Chapter Twelve
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What’s that? Almond’s tiles need replacing? How foreshadowy.
Leora
My roots are showing. Not just a little, either. Inches of my roots are showing, dim blonde peeking out above fading purple—a far cry from the pretty, vivid violet I like to keep the locks, and it’s making me itch.
“I did tell you that you needed a six week appointment, not an eight week,” Almond says, flicking a long, black plastic cape out beside her.
She shifts, gliding the cape gently over my body before securing it around my neck.
“You come in here every eight weeks to gripe about your regrowth, and every eight weeks I tell you to go to six weeks. And do you? No. You do not. Instead, at six weeks, we have a book club, and during that book club, I have to harass you into making an appointment on my booking site because you’re walking around with nearly an inch of blonde sticking out of your head.
And I know that you know that it doesn’t look good.
Everyone knows that it doesn’t look good, and everyone knows that I do your hair, and everyone thinks that I purposefully let you walk around like that! ”
I pull my lips between my teeth and try to look contrite in the mirror when my pink-haired friend pauses to shake her head at me. She doesn’t have roots showing. She has never had roots showing. I’m not even sure what her natural hair color is.
“I’m sorry,” I say, truly meaning it. It’s not like I try to go so long. I just don’t think about it until the blonde is practically slapping me in the face—until it’s the only thing I can think about.
“Don’t be sorry,” she orders, pointing a rattail comb at my reflection. “Be booked.”
I nod, the exact same way I have every other time I’ve received the exact same order.
Almond sighs, the exact same way she has every other time she’s given it.
“You’re not going to book an appointment in a timely manner, are you?”
I grimace and answer truthfully, “Probably not.” I’d certainly like to be a person who schedules her hair appointments for when she needs them, but I know myself too well to commit to it, and Almond knows me too well to push any harder.
She’s ranted. She’s raved. And now she’ll put her hands in my hair and do her magic, regardless of how much magic it needs. It’s what she does.
“You want the same purple?” she asks, even though I always want the same purple.
I’ve been dying my hair this shade since we settled on it last year after months of trialing darker and lighter options.
I haven’t strayed since we landed here, at the shade that sits best next to my pale complexion and jewel-green eyes.
She runs her hands through my shoulder-length strands as I confirm that yes, I want the same color.
When she reaches the bottom of my hair, she pinches a lock between her fingers to examine the ends.
She hums. “You may not be good about dye upkeep, but I can’t fault your overall care.
No split ends, and your hair is really soft.
Have you been using that deep conditioner you bought last time? ”
I perk up. “Yes!” I nod enthusiastically, the high praise of a hair girl going straight to my head. Sure, my roots are horrendous. But she said my hair is soft, and I don’t have split ends, even though it’s been two whole months since my last hair cut.
“Very good.” She punctuates her approval with a squint as she appears to x-ray my hair follicles with naught but her eyes. “Bangs again?” she asks. “And the same length as last time?”
“Everything the same,” I confirm. “Unless you think something different would be better, in which case nothing the same.” Almond is a genius with hair.
I love the purple, and the bangs, and the just-above-shoulder length.
But if she told me to shave it all off and dye my scalp lime green, I’d do it in a heartbeat.
When it comes to hair, no one knows better than Almond—not even the person the hair belongs to.
Almond agrees that continuing the vision she’s already curated for me is best, and she gets to work mixing my color. Then, casually—slyly—she says, “It’s a good thing you came in today. I think I’d die a professional death if you went on your date tonight with that hair.”
My green eyes widen in the mirror, and my dark, thick lashes almost touch my eyebrows.
A smirk teases Almond’s lips before she can hide it.
She turns her back to me to set her bowl on a scale at the cabinet-turned-workspace behind me.
She squirts a few mystery liquid-ish substances in the bowl, then stirs vigorously until the mixture turns a shade of pink that never fails to make me nervous, no matter how many times it changes to purple on my head.
“It’s not a date,” I dispute. “Don’t be silly.”
She faces me once more, eyebrows raised. “It’s definitely a date,” she says. “What else would meeting a man at a bar be?”
“There are a million things meeting a man at a bar could be,” I inform her. “And nearly all of them have nothing to do with romance.”
