Chapter Fifteen
Brynlee
“What do you think?” Darla asks as I stare at my reflection in the mirror.
It’s two shades lighter than the color I’ve had for almost ten years, but she’s right. It brightens me up. “I love it.”
“Really?”
“Really. Oh my gosh, you have a special skill for this!”
She smiles as she cleans up everything before bringing it out to her car. I can’t take my eyes away from the masterpiece she made and wonder how I managed to go this long without anyone making the suggestion. The trim she did is also different, and it lays better than it ever has. It’s gorgeous.
I walk out to meet her as she comes back inside, and I nod towards the living room. We sit, and I see turmoil in her eyes. “How are you doing?”
“I’m fine.”
My stomach bobbles with worry. “Are you angry with me for telling Carter what you told me?”
Her dark hair brushes her face as she shakes her head. “No, I’m not.”
“Did you two talk?”
“Sort of. He suggested workin’ on a plan to move towards makin’ my dreams a reality, but I think that was your idea, not his. I know he doesn’t really want me to do this. I know he’s worried about money, but it feels so much bigger than just that.”
“Oh, before I forget, here’s a check for you.”
Darla furrows her brows and reaches for it. “You don’t even know how much the supplies cost.” Her eyes widen as she stares at the cashier’s check I hand her. “Oh my God, Brynlee, tell me this is not how much you paid your last stylist.”
Laughing, I lean my side into the couch cushion and face her. “No, it’s not.”
“I don’t understand. What’s this?”
The fight not to get her hopes up is real. “I wanted to see what you can do, but I knew at the fair I wanted to invest in you. After the magic you worked today, I know you could beat out any stylist in the big cities.”
“Brynlee, this is too much,” she says and tries to hand the check back to me.
“No, it’s not. The best investments are in people with a passion and dreams. You need an investor, and I’m looking for a business to invest in.”
She swallows as her glistening eyes glance up at me. “It’s too much to ask for.”
“You didn’t ask. I’m offering. I’d like to keep this between us, though.
I don’t need any more fuel added to the fire around town when it comes to what people think about me, but I have some money.
I’m not Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos by a long shot, but I have some.
More than that, I know how to make it work for me. Like this.”
“I have so many questions right now, but you’re sure about this? What if… What if I fail?”
Reaching out, I squeeze her wrist. “I have faith you won’t.”
“No, I can’t risk that—”
“That’s how investments work. If it tanks, well, crap. But I don’t think it will. It’s up to you if you want to take this chance on yourself, but I want to. I won’t force you if you aren’t ready.”
She wipes her eyes and lets out a long sigh. Setting it on the table in front of her, she stares at it. “You know Rhett’s my best friend, right?”
This took an unexpected turn. “Yes?”
“You’re makin’ this extremely generous offer, and I might be an idiot for sayin’ this, but I need to make sure we’re all aligned here. I won’t stand to see anyone hurt him.”
“To counter your sort-of accusation, which… ouch, I think it would be kind of silly of me to go into business with the best friend of the man I intend to hurt, don’t you?”
“Yeah, that would be pretty dumb. And you’re not dumb. In fact, you seem really smart.”
I smile at her, flattered and relieved she doesn’t think I’m some airhead. “Because it seems like you need to hear me say it: The last thing I plan to ever do is hurt Rhett. He’s everything I never knew I needed or wanted, and I like being with him. I like who I am with him.”
“He’s not just an ego boost or somethin’, right?”
“All my life, I’ve been told what to do, how to act, and what to be, but with him, I’m just Brynlee. He makes me feel like I’m finally enough, and I’ve never really felt like I measured up before. He makes me feel safe to be myself.”
“You really care about him, though?”
Looking at the couch, I smile. “Hurting him would kill me. I’ve never met anyone who can look at me and take my breath away, but Rhett does that.
I haven’t been able to stop thinking about him since we met, and I’ve never met a man who wants almost exactly the same things out of life as I do.
When I look at him, I see it all. Marriage, kids, growing old together.
It finally feels like I have someone with me who wants to face the world together. ”
Her hand rests on her chest. “That’s beautiful.”
“Oh my God,” I gasp, my chest tightening as I look up at her in panic.
“What?” Darla asks, her face scrunched up with confusion.
Panic fills me, and I lean back, my hand mirroring hers. My heart races, and I can’t quite catch my breath. How did this happen? It’s only been weeks.
“Brynlee, what’s wrong?”
“I’m in love with him,” I whisper.
“What?”
I can’t breathe. Falling in love with Rhett was inevitable. I knew this, but I never expected it to be this soon. “You can’t say anything, Darla. Please.”
“Tell him.”
“No, I can’t! I can’t tell him until he tells me. It’s too fast. It’s too soon. Oh my God.”
Her hand takes mine, and I look into her green eyes as I gasp for air. “Breathe.” We breathe in and out together, and my heart rate falls back to a semi-normal rate. “Why can’t you tell him before he tells you?”
“A lady never tells a man what she feels until he tells her first, darling. You don’t want to come across as clingy, otherwise you’ll push him away.”
“What the hell?”
“Mama. She’s still in my head. She… There are these things she’d drill into me, and I can’t shake a few of them. This is one of them. Please, Darla, don’t tell him. I’ll give you an extra twenty grand. Please, please,” I plead with her, tears filling my eyes as the panic rises again.
Shaking her head, she leans back and chuckles. “You don’t have to pay me extra. I just don’t understand this”—she waves her hand in a circle in front of me—“panic.”
“I can’t tell him because we’ve only known each other for a few weeks.
I know you’re his friend before mine, but I can’t say it until I know he feels the same.
There’s a lot you don’t know about me, but I will die if I tell him I love him, and he doesn’t say it back.
