Chapter 22
twenty-two
. . .
By the next afternoon, I was angry enough to admit it had followed me into daylight.
That was how I knew it mattered.
Not because I woke up raging. I didn’t. Micah had still been warm when I left his bed. Still sleepy-voiced and fine and trying not to look too irritated that I was putting my earrings in instead of climbing back under him. He had kissed me soft at the door and texted me before I made it home.
Micah: You got in?
Then later:
Micah: Still thinking about your face when I pulled you back into bed.
That one had made me stop walking outside my building like somebody had physically tugged on my sleeve.
Because I remembered it too.
The weight of his arm around my waist. The rasp in his voice. The way I had laughed once before letting him drag me back under him like I had not been halfway dressed and pretending to have better sense.
So no, I wasn’t raging. Just mad. And mad in a way that was harder to shake because the rest of him kept being so damn good.
By the time I got to Mena’s, I was ready to hear something besides my own mind.
The salon was warm when I stepped in, bright at the front and honey-soft toward the back where the dryers hummed and women settled into being taken care of.
It smelled like edge control, wrap lotion, flat iron heat, and somebody’s vanilla body mist. Music played low from a speaker near the stations, Ne-Yo singing about being sick of love songs while three women under dryers pretended they weren’t listening and absolutely were.
Mena looked up from the woman in her chair and grinned.
“Well,” she said, “if it isn’t Pretty Bothered.”
The whole shop laughed.
I shut the door behind me and rolled my eyes. “I knew I should’ve gone somewhere anonymous.”
“You don’t want anonymous hair,” Rochelle called from under the dryer. “You want answers.”
That got another round of laughter.
I pointed at her as I made my way back. “See, this is why I don’t tell y’all nothing.”
“You don’t have to,” Mena said, dusting loose hair from her client’s neck before unsnapping the cape. “Your face did all the talking when you walked in.”
Her client laughed, gathered her purse, and slid out of the chair with one last look at me that said she wished her appointment had run ten minutes longer.
Mena shook the cape once, wiped down the chair, and motioned me over. “Come on. Let me see what he did to my work.”
“I hate all of you.”
“No, you don’t.”
I sat and looked at myself in the mirror while Mena tied the cape at the back of my neck.
My pixie had survived, but barely. The short layers were still close around my ears and nape, but the crown had gone soft, the roots lifting in a way they never did when I left Mena’s chair.
A few pieces near my temple had separated, and the auburn-bronze highlights caught along the top when I turned my head, pretty enough to almost distract from the fact that my hair looked like somebody had been touching it with intention.
Mena saw me looking and smirked. “Yeah. He been in it.”
Crystal cackled from the next station, where she was braiding down a new client with her fingers moving fast and nosey.
I cut my eyes at Mena in the mirror. “Please be quiet.”
She combed gently through the short layers at my crown and hummed like she was assessing evidence. “No.”
That made me smile when I didn’t mean to.
She caught it instantly.
“See?” she said. “That’s exactly what I’m talking about. Happy mouth. Mad eyes.”
That shut me up.
Because yes.
That was pretty much the shape of it.
Mena ran her fingers once more over my crown, then untied the cape from my neck.
“It ain’t bad, but I’m not sending you back out with this half-surrender happening at the roots.
We’re going to shampoo, put some moisture back in it, mold you down, sit you under the dryer, and then I’ll clean up the shape. ”
I sighed.
She grinned at me in the mirror. “Don’t sigh now. You the one letting that man put his hands in my work.”
The shop made another sound, and I got up before they could gather more momentum. Mena led me to the shampoo bowl with her hand light on my shoulder, still laughing under her breath.
I settled back, the cool curve of the bowl catching my neck while she adjusted the towel beneath me.
“What happened?” she asked, turning on the water and testing it against the inside of her wrist.
I looked up at the ceiling for a second.
Then at the women around me. Rochelle under the dryer with one hand resting dramatically on the arm of the chair like she had been waiting for testimony.
Crystal at the next station, braiding and pretending she was not fully invested.
Ms. Mary under the other dryer with her reading glasses low on her nose while her rinse processed.
All of them halfway in their own business and fully ready for mine.
Usually that would’ve made me protective.
Today it made me honest.
