Chapter 5 #2
"Honey, I can tell." He lifted a section near my temple and let it drop in disgust. "This is I-washed-it-in-a-canteen hair.
" He squared his shoulders like a man accepting a mission.
"Okay. Here's what we're doing. We shape the curl — clean lines, give it some structure so it falls instead of explodes — and then we tame it.
Because right now, with respect, this is less hairstyle and more weather event. "
"Wow," I said.
"I say it because I care."
I opened my mouth to tell him exactly what he could do with his caring, but Jillian cut me off.
"Yes to all of that. And the Japzilian."
I turned so fast the cape twisted around me. "The what?"
"Japzilian," Dominic said, already sectioning my curls with clips like a man who'd been given orders and fully intended to carry them out.
"It's a hybrid. Japanese thermal smoothing meets a Brazilian treatment.
We do the Brazilian first — smooths the cuticle, kills the frizz — then the Japanese conditioning to restructure the cortex.
On curls like yours?" He kissed his fingertips.
"Honey, it's going to take this hot mess and turn it into movement.
You'll still have curl, but it'll be intentional curl.
Curl with a college degree. Lasts four to six months. You're going to love it."
"Japzilian," I repeated flatly. "That sounds like a sex position."
"It's a hair treatment, Jimmy," Jillian said, not looking up from her phone.
"It sounds like something you'd find in the back pages of a magazine you'd hide from your mother."
Dominic snorted. "Oh, I like him." He picked up his shears and a comb with the air of a man preparing for surgery. "Trust me — when I'm done, you're going to look in that mirror and weep tears of joy."
"I'm already going to cry, and it won't be from joy."
"That's the spirit."
He started cutting. The first curl hit the floor and I flinched.
Then another. I watched them fall and tried not to think about the fact that this was the hair that had been crushed under a helmet in Aleppo, shoved up under a watch cap in Kabul, gone unwashed for three weeks during a stakeout in Juárez.
It was war-correspondent hair. It had seen things.
And now Dominic was methodically dismantling it while humming along to a Dua Lipa song.
"This is a nightmare," I said.
"This is self-care," Jillian corrected.
"This is a hostage situation."
"You're being dramatic."
"I once watched a man field-dress a wound with a pocketknife in the back of a Humvee and it was less traumatic than this."
Dominic pointed his shears at my reflection.
"Sweetheart, when we're done you're going to walk out of here looking like you belong in a boardroom.
Or on television. Or wherever it is people go to be powerful and well-conditioned.
" He resumed cutting. "What you walked in here with, on the other hand?
That was a before photo. A cautionary before photo. And I say that with love."
"You say a lot of things with love that don't feel very loving."
"That's because the truth hurts, baby. Hold still."
Jillian, who'd been watching the exchange with open delight, set her phone down and crossed her arms. I knew that posture. It was the one that preceded the question she'd actually dragged me here to ask.
"So," she said, her voice shifting into something more careful. "Have you thought about the fact that you're going to be working with Nelson?"
I stared straight ahead into the mirror. "No."
"Liar."
"What I'm thinking about right now, Jillian, is that a man named Dominic is about to chemically restructure my fucking hair cortex with something called a Japzilian. I'd like to focus on one crisis at a time."
"Oooh." Dominic's shears paused mid-snip. His eyes flicked between us in the mirror like he'd just realized this appointment came with a floor show. "Who's Nelson?"
"Nobody," I said.
"His ex," Jillian said.
"Jillian."
"Drama, girl." Dominic resumed with renewed enthusiasm, his shears moving faster, like they were being powered by gossip. "I am living for it. Keep going."
"There's nothing to keep going about," I said. "It was thirteen years ago. We were in college. It ended. The end."
"Thirteen years." Dominic let out a low whistle. "And now you're going to work together? Honey, that's not a job. That's a season of reality television."
"It's really not." I shut my eyes a moment. "We're both professionals. I'm sure we'll—"
"Does he know you're coming?" he interrupted.
I said nothing.
"Oh, he definitely does not know." Dominic caught Jillian's eye in the mirror.
"Can we focus on the hair, please?"
"Babe, I am focusing on the hair. I can multitask." He set down the shears and reached for a bottle of something that smelled like coconut, chemicals, and money. "Japzilian time. Lean back."
I leaned back and stared at the ceiling while Dominic painted what felt like warm silk into my curls, section by section. It smelled expensive. Everything in my life had suddenly started to smell expensive, and I didn't know what to do with that.
Jillian waited until Dominic stepped away to mix more product before she leaned in close. Under the teasing, her eyes had gone serious. The real Jillian — the one who'd held my hand in a hospital in Berlin and talked me through a panic attack in a hotel room in Istanbul.
"Jimmy." Her voice was low enough that only I could hear it over the dryers and the piped-in pop music.
"I need to ask you this for real. Can you handle it?
Working with Nelson every day? Because I know you, and I know what Nelson meant to you, and I need to know you're going into this with your eyes open. "
The salon hummed around us. Dominic had his back to us, but the angle of his head said he was still listening.
In the mirror, my reflection stared back — green eyes, auburn curls already starting to fall into something sleeker, something that made me look like a stranger.
A man who'd soon work in a building with polished floors and corporate logos and millions of viewers.
A man who'd see Nelson Mackenzie every single day.
Nelson, who I'd walked out on thirteen years ago and never looked back.
Until now.
I met Jillian's eyes in the mirror.
"I don't really have a choice, do I?"