It’s a whole self-worth thing that’s really complicated. Just… please? Please, Darla?”
“I won’t say anythin’. My God, you’re about thirty seconds away from needin’ a paper bag.”
Yes, yes, I am. “Okay, something else. Let’s talk about anything else.”
“You were engaged before you came here?”
Groaning, I close my eyes and rest my head on the back of the couch. “Yes. I was engaged to Kevin Sandoval. Have you heard of Sandoval Whiskey? That’s him.”
“What?”
“We were supposed to get married in about five months.”
“What happened?”
I open my eyes and smirk at her. “Pippa Rocha happened.
“What’s a Pippa Rocha?”
“The twenty-two-year-old secretary he’s screwing.”
Jaw dropping, Darla leans forward. “You’re joking.”
“Nope. In the world I came from, it was pretty much accepted. Wives and girlfriends had access to money, and as long as they got the expensive houses, vacations, and gifts, it expected they’d look the other way when the men cheat.
It’s a weird form of compensation, but the worst part?
Me leaving him is likely a bigger betrayal than his affair.
Even though it’s the third time I caught him with her. ”
“Seriously?”
It’s humiliating to admit, but I’ve already started. I explain how the first time I caught them, he convinced me it would never happen again. And Mama pushed me to be with him, so I accepted it.
The second time, I was hell-bent on leaving. I had my bags packed and ready, but Mama got her cancer diagnosis, and Kevin was there. He never left my side. He paid her medical bills, which was amazing because she’d split from her latest rich husband.
“I’ll forever be grateful to him for that. And he was there when she passed, which was quicker than we expected. But then I found out he was screwing Pippa,” I say, popping my Ps. “Again. That was it.”
“What did you do?”
The way Darla stares, her eyes as wide as saucers, reminds me of watching reality television. The drama captivates and sucks you in, but the difference is, this is actually real. My life.
“I confronted him before he left on a business trip, and he said he’s going to do what he’s going to do, and there’s nothing I can do about it.
I just heard Mama’s voice in my head after he left.
You don’t marry for love in this society, darling.
That’s when I knew I wasn’t going to do it anymore, and I packed my stuff and called movers. ”
“You just left?”
“I was gone before he returned, and I left that god-awful gaudy ring on a note that simply said, ‘You can do what you want, and now, so can I.’ And I was gone.”
Her jaw drops. “Wow.”
“Mama spent her life running from the world she came from, and she wanted me to have the big life she never quite attained. Not fully. She has got to be fretting right now because all I want is everything she tried to escape. I want a simple life with a man who loves me.”
“But Kevin could buy you mansions.”
“The mansions that I’ve stepped foot in are as cold as the arctic because there’s no real love. Those relationships, like the marriage I was going to be in, are more like business arrangements. I’d rather live in a small house filled with love than one of those mansions.”
“Rhett’s not a rebound, though, right? You don’t just think you love him because you’re gettin’ over Kevin?”
Shaking my head, I laugh. “No, he’s the real thing.
Kevin wasn’t. I don’t think I ever really even liked Kevin.
He’s who Mama wanted for me, and I wanted to please her.
Mama’s not here anymore, and it’s time for Brynlee to find happiness.
And what would make Brynlee very happy is her new friend, Darla, chasing her dream. ”
“I’m scared,” she whispers.
“That means you’re ready. No one goes after their passion and just feels okay about it. If it scares you, it means it’s big enough.”
“I could lose all your money.”
Smiling, I nod, loving the strands falling in my face as I do. I really love my hair. “Maybe, but I don’t think you will. If it does happen, that’s the risk I took.”
“You’re like a fairy godmother, you know that?”
“I’ve been called much worse. Recently, actually.”
“You won’t hate me if this doesn’t work out?”
I lean forward and take her by the shoulders to shake her.
“Stop assuming the worst! Think about how amazing you’ll make this business.
I don’t know how to run the day-to-day operations, and I know nothing about hair except that I love what you did with mine.
What I do know is finances and marketing.
I’ll help you. I ran a few numbers with assumed metrics, and I’m confident this money can be made back by your fourth year in business. ”
“Four years!”
“It takes time.”
“That’s too long. I can’t…”
“You can. If you let yourself. Take a deep breath and just leap. If you’d rather, we can talk about a partnership rather than just an investment. I know you can do this, Darla. I feel it.”
She stares at the coffee table and lets out a deep breath. “I’m goin’ to do this. I’m really goin’ to do this.”
“And you’re going to be great!”
“How is it possible that you have more faith in me than my husband does?”
Damn it, I was hoping to avoid this. I don’t want to throw Carter under the bus. “I don’t have a personal stake in it.”
“I’m goin’ to prove him wrong.”
“Atta girl!”
She smiles and looks up at me again. “I’m really glad we became friends.”
“I’m glad to have a friend. A real one.”
Snorting, she leans back. “Like you didn’t have a hundred friends on speed dial in Chicago.”
I can’t help but laugh. The term friend means something very different in the world I ran from.
“Oh, I had over twenty women I could call to go to the spa with because of who I was with. When Mama died, they all came to the funeral. Not a single one asked how I was holding up. No one checked on me. I never had real friends out there.”
“That’s so sad.”
“That’s okay. I’m glad Rhett has friends like you and Carter. And I’m ecstatic to have a friend like you, too. So… how about a tour?”
“I’d love one, partner.”
We stand and hug, and it feels just like I always thought having a real friendship with another person would feel like. Darla’s not just my friend because of my status or the status of the man I’m with. I know her through Rhett, but she’s not just pretending to be nice for appearances.
Who knew moving to a small town most people haven’t heard of would give me so much of what I needed in less than a month?