Chapter 14 Jade
Jade
The hair cuttings tickled places where they shouldn’t have even fallen.
Jade flapped her shirt to release some of the embedded strands, then ran a sticky brush over her tank and bra to catch a few more stragglers.
She’d cut straw-dry hair before, but this last client had an unfortunate perm on top of an even more unfortunate bleach-job (not from Jade’s salon, of course), and the hair had shot like thumbtacks into her skin.
The back-room door swung open, carrying the buzz of hair dryers and conversation, and Amanda peeked in.
‘Hey, Mrs Dieterman called. She’s running a few minutes late.’ Amanda tapped her fingers against the door frame. ‘Also, your last client of the day just cancelled.’
Normally, that would’ve irritated Jade, but today she welcomed the news.
She hadn’t slept well last night, what with the visions of needles and a soft pouty mouth swirling in her brain.
The idea of leaving early, grabbing some takeout, and taking a bath sounded exactly like what the hair doctor ordered.
‘Want me to check if someone in the books next week wants to take an earlier appointment?’
Jade tore off the sticky paper from the roll and tossed it into the trash. ‘Nah. I’ll just take the rest of the night off.’
‘Suspicious. You okay?’ Amanda raised a perfectly shaped black eyebrow. ‘Ohhhh, do you have a date? Saturday night and all.’
‘Yeah. With myself, Netflix, and a bath.’ Jade left the part out about including a new vibrator in her evening plans.
She and Amanda were tight, but she wasn’t about to violate that boundary.
As chummy as they were, there was still an employee-employer relationship to consider.
‘I’m too old to go out on a Saturday night. ’
‘You’re a hottie. You know that, right?’ Amanda pumped rose-and-herb-scented lotion in her palms and handed Jade the bottle. ‘Probably inappropriate for me to say, since you’re my boss and all, but whatever. Seize the moment, woman. You aren’t going to be in your thirties forever.’
Inappropriate or not, Jade warmed at the comment.
‘Hey, favour to ask you,’ Amanda said as she stuffed the last of the dirty towels in the washing machine.
‘Sure, what’s up?’
‘You okay if my aunt meets me here after hours and I use your station to do her starter locs?’
‘Yeah, of course.’ One of the benefits she had for her employees was the ability to use the salon after hours for family.
Amanda didn’t have a licence and technically, Jade could get in a little trouble for having an unlicensed employee working on hair.
However, she never once heard of a cosmetology board member slapping a fine on a salon owner for free after-hour services.
‘You’re a nice niece. You might want to have Uber Eats on speed-dial since you’ll be here for a few hours. ’
‘I was thinking maybe we’d order pizza and make it a whole family affair. I think I’m gonna have my mom come help if that’s cool.’
‘For sure.’
‘Thanks, lady.’ Amanda grabbed a few water bottles from the fridge and bounced out the door.
Jade double-checked her tray. Spray bottle, rollers, and freshly sanitised combs. Check. Often, auto-pilot took over, and she returned to her station carrying supplies that she forgot she even loaded.
With an unexpected reprieve, she grabbed her phone from her pocket and peeked. Her heart leapt when an unread message from Lucy popped up.
Lucy: Hey, do you have plans tonight? Wondering if I can take you for dinner?
Dinner. Maybe this message was a gratitude offering since Jade helped Lucy yesterday. Maybe Lucy was asking for a date. Maybe Lucy was bored and just checking if her friend wanted to hang out to help pass the time.
Jade wasn’t sure which one of these scenarios sounded better.
Or worse. Too many thoughts swirled in her mind, and after staring at the message one too many times, she slipped the phone back in her pocket without responding.
Does she want to have dinner with Lucy? Yes.
Should she have dinner with Lucy? Honestly, she didn’t know.
The back-room door swung open and Shayna bounced in, her sky-high, ultra-snug ponytail flapping behind her. The hairstyle looked damn good, but Jade couldn’t help but wince at the inevitable pounding headache Shayna would have by the end of the shift.
At six feet tall, Jade was used to being the tallest woman in the room. But Shayna was a fan of platform heels, and the ones she had on today nearly put her eye-to-eye with Jade.
‘You must have a spine of steel.’ Jade glanced at Shayna’s shoes. ‘I’ll never understand how you don’t jump into an ice bath as soon as your shift ends.’
Shayna reached for colour and developer. ‘Who says I don’t?’ She squeezed a dollop of deep red into a bowl and mixed. ‘I was born in heels.’
