Chapter 4
4
Skye Simmons
“Cut and color, followed by a beach wave perm and two more colors this afternoon. What’s on your plate?” she asks, sitting down in my chair and leaning back, before spinning it in a circle.
“Two cuts and style, one correction color, and I think my afternoon is open.” I still wasn’t quite sure how to take Vivian. She warmed to me from the very first day, but I’m continuously baffled by her bluntness. She reminds me a lot of Tori. She says what’s on her mind and I’m not sure she actually has the embarrassment gene. I swear, nothing phases her.
“It’s Friday,” she perks up. “I ditched my guy friend, because I’ll just say it, he was packing, but he had no clue how to use it. I mean I’d rather be with a guy with a small pecker that understood the assignment than a man that can’t move his hips for shit.”
I quickly look around, but no one seems surprised by Vivian’s conversation or lack there of volume.
“You can only take so much slamming and jerking before you wonder why in the hell you bother. No foreplay, just jab jab, seize and shiver. It was a pity really, with a pecker like he had it seems like such a waste.”
“Amen.” I glance over to a client in the next chair next to mine. “A man has to know how to use his gift. Big, small, average, it’s all about the skills they bring to the table. I once dated a man that acted like he was licking a lollipop when he took a trip down south. One swipe pause, another swipe pause. I remember looking down at him baffled and not because he was so damned good I’d lost my mind. The man was a menace, but he was so pretty to look at.”
Vivian reaches out and offers a fist bump to the woman and all I can do is look back and forth between the two of them.
I’ve had two sexual experiences in my life and the first one barely counts. My first time was in the back of an old Mustang with Nick Counterman. I can honestly say it was over so fast I wasn’t sure it even truly happened. The second time I’d been half drunk after a party and there was absolutely no foreplay of any sort. I am not very experienced, not enough to weigh in on this conversation. So instead, I just sit there and gawk as they continue on like they aren’t in a room full of people.
I guess what they say is true, salons are the hub of all gossip.
“Drinks are on me.” Vivian waves a stack of bills through the air with an overly exaggerated smile on her face. “The two of us on the streets of Nashville could be dangerous.”
“You go and have a good time,” I tell her, grabbing my bag and tossing it over my shoulder. “I have to get home to Tori.”
“Wait.” Her face morphs into confusion with her brows creased and her lips pursed. “You have a kid? How did I not know this already?”
“Because she is fourteen.”
“Well, this is awkward.” I know what she is referring to, because for me to actually be Tori’s biological mother I would have had to have had her when I was eight. So I continue on without allowing her to. “Tori is my sister, whom I adopted when our parents were killed in a car accident.”
“Oh my goodness.” Now it’s awkward for an entirely different reason. I hate when people pity us. Yes, we got dealt a bad hand, but we aren’t the only ones in the world. There are always far more worse things.
We are surviving.
“So no night out, but maybe a night in?” Vivian says and part of me wants to argue with her and come up with some excuse as to why I can’t. But honestly, she is somewhat refreshing. Her go get ’em attitude, her open honesty, and maybe the fact that I have no actual girlfriends other than my teen sister.
“If you don’t mind a mouthy teen that cusses like a sailor and has absolutely no filter then you are welcome to join us for our normal Friday night takeout and movies.”
“Are you kidding, the girl sounds like my kindred spirit.” She isn’t lying. I thought of my sister immediately after meeting Vivian for the first time.
“But can we add homemade margaritas to that plan?”
“Strawberry?”
“Of course.” She rolls her eyes and grabs her own bag before hooking her arm through mine. “Though watermelon isn’t bad, but we’ll have those next time.”
I smile thinking of next time and not caring the slightest that I’m being such a nerd. Haven’t had time for friends and hanging out. I’ve had my head focused on one thing, taking care of Tori. That has never involved drinking and hanging out talking about guys I shouldn’t be talking about. “I’ll go to the store and get everything for the margaritas. You and Tori decide on what’s for dinner and send me your address so I know where to meet you.” Vivian leads me out of the salon offering a wave to those we’ve left behind but not even looking in their direction.
I rattle off my address and she stops practically falling over her own feet.
“Oh hell, you live next door to Grayson Hawk?”
“Why, do you know him?”
“Well, not how most women know him.” She wiggles her brows suggestively. “I used to run around with his cousin Scarlett. Now she is another one that is not afraid to tell anyone exactly how she is feeling. It’s been a minute though since she and I hung out. I think you’d like her, but Gray is nasty.” I wrinkle up my nose at her description of him. “As in kinky nasty, girl,” Viv clarifies.
“Excuse me?”
“From what I’ve heard the man has some major talent in the bedroom but he’s shared that talent with far too many women. I don’t know if he’s ever been serious about anyone for longer than a night or maybe two.”
From the things we’ve heard through our apartment walls none of this should be a shock to me.
We pause near our cars and she offers me a quick hug, before climbing inside and waving to me through the driver’s side window.
On the way home I give Tori a quick call and tell her we have company coming over and to pick up the apartment. She and I are not the tidiest pair and it’s not out of the ordinary to have a basket of folded clothes sitting on the kitchen chair or a sink full of dirty dishes that I intended to load later.
As I pull into my parking space I am met with the same motorcycle, only this time it’s in the space next to mine.
I’m reminded of the things that Vivian has told me about my neighbor as his face flashes in my mind. Those dark eyes and that smirk. I’ve never truly spoken to him but I’ve heard and seen enough to know I should stay far away.
Far far away.