She waves that away. “Oh, sure, but those meetings don’t support my current point, so they don’t matter.” She grins. “Your meeting is a date! You’re doing the friends-to-lovers, just like I said!”
My nose scrunches. “It’s not a date,” I repeat.
“It’s nothing like a date at all. It’s more of a…
” I consider, tilting my head. My hair shifts as I do, drawing Almond’s attention and spurring her to grab her bowl and get to work.
Gently, she tips my head straight and starts applying the pink concoction to my roots.
“More of a what?” she asks.
I shrug, careful not to jostle my head too much with the movement. “A chance meeting,” I decide.
She snorts. “Right. A chance meeting. That you arranged via clandestine means. With a man that you find attractive. At a bar. During prime date night hours.”
I roll my eyes. “I didn’t arrange anything.
I wrote a letter to my pen pal, apprising them of my weekend plans.
What he chooses to do with that information is completely up to him.
Completely, one hundred percent up to him.
Nothing to do with me at all, the choices of that man.
He will do only what he wants to do—and is brave enough to follow through on. ”
Judging by his last letter, a reply to mine, he does at least intend to be brave tonight.
It wasn’t a promise, like when he vowed we would never lose the letters no matter how our relationship grows outside of them, but he indicated quite clearly that he plans to see me tonight.
He even wrote the words I will see you at the bar on Friday right there on the page and everything.
I’d hardly call that a clandestine date planning so much as a casual mention that he will be where I am at the same time as me as a part of his weekend plans.
“Uh huh,” Almond says dubiously. “You know I can see you, right? With my eyes? Your hair might be a mess—for now—but your makeup is flawless, and your outfit looks like something out of the crystal girlie version of Vogue. Once your hair is fixed, you’re going to be the hottest I’ve ever seen you, including that time we had that ball-themed book club meeting where we all dressed up like fairy princesses. ”
I shrug, nonchalant. “I always look good.”
“You do always look good,” she agrees. “You do not always look this good.”
She works her way around my head, glopping cold pink goo all over.
“It’s not a date,” I insist. “I’m not even convinced he’s actually going to show up.
There’s at least a seventy-five percent chance he loses his nerve and I end up drinking alone.
” She opens her mouth to protest the possibility, so I continue quickly, “Which would be fine. I’m excited to experience the bar whether Wolfe shows up or not.
I’ve lived here for years and haven’t ever been to the local watering hole.
It’s going to be cool to check it out. Do I hope that Wolfe will be a part of that experience?
Yes. Absolutely. He’s my friend, and I want to see what our friendship will be like outside of our mailboxes.
But I’m also not going to be crushed if he doesn’t come.
I’m dressed up for the experience, not the man—who, again, is my friend. Nothing to anything about it.”
The lady doth protest too much, and her nose doth grow longer and longer.
I press my lips together to stop my ramble.
Almond, possessing a brain and a base amount of knowledge on me, her friend of multiple years, coughs to not-so-subtly cover her “LIAR.”
I groan and try another tactic. “What if I said I don’t want to talk about it?”
She laughs. “Then I’d say I don’t believe you, because if there’s one thing you like to do, it’s talk.”
“I don’t like to talk,” I counter. “I simply… do a lot of it. Involuntarily.”
“Why don’t you do some of it now?” she asks. “Voluntary or otherwise, I don’t really care.”
“I’ve noticed,” I huff. “I’m still upset with you, by the way.”
She blinks, hands pausing above my head. “Upset?” she asks. “With little ole me? What a silly thing to be at this particular moment, when you are oh-so-vulnerable. Do you want your hair to tinge green?”
My eyes roll. “As if you would ever compromise your work for the sake of humbling me. You have too much professional pride for that.”
She sniffs as she turns to set her color bowl down. She lifts a pink, mushroom-shaped egg timer and sets it to thirty minutes. “You’re right, but it’s rude to point out the hollowness of my threat.”
“You know what else is rude?” I retort. “Kidnapping people.”
“Then it’s a good thing I didn’t kidnap anyone!
” She grins. “Besides, how was I supposed to know you wouldn’t appreciate it?
You’re all about the kidnappings at book club.
You turn into a puddle every time we get one.
I was helping make your dreams come true!
And you can’t exactly argue with the results, can you?
Considering you’re getting all dolled up for your friends-to-lovers, kidnapping-turned-romance date? ”
“It’s not a date,” I say. Again.