“Tuesday started with some bullshit,” I said.
Mena’s brows lifted as warm water moved over my hair. “Okay.”
“One of the women Micah used to talk to posted some raggedy little status about banker men moving dirty and fucking bitches in private.”
The whole shop made a sound.
Not loud.
Just knowing.
“Who?” Rochelle called.
“Candace.”
That got a little pause out of Mena. “The Candace that came to that gallery thing last spring?”
“Yes.”
“Who the hell is she?” Rochelle asked.
I sighed. “Exactly. Nobody really. Kendra caught the BS before I did. I asked Micah about it. He answered. He came over later, made me tea, brought me a heating pad because my cramps were trying to kill me, held me on my couch, and promised there was nobody else.”
Mena nodded once and worked shampoo into my hair, her fingertips gentle but thorough.
“Okay,” she said. “So he handled that part.”
“He did.”
“But.”
I exhaled through my nose. “But then we went out last night.”
Mena rinsed the shampoo away, her voice softer under the running water. “Okay.”
“We ran into Bryce.”
“The one from the beginning?”
“Yes.”
“And?”
I stared up at the ceiling and let the whole ugly thing come out the way it had actually been sitting in me.
“He didn’t claim me.”
Mena’s hands stilled for exactly one beat.
I kept going while my nerve to be vulnerable with these women was there.
“And maybe that sounds ridiculous,” I said, my mouth already tight with how foolish I heard myself sounding and how true it still was, “because we never sat down and said what the fuck we were doing.” I looked toward her as much as I could from the bowl.
“But shit, I’m on this nigga’s dick twenty-five out of twenty-eight days a month. ”
The shop exploded.
Rochelle lifted the edge of the dryer hood like she needed to hear better. “OH.”
Ms. Mary laughed so hard she had to take her glasses off.
Crystal slapped her own thigh and said, “Well all right then.”
Even Mena had to laugh before she got herself back together.
“No,” she said, reaching for the conditioner. “See, context matters.”
I smiled despite myself, then went right back to being irritated.
“He wasn’t rude,” I said as she worked the conditioner through my hair. “He was just weird. Bryce said something about it being nice to see us off the timeline, and Micah just said we came out for a drink.”
Rochelle made a face. “Mmmmm.”
I nodded from the bowl. “Exactly.”
“And that was it?” Mena asked.
“That was it.”
Ms. Mary looked up over her glasses. “Oh, baby.”
That little sound older Black women made when the situation had already told on itself enough.
“And the worst part is, I can’t even say he was wrong in what he said,” I said. “We hadn’t really said what we are. Not in words.”
“That matters,” Mena said.
“I know.” I laughed softly, without humor. “That’s what’s getting on my nerves. Because in real life, we’re doing everything.”
Rochelle leaned forward. “Everything everything?”
The whole shop laughed.
I closed my eyes. “You are entirely too invested.”
“Yes,” she said, settling back under the dryer. “Continue.”
By the time Mena rinsed me, wrapped a towel around my hair, and walked me back to her station, the whole salon had settled into my business like it came with the service.
I sat again while she blotted the short layers, then began working foam through my hair with the careful precision of a woman restoring order.
I shook my head and kept going, but Rochelle’s question had already done its damage.
Because now my mind was back on Micah with me bent over and open for him, one big hand spreading my ass while his tongue slid over the tight little place no man had any business being that good with.
Slow at first. Then filthier. His mouth hot and patient, licking at my puckered hole until my whole body turned liquid and my dignity left the room.
By the time I relaxed enough to let his thumb press inside, he was already deep in my pussy from the back, stroking into me swiftly, completely, while he opened me up everywhere else too.
So yes, Rochelle.
Practically, everything everything.
I crossed one leg over the other in the chair and cleared my throat.
“Anyway,” I said, reaching for calm like it hadn’t just abandoned me completely, “we’re together all the time.
He’s at my place. I’m at his. We eat together, watch shows, play games.
He came over Tuesday, held me, reassured me, did everything right.
” I met my own eyes in the mirror while Mena combed the foam into place.
“And then in public, to another man from the same exact circles where all this started, I’m just a woman he came out for a drink with. ”
That sat in the room.