A conversation had to be had. Shayna’s profit’s downward spiral was ongoing, and Jade knew they had officially reached the point where she had to address the situation.
She pulled in a deep breath. Elizabeth always said that Jade’s greatest fault was avoiding hard conversations – that she bottled everything up and stewed until she boiled over.
She should just come out and casually ask if Shayna was okay.
‘Are you okay?’ Shayna asked as she plucked foils from the box. ‘You look like you’re off in la-la land.’
Ugh. Beat me to it.
‘Oh yep!’ Jade’s words were way too chipper.
She was the boss, dammit. This was her salon, her employee, her profits.
She needed to just spit it out. ‘Off to see if Mrs Dieterman arrived.’ Her face heated.
She’d address the Shayna situation later.
Right now, the text message from Lucy was playing in a constant loop, and she had to figure out what to do.
Besides, if something was happening, a busy Saturday afternoon was not the time to have a heartfelt and possibly upsetting conversation.
Definitely not avoiding. Definitely.
Jade pushed the door open with her hip and smiled as her client walked through the door. ‘Mrs Dieterman. Looking as beautiful as ever.’
Mrs Dieterman scowled. ‘Well, now I know you’re full of mouldy baloney. My shampoo set cannot keep up with the humidity, and I refuse to go to church tomorrow looking like a raggedy doll.’
Jade set the supplies on her station and held out her arm.
‘You don’t eat fish, right?’ Mrs Dieterman gripped Jade’s arm and shuffled to the shampoo bowl. ‘I forget if you vegetarians count that as meat. You know, in the church, we don’t count fish as meat. You can have that during Lent on Fridays and it’s okay.’
‘Good to know,’ Jade said with a smile at the random food fact.
Does Lucy eat fish? Can pregnant women eat fish?
There are so many rules, she imagined, with pregnancy and eating, but she had no reason to dig into those.
Wait … what did Mrs Dieterman ask? ‘Oh, uh, no, I don’t eat fish. Why do you ask?’
Mrs Dieterman sighed as Jade lathered the suds and scrubbed, rubbing softly on the top, and harder on the nape.
‘Mr Dieterman went with our oldest son fishing today in Brainerd. Last summer, they came home with almost fifty pounds of fish. They said this year they’re expecting to get more.
Who can even eat that much? I figured I’d beer batter fry them and bring you some.
You could probably use some meat on your bones. ’
Normally, any comment about body or sizes, or someone being too fat or too thin, made Jade cringe.
But Mrs Dieterman got a pass – it was clear in her tone it was more motherly love than societal judgement.
As Mrs Dieterman continued chatting about the best spots for walleye, Jade’s mind wandered.
Dinner. Tonight. Was this dinner dinner?
Or was this just grabbing some takeout with a friend.
And if it was ‘dinner’ dinner, was Jade actually ready for that?
Back at the station, Jade grabbed the rollers. Crap. Wrong ones. How the hell did she do that? She scurried back to grab the right ones and took one more glance at the text … wondering if I can take you for dinner.
Okay, that was definitely more than takeout. Jade took a second to pinch the tip of her nose, separate the flush of tingles from the coiling belly, then returned to Mrs Dieterman.
‘I don’t think I ever asked how you and your husband met,’ Jade said as she rolled. ‘Was it love at first sight?’
‘I’ll tell ya – I told him it wasn’t. But I knew he was the one, even though we were only fourteen when we met.’
‘You’ve been together that long?’ Incredible. Meeting your soul mate so young and sharing a lifetime of experiences, knowing everything about each other, loving each other … a dream come true. Being a divorcee fresh into your thirties – not a dream come true.
Amanda set a cup of coffee down in front of Mrs Dieterman. Jade mouthed her quiet thanks. She was all Lucy-distracted from the adrenaline-inducing text message and had totally forgotten the drink.
‘Thank you, dear.’ Mrs Dieterman took a small sip.
‘We had this boy in our school. Pretty new, moved from a different county. Kinda different from the other boys. Really shy. The kids picked on him and pushed him around. But not my husband. One day, the boys were really laying into him. My husband has always been a little quiet. I’m the talker.
But we were chatting outside of school, and he was real distracted.
And then he excuses himself, walks right up to the bully and socks him one, square on the chin.
And I knew right then and there he was the guy for me. ’
Jade chuckled and divided the next section of hair. ‘You knew he was for you because he could throw a punch?’