Her head tipped to the side, her eyes filling with confusion. “How’s that?”
“You both dropping everything so I can get a new hairstyle,” I explained and shook my head. “That’s me. Part of me at least. Selfish.”
“May I ask, if you met me and I behaved like you’ve behaved since I met you, and suddenly I phoned you, making it clear you needed me, how you would feel?”
Oh God.
“Honored that you asked me,” I said quietly.
“Indeed,” she replied firmly.
“I’ve made a mess of my life,” I shared.
“Join the club, Amelia,” she returned instantly.
I blinked and another tear escaped down my cheek.
What was she talking about?
She was gorgeous. She was the most fashionable woman I’d ever seen. She was always turned out perfectly. She had Jake, who was nice and sweet and almost as handsome as Mickey and he was so into her, it wasn’t even funny. Her son was adopted, but he clearly adored her beyond reason. And Jake’s other two kids loved her the same way.
She had everything.
How was her life a mess?
“I didn’t always have Jake and all that he brought to me,” she announced, as if hearing my thoughts. “I didn’t always have Conner and Amber and Ethan. I didn’t always have Alyssa and Junior. I used to have next to nothing. Then,” she leaned into me, her eyes holding mine, “with a good deal of help, at long last, and when I say that, I mean for me it lasted decades, I picked up the pieces.” She reached out and grabbed my hand. “You’ll note, in saying that, when I did, I did not do it alone.”
Another tear chased down my cheek.
Josie watched it then looked back at me.
“Will you give me the honor of letting me help you not go it alone?”
Without the ability to do anything else, I nodded.
She squeezed my hand.
“Thank you,” she whispered.
“Don’t mention it,” I whispered back, the only way I’d be able to speak.
She started chuckling.
“Back!” Alyssa cried, and Josie and I both jumped, Josie straightening away from me, my eyes going to Alyssa in the mirror. “Right, bringing you back to your original beauty with threads of blonde to make it exciting, just pieces throughout this mass of gorgeousness,” she stated, dumping the two bowls she had on the counter in front of me and gently pulling the ponytail holder out, my hair falling around my shoulders. “But around your face”, she flipped my hair forward, over my shoulders, then twitched some locks by my temples, “more blonde to highlight your pretty face. Sound good?”
I had no idea. I’d never had highlights. My mom thought highlights were common.
I didn’t care.
Alyssa could do anything.
Just as long as she helped me to a new me.
“Sounds great,” I said softly.
She smiled brightly at my reflection in the mirror, straightened from me and shouted to the room at large, “Ruby! We got a mission and we need to sustain that mission so we gotta get our order from Weatherby’s. I’ll owe you a bottle of tequila, you go pick it up. Tell ’em to put it on the salon account.”
“The salon has an account?” a female voice I suspected was Ruby called back.
At this point, Alyssa was pulling on plastic gloves. “Tell ’em to make one.”
“You offer tequila, I expect Patrón,” the unseen Ruby declared.
“Whatever. Hoof it. My bitches are hungry,” Alyssa returned, reaching to open a drawer filled with foils.
“On it,” Ruby replied.
Alyssa started sectioning off my hair.
“What do you think of these?” Josie asked and I turned my eyes to the Surface screen.
There was a pair of silver pumps on it that were simply extraordinary.
“Maybe you should get my credit card out of my purse,” I suggested.
“Size?” Josie asked, her voice smiling.
“Six and a half,” I answered.
She grabbed my purse and sat in the salon chair next to me.
Alyssa twisted and clipped up my hair.
And as time wore on, I found it was astonishingly easy to pick up the pieces.
All you had to do was sit in a chair…
And have good women as company.
*
“Are you ready for it?”
It was hours later.
It was thousands of online shopping dollars later.
It was two sessions of makeup lessons (Alyssa’s salon did special occasion makeup and had a huge trunk full of it). This done in between me “cooking” and getting my hair washed out, Alyssa taking a client, then coming back to do a cut (with my side or back to the mirror), Alyssa taking another client, then coming back to do the style.
Now I was done.
Staring at the back wall, unable to see myself in any of the copious mirrors around me, I replied on a lie because I was anxious as anything, “Ready.”
She whirled me around.
I looked in the mirror and watched my face crumple.
“Girl, do not start crying!” Alyssa fairly shouted. “You’ll mess up your makeup.”
I took a breath in through my nose. I took another one in through my mouth.
And I stared at me.
Alyssa had cut in delicate layers, these making my now shining, gray-less, subtly highlighted hair less heavy. These layers were more distinct around my face where she’d feathered them down the sides and cut in a long bang that hung to my eyelashes and dipped lower at my temples. That and the increased blonde around my face giving my skin a healthy glow. And Josie’s expert makeup tactics that were all about proper use of color, perfect shading, all of this packing a punch, made my eyes pop even more than they used to do.
I looked younger, not decades, but definitely younger.
Mostly, I looked like I gave a shit. I looked like I cared. I looked like I was worth something…to me.
Worth taking care of.
Worth spoiling.
Worth everything.
“My husband who I loved more than anything on this earth, save my children, had an affair with a nurse at his hospital, put an engagement ring on her finger before he asked me for a divorce, and married her only days after we signed the papers,” I said to the mirror, my eyes on my eyes, something I’d thought when I was younger was my best feature.
Something that was my best feature again.
Finally.
“Oh shit,” Alyssa muttered.
I felt Josie lean into me.
I didn’t take my eyes from me.
“I lost it. Completely,” I stated. “I went absolutely insane and made them both pay for this betrayal at every opportunity. My kids saw it. It was unhealthy. They didn’t like it. It went on for years and got so bad my ex had to move across the country to escape me. He got a judge to award him my kids. They’re all here and I followed them to heal my family. My husband welcomed me to Magdalene by showing at my new house, shouting it down and threatening me. And last weekend, my children made it clear they hated me.”
“Amelia,” Josie whispered.
Alyssa sat down in the salon chair on my other side and grabbed my hand.
I looked between them and then back at the mirror.
“I messed up,” I whispered my admission.
Neither of them said anything.
“I kept doing it,” I went on.