Brittany
Hell, Kentucky shows its teeth real polite at first, like it’s smiling while it sharpens them.
It’s Saturday morning when I end up at Blow Me, the salon wedged between a vape shop and a tax place that’s been “under new management” since I was in middle school.
The bell above the door jingles like it always does, too cheerful for the way my nerves keep jumping, and the smell of hairspray and hot tools hits me square in the chest.
This is where women come to pretend nothing’s wrong.
The waiting area is packed the way it always is.
Mamas with toddlers, teenagers with bleach dreams, women my daddy’s age who still believe a fresh color can fix a stale marriage.
Country radio murmurs from a tinny speaker in the corner.
A fan oscillates lazy over the front desk like it’s too tired to care about anybody’s sweat.
I pick a chair and try to make myself small.
That used to work in Hell.
“Girl,” Tinsley says, snapping a cape around my neck like she’s tying me to a chair, “you look like hell chewed you up and spit you back out.”
“Thanks,” I mutter. “That’s the look I was going for.”
She laughs, loud and mean, already combing through my hair. Tinsley is one of those women who could sell you a curse and you’d thank her for the pretty packaging. “You party too hard or you get your feelings hurt?”
I don’t answer right away.
The mirror shows me pale, eyes a little too bright, mouth a bit hung over still remembering a biker’s voice sounding like he cared about me. I tell myself that’s stupid. I tell myself I’m twenty years old and allowed to dance and drink and wake up scared without the world ending.
Hell disagrees.
Two chairs down, a woman I don’t know keeps glancing at me. Too often. Too pointed. She’s got biker ink peeking out under her sleeve and a cut folded over the back of her chair like she’s saving it from touching the floor. The patch on it catches my eye even from here.
Property of…
I don’t finish reading it. My stomach twists before my brain does.
She leans toward her stylist and whispers, hand cupped like secrecy matters in a room built for gossip. The stylist’s eyes flick to me, then away too fast. That’s worse than staring. That’s confirmation.
They look at me again.
I swallow hard, throat tight like I’m trying not to choke on my own name.
Tinsley catches it in the mirror. Her hand stills just a fraction, comb teeth caught in a snarl near the ends. “You piss someone off?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Mmm,” she hums, not convinced. “Folks don’t look at you like that unless they already decided something.”
The woman laughs under her breath.
I hear it.
I hear the words too, quiet but sharp enough to cut.
“Like her mama. Messing with married men.”
My face burns like she slapped me.
Tinsley’s mouth tightens. She sets the comb down with a little more force than necessary. “You wanna say that louder, sweetheart, or you good being a coward today?”
The salon goes a hair quieter. Not silent. Never silent. But the kind of quiet that screams.
The woman stiffens. Her eyes flick to Tinsley, then away. She smirks like she won something just by being heard, then crosses her legs like she owns the air.
My hands shake under the cape.
I don’t cry. I don’t snap back. I sit there and let my hair get washed and cut and styled like I didn’t just get labeled by a woman who knows exactly where to stick the knife.
I didn’t just grow up poor. I grew up with everyone saying it was because my mama left with a married man, and it broke my daddy.
Like she’s the reason he wasn’t a good enough man anymore.
When Tinsley spins me toward the mirror at the end, she pats my shoulder like she’s proud I didn’t break.
“Looks good,” she says. “Don’t let anybody tell you different.”
I tip extra because I don’t know what else to do with gratitude in a town that charges interest on kindness. Then I leave fast, the bell jingling too loud behind me.
Outside, the air feels heavier, like Hell shifted a couple inches closer overnight.
The parking lot is full of glare off windshields and heat off asphalt. I walk to my car and my skin crawls like I’m being watched even when no one’s calling my name. I yank my door open, slide in, lock it, and sit there with my hands on the steering wheel breathing through the pressure in my chest.
I hate that I’m scared.
I hate that I’m more scared of women than men right now, because women in biker country know how to kill you without ever touching a weapon.
The pawn shop is supposed to feel safer. It usually does.
Always smells like mold though, dust, and desperation, from the desperate folks who come in, putting on a proud face.
And today it smells like baby powder too, because Lottie brought her kid to work again.
The bell over our door is a different kind of jingle, not cheerful, just functional, like it expects trouble and made peace with it.
Like one day one of the distressed folks coming in might not take my low-ball offer for their family heirlooms and take it out on me. But in all honesty, our clientele are nicer than most and treat us like a bank since the banks rejected them.
