years old, and I taught myself how to do it, like my mom told me to.
From then on, my hair was to be clean, brushed, and styled every day.
There’s still a small, faded scar beneath my left earlobe from a burn I’d given myself on the first attempt of using a curling iron.
My mother learned the same way that I did, and so did hers. Nothing else has ever made any sense to me.
“What, do you think it would be ugly?”
“What?”
My eyes snap to her, then down the aisle where the other woman’s voice carries as she coos to her baby.
“My hair?” Aislin says, waving a box of vivid dye in my eye line. “Green peek-a-boos? Too early two-thousands?”
“No. That’s— it would be cute on you,” I tell her with a smile.
“You need a vacation,” she laughs, tossing the box into our cart before reaching forward to lovingly pat my cheek. “It’s been what, like, two years since you took a day off? Girl, take a week. I can hold it down at the salon.”
My heart slows in my chest, and my veins fill with lead as Aislin pulls up her long hair to ball it on the top of her head and secure it into place with the scrunchie wrapped around her wrist.
“Come on,” I say, gripping onto the cart’s handle, “we’ve done enough damage, let’s get out of here.”
My senses fill with the rich aroma of a delicious array of spices as a plate of stuffed chicken is set in front of me, accompanied by a fresh green salad.
“This smells amazing, Lovey,” I tell my husband with a smile.
“B would lose his shit if he knew I air fried it,” he chuckles.
My fork pushes at the greens on my plate while he steps back into the kitchen to put together his own meal. He’s always served my food to me first, even when we’ve only shared fast food meals in the car, and even in the middle of us not speaking to one another.
I’d asked him early into our relationship why he does it, and he explained to me that his mother always served his father’s meals before her own as a sign of respect to him. It’s a small gesture, one that I’m not sure he thinks very much of, but it means a lot to me.
“Are you gonna sit?” I ask him as he finishes plating his meal.
He surveys his options; either sitting with me or in front of the television like he does most nights, while I normally take a plate up to our bedroom.
With an affirmative bob of his chin, he seems to make a decision, pulling out the chair in front of him and resting his plate onto the table. As he takes his seat across from me, he pulls his napkin into his lap, hesitating for a moment before smoothing it out.
“Did you have any fun clients today?” He pulls in a breath as I ask, letting the tip of his tongue wet his lower lip. “I’m not asking about money. I just want to know about your day.”
I guess I can’t blame him for assuming. I have been on him so much lately about our finances. There’s an irony somewhere in there that etches an uncomfortable sting into my chest.
Cargill women aren’t taught how to manage money; that’s the responsibility of our husbands. When Tripp and I first started dating, I didn’t even know how to check the available balance on my credit card or how to pull cash from an ATM. He had to teach me how to do all of those things.
And now, I nag him about money all of the time.
Maybe it’s more than just nagging to him. Maybe he sees it as an insinuation that he’s failing. I know he feels that on quiet days in his shop, and there’s a part of me that knows that I make it worse when I bother him about our accounts.
“Yeah,” he says with an exhale, unlocking the screen of his phone on top of the table. “Some girl came in wanting her sternum blasted and she told me to do whatever I wanted with it.”
Sliding his phone to me, a picture of the tattoo in question fills the screen. A large image of a coyote’s skull covers her chest, webbing leading down into the space between her breasts, her nipples covered by flesh-toned pasties.
My veins fill with lead again as I click off the power to the screen and hand the cell phone back to him.
“You did a really good job,” I tell him.
“You hardly looked at it.”
I saw enough, I think, with the back of my jaw tensing.
“You’re not getting what you need here,” I say, poking at my salad with my fork, “and these beautiful women are coming into your shop and taking their clothes off for you.”
“I can’t tattoo skin I can’t get to,” he tells me. “I’m not looking at them, I’m just working. The only thing I’m looking at is their skin.”
Pushing the food around my plate, I keep my gaze on the table. My teeth chew at the inside of my cheek as my skin heats, and my leg bounces against my chair.