Mena’s hands kept moving, smoothing my hair close, shaping the crown, bringing the style back under discipline piece by piece.
“And online,” I added, “we communicate more openly. Teasing. Commenting. Still not doing too much, but enough that if somebody only saw us there, they’d think there was something there.
” I frowned at my own reflection. “Only it would still look like flirtation. Like internet familiarity. Not the real thing.”
Mena nodded slowly.
“So in the comments y’all sound more connected than you did in the room that counted.”
“Yes.”
The fact that she assessed it so completely made me swallow hard.
She laid the comb down and met my eyes in the mirror. “Did he know it bothered you?”
“No.”
“Did you act like it bothered you?”
I thought about the way I’d gone quieter after Bryce left. The way sex had still happened later, but not with my whole mind in the room. The way Micah had looked at me in the dark when he asked if I was tired, and I had let that half-truth stand in for the real thing.
“No,” I admitted.
Rochelle made a little noise again. “Mmmmm.”
I looked toward the dryer. “You humming like a church mother is not helping.”
“It’s helping me.”
Ms. Mary, now at the shampoo bowl about to have the dark brown color rinsed, laughed out loud at that.
Mena wrapped a strip around my edges, adjusted the mold, and turned the chair slightly. “All right. Under the dryer. Since you want to come in here with your hair and your feelings disturbed.”
“I came for a service.”
“And you are receiving several.”
The women laughed again as I moved to the dryer chair. I settled under the hood, heat blooming around my head while Mena leaned against her station and kept talking to me through the opening.
“Maybe he’s private,” she said. “Maybe he was protecting something. Maybe he didn’t want Bryce in his business. Maybe he was trying not to let the outside get hands on something before y’all even named it.”
I frowned at her from under the dryer. “That makes sense in theory. But after Candace? After all that? I think I needed more than theory.”
“Fair,” she said.
Crystal pointed her rat-tail comb at me. “Baby, after a woman posts some raggedy nonsense about your man, the next night is not when he needs to get vague.”
A chorus of agreement moved through the shop.
“Exactly,” Rochelle called from her own dryer. “You already had one woman cutting up in public. Now he acting all light-skinned mysterious when another man walks up? No.”
I laughed so hard I had to shake my head. “Why are y’all like this?”
“Because we love the Lord and pattern recognition,” Ms. Mary said from the bowl, and the shop lost it.
When my hair was dry, Mena brought me back to the chair and peeled the strip away from my edges. The style had started to return to itself, the short layers molded close again, the crown smooth, the bronze in my highlights catching clean under the salon lights.
Mena brushed my edges down with the side of the brush and looked at me in the mirror. “Let me ask you this. He makes you happy?”
I smiled before I could stop it. “Yes.”
“He gives you toe-curling orgasms?”
My whole face got hot.
Somebody near the front barked out, “I know that’s right!”
The shop exploded.
Laughter. Claps. One of the newer stylists near the lounge almost dropped a comb. Rochelle pointed at me from under the dryer like she had finally reached the part of the sermon she came for.
Mena smiled and kept going. “And we know he sweats your hair out. Chile, you might as well come in here every two business days the way your hair be looking when you get to the bowl.”
“Oh my God,” I muttered.
“There it is,” Rochelle shouted. “He gotta be the right one if he keep fucking your hair up and you still smiling when you come in here.”
That got another round of laughter. Even I laughed, because unfortunately, it was funny and very, very true.
Micah’s dick, mouth, hands.
All of him was magical.
Mena shook her head like she had delivered wisdom and the room had received it. “Good sex don’t answer every question, baby. But it do buy a man time.”
“Not unlimited time,” Ms. Mary added.
“No,” Mena agreed, meeting my eyes again in the mirror as she cleaned up the shape near my temple. “And that’s the part. You don’t have to decide today whether he meant harm, whether he was scared, whether he was being private, or whether he just missed the moment. But you do need to ask him.”
I could sit in here and let ten Black women solve it for sport, or I could ask the man I had been in bed with all week why, in the one room where it might have counted, he had let us sound smaller than what we had become in private.
Mena’s mouth softened in the mirror. “Because if he’s the right one, he can handle the question.”
And there it was.
Sooner or later, Micah Sutton was going to have to explain himself.