Mason is a little boy, maybe two, not really sure since Lottie counts his age in months. His blond curls bounce while he toddles between the counters dragging a toy Monster truck missing one wheel. Lottie scoops him up when she sees me.
“Brit,” she says, relief and worry tangled together. “You okay?”
“I’m fine.”
She snorts. “Bullshit.”
She shifts Mason higher on her hip. He smells like peanut butter and wipes, warm and real and innocent. A reminder there are still things in Hell that don’t deserve what happens to them.
“This is Mason,” she says like she’s introducing him again on purpose, like she wants to anchor me to something normal. “You remember him, right?”
“Oh, I was supposed to babysit,” I say, forcing a smile that feels too tight. “Hey, buddy.”
Mason grins and shoves the truck toward my face like it’s a sacred offering. I take it and make a little vroom sound because that’s what you do when a toddler hands you something broken and expects you to treat it like treasure.
“Run him over to Hollar Dollar and get him some yum yums,” Lottie says in her best baby voice. Then she drops it and looks at me like she’s making an executive decision. “And take your time. I need five minutes with my thoughts before the universe hands me another problem.”
I take Mason on my hip and head for the front.
“Careful,” a voice says from behind the counter.
I jump so hard Mason giggles.
Becki Crowley is leaning on the glass case.
Dark hair pulled back, eyes sharp, mouth set like she sees more than she says.
She’s wearing a Hollar Dollar tee and jeans with a rip at the knee, and she looks tired in a bone-deep way I recognize.
The kind of tired that doesn’t come from work.
It comes from surviving the same story too many times.
“Jesus,” I say. “Warn a girl.”
She lifts a brow. “You ain’t the only one getting watched these days.”
That settles wrong in my stomach, heavy and cold.
I force a laugh I don’t feel. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means Hell’s got eyes,” Becki says, and her gaze flicks to the front window like she expects to see somebody standing there.
Mason smacks my shoulder with his truck, impatient. I turn toward the door before my face can give away how hard my pulse just kicked.
Hollar Dollar is bright and loud and cheap, aisles stacked with sugar and plastic and more desperation.
Mason clutches a bag of mini-Oreos like he earned them through hard labor.
I keep checking windows, the door, the reflections in freezer glass.
I hate myself for it, but I do it anyway.
When you’ve been poor your whole life, you learn to watch for danger the way you watch for price tags.
By the time we’re back at the pawn shop, Lottie is waiting like she’s been counting seconds. She takes Mason and shifts him onto her hip with practiced ease.
“Brit,” she says quiet, “come in the back.”
She doesn’t ask. She never does when it matters.
The office is small and cluttered. Old receipts. A couple of guns locked in a cabinet behind her desk. A half-finished cup of coffee that smells burned. Mason gets set into a playpen with his snacks and toys, and Lottie shuts the door halfway like a shield.
Becki follows and leans in the doorway, arms crossed, watching like she’s security and witness both.
“On break,” she explains.
Then Lottie looks at me. Her eyes shoot holes in me.
“You didn’t just dance with him,” she says.
It ain’t a question.
My throat tightens. Hives crawl up my neck. “We didn’t f.u.c.k.,” I say, and I keep my voice low because Mason doesn’t need new vocabulary today.
“I know,” Lottie says too fast, and I can hear her checking her own words like she’s trying to keep the world from twisting them. “I know that. But Hell don’t give a shit about right.”
Becki’s eyes sharpen. “Beth thinks you did.”
“That’s it,” Lottie adds. “That’s all it takes.”
I shake my head so hard my fresh hair swings. “That’s insane. I was unconscious.”
“Welcome to biker country,” Becki says dry. “You brush the wrong shoulder and suddenly you’re a problem to solve.”
“Beth…” I start, then stop because saying her name out loud feels like summoning something.
Becki’s eyes flicker, just a fraction, like the name hits a bruise.
Lottie exhales slow. “They ain’t gonna come for you head-on. Not yet.”
My pulse kicks. “Who?”
“Doesn’t matter,” Lottie says. “What matters is you watch your back.”
I think about the salon. The diner where my plate got set down without a smile. The way men go quiet when I walk past, like I’m contagious.
“I work,” I say, voice too thin. “I do my online class. I babysit. I mind my own business.”
Becki snorts. “That don’t save you.”