She hums. “This reminds me, do you want the photos and videos I took from the kidnapping? Or do you want to wait and see them in your wedding slideshow?”
I close my eyes and shake my head, dismayed. “You already know my answer.”
She giggles, a sound composed of mania and glee, then she sits on a saddle-back rolling chair, fluffs her pink gingham dress—covered by a clear plastic apron—out around her, and pushes off.
She slides across the tile floors, which take the abuse with some complaint.
The tiles are older, and several have chips that turn into cracks when her wheels pass over them.
She collides with the door to her hair studio as a method of stopping and reaches up to grab her pink fairy wing purse from a hook on the wall.
From it, she unearths her phone and navigates through the device as she shoots back toward me in the chair.
I brace myself with no small amount of alarm, but her return landing is much smoother than her previous one, and she comes to a slow stop beside me, aided by her dragging feet.
“Here we go!” she says, tilting her screen to me. “You guys look so freaking cute.”
I whimper when what she’s showing me fully registers on the wings of her words. “Almond, that’s my butt.”
And it is. My derriere, less than six inches from Wolfe Blackwood’s face. It would be even closer if he weren’t gentlemanly tipping his head away and stoutly avoiding me.
“My stars,” I whisper, mortified. “It did not feel that scandalous when it was happening.”
“You were probably too distracted to notice the scandal,” Almond comments. “Abductions tend to do that to people. I think it’s part of the flight, fight, or fawn spectrum. You only notice what you have to notice.”
“Please tell me this is the only photo of… this,” I plead. “And that we can delete it right now?”
Almond removes her phone from my reach, even though my hands are fully under my cape, so I couldn’t make a quick grab at it if I wanted to.
Which I do.
Quite vehemently.
I want to grab, and delete, and scour to make sure there is no other photographic evidence of my bottom and Wolfe’s face being in such proximity.
“We aren’t deleting the evidence of your love story’s inciting incident,” Almond gasps, appalled. “And if you’re going to respond like this to all of them, I’m not showing you any more.”
Stars, there’s more. “I don’t want to see any more,” I assure her. “I want only for them to be deleted. Immediately. Forever.”
Her eyes narrow into a glare. “What has happened to you?” she asks. “This isn’t at all like the Leora I know.”
“The Leora you know is book Leora,” I remind her.
“Book Leora suspends disbelief and throws herself headlong into the story, letting it sweep her away to darknesses and feelings Real Life Leora would never be okay with! As evidence! By me! Not! Being! Okay with them!” I pant, heart skittering about in my chest. “Think about it, Almond. Really think about it. How would you react if, suddenly, out of nowhere, with no warning at all, Emerson Wright started behaving like one of the male leads in one of our books? If he walked into your studio right now, in the middle of your work day, threw you over his shoulder, and whisked you away? And we don’t even have to add on him bringing an entourage.
I think we both know you wouldn’t handle that situation well. ”
Stricken, she clutches her phone to her chest. “I… oh.” She deflates, a balloon losing all its helium. “You’re right. I would not handle that well at all.”
“Even though it’s in the books you love? Even though you melt right along with me at book club?”
She grimaces. “I’m sorry, Leora. I hadn’t thought of it that way.”
I accept her apology. “Now about that picture…”
She frowns. “Do we really have to go that far? These are precious family heirlooms!”
I lunge for her precious family heirloom, and she squawks.
“My butt is not being passed down for centuries!” I declare, chasing her around the small studio. More tiles crack as she flees on her rolling stool.
“Careful!” she screech-laughs, dodging my grabbing hand. “You’ll get dye on your makeup!”
“This is not! How you! Repent!” I huff, accentuating each word with a swipe of my arm.
Almond, it turns out, is very good at evasion.
I don’t catch her until the little mushroom timer goes off, and she shoves her phone down the front of her shirt, where I dare not wander.
I glare at the ceiling the whole way through her rinsing my hair.
“If one person sees that photo,” I warn, “you’re over.”
She cackles, then she imbues my hair with her magic, and I forget to be mad at her.
Mostly, anyway.
We’ll revisit my feelings on the subject if a wedding ever becomes an actual possibility…
“Hush,” I whisper to my hopeful heart. “I said if.”
She beats loudly regardless, the silly, errant thing.