Freebie
Cockamamie Unicorn Ramblings
About Piper & Rayne
Also by Piper Rayne
From barbershops to posh salons, gossip and hair are intertwined like love and flowers.
Being a hairdresser in a small town like Sunrise Bay comes with challenges. I’m not like my sister Nikki, who loves spreading any juicy story she can on her radio segment, Scandals of Sunrise Bay. But at the same time, I can’t stop people from sharing news they hear or discussing private matters while they’re getting their hair done. This is especially true on Teased Thursdays, as we call them, at my salon, Fringe. Every Thursday, leisure-suit-wearing Fran and her gang of followers inundate Fringe for their weekly curl, tease, and hairspray that somehow lasts them until the following Thursday.
The difference this week is that I had no idea I’d be the topic of gossip.
“Hot Pants was down at the bay, running without a shirt again,” Fran says with her eyes closed as I tower over her, washing her gray hair.
I mouth “Hot Pants?” to Malia, another hairstylist at my salon.
“Are you spying on Gavin Price again?” Malia asks, her fingers digging into Fran’s biggest sidekick, Nora’s, bottle-red hair.
“Fran’s daughter sent us all the CDs. We’ve been watching that show of his,” Nora says.
My eyebrows shoot up. Gavin Price, the Hollywood heartthrob who moved here permanently this past spring, is well known for his role in the teenage drama series High Society. I can’t lie and say I didn’t have pictures of him on my walls.
“I think you mean DVDs.” Malia bites her lip to stop from laughing.
Fran ignores Malia’s correction. “The four of us get together every Saturday night to watch two episodes. We make margaritas—virgin, of course—and eat pineapple upside-down cake.”
“Sounds fun,” I say, putting a towel around Fran’s head and slowly raise her up in the chair so she doesn’t get dizzy—a constant complaint that she posts on the Sunrise Bay social media page. As though I’m whipping people up in their chairs as though it’s a carnival ride. “Let’s get over to the chair now.”
“He’s so good-looking. You’re single, Posey.” She shuffles over to the chair, trying to glance back at me over her shoulder.
“Thanks for the reminder,” I say, easing her down in the chair, then I gently massage the towel through her short strands.
“I just thought most of your siblings have found love. What about you?” She eyes me through the mirror.
I offer her a tight smile. She’s not the first and won’t be the last person who wants to discuss my love life. “Well, I have the good fortune of being the youngest. Less pressure. Lots of time still.”
“Time flies.”
The other two women from Fran’s gang agree from the waiting area.
“The years will fly by, and sooner or later, the well of men dries up. Even here in Alaska.”
It’s common knowledge that the men in Alaska outnumber the women.
“You’ve seen all the single guys down there by the docks,” I say. “They wouldn’t know how to woo a woman if someone handed them roses and a box of chocolate.”
Fran shakes her head at me.
“They’d probably eat the chocolate and give the roses to their mamas,” Nora says in the chair next to me and chuckles.
“Malia found a good man,” Fran says, grabbing Malia’s hand as she passes by.
Malia kindly smiles. She knows she needs the good juju on the social media page since she cut Ginny’s hair too short last week, which is why Ginny is in the waiting area and not having her hair done today.
Malia has been seeing a guy, but the relationship is new, and she’s already confided to me about her concern about his lack of kindness to the waitstaff when they go out to dinner.
“Let’s go back to you and the ladies watching High Society,” I say. “I used to watch it. What season are you on?”
I want to move the conversation away from my love life. Fran is right though—lots of my siblings and stepsiblings have found the love of their lives. I’m not sure I’m ready for all that just yet anyway. I’m only twenty-four.
“We’re on season three. After they graduate from high school and go on to college,” Nora says. “I don’t feel quite so dirty now.”
Malia and I laugh, although I’m pretty sure Gavin was over eighteen in the later years he was filming High Society, portraying a rich teenager living in the elite circle of New York while attending a boarding school. I loved that show, but I really fell for Gavin when I was only eight and watched him in a family show called The Carters. He played the youngest brother, and I often imagined having a family as perfect as theirs while mine was falling apart after my dad cheated on my mom.
“I’m serious, Posey. You gotta go after him. Now that he’s chosen Sunrise Bay as his home, the women are going to flock here,” Fran says.
“I heard from Matt that the guys on the dock are worried he’s going to steal all their women,” Malia repeats what she heard from her boyfriend.
All the women agree again. Louder this time.
“He can’t possibly take all the available women in this town,” I say, combing out Fran’s wet strands to start trimming.
“Have you been in the same room with the man? He steals all the attention. He’s just got that thing, that X factor or something about him.” Malia nods, as though to convince me.
I have been in the same room as him, and although yes, he does have a certain charisma with his easygoing boy-next-door vibe that’s mixed with a rule-breaker, he’s also the man who ran me off the road in his ridiculous Porsche rental car last summer.
Hello, we’re in Alaska! Which goes to show that he’s either vain or a show-off. Probably a mixture of both, which means he is not for me. If only I could tamp down my crush from when I was younger.
“If I was your age, Posey, I’d be showing up outside his house in a trench coat with nothing underneath but skimpy lingerie.”
I almost choke from Fran’s words, smiling nicely at her through the mirror. “I’m just not like that.”
Because I’m not. I never have been. I’ve always sat back when it comes to things involving guys, letting them come to me. Even then, trust can be hard when your dad cheated on your mom. I know there are good guys out there—my brother and stepbrothers have shown me that—but I can admit to myself that I didn’t come out of my parents’ divorce unscathed.
I cut Fran’s hair while the entire salon dissects why Gavin Price is sticking around town, other than being good friends with my sister Nikki’s husband, Logan.
Some speculate he’s undercover for some important role he’s trying to get into. Others say he’s been chewed up and spit out by Hollywood and needs a place to hide out. Whatever the reason, Gavin has chosen this town as his home for the foreseeable future. The reason doesn’t matter, because the man is so full of himself, he can go back to where he came from for all I care. Then again, I’d probably miss spotting him at The Grind or seeing him leaving Logan’s gym all sweaty. It sucks having a crush on a man you don’t even like.