But because I want real friends. I want to fit in. I want to find a way to make things work so that we’re a positive part of the community, and I am clearly off to a bad start here.
So I flash Flint an even more brilliant Maisey Spencer, small-time home renovation TV star smile that I don’t feel and don’t like either. “That’s so kind of you.”
His eyes narrow. “You know I see through teenage bullshit every single day.”
“Guess I’m lucky I’m not a teenager.”
“Not much different.” He sets the cartons on the bench at the edge of the playground and approaches me, a looming mass in the dim light. “What did you do to your hair?”
“It’s chain-chic. Latest trend.”
He sighs. Again.
I do my best not to get snippy in response.
But then he does the very worst thing he could possibly do.
He slips a hand into his pocket, pulls out something flat and palm size, and then I hear the distinct sound of a pocketknife opening.
“Oh my God, no!” I shriek. I back up in the swing, some of my hairs getting pulled, and I work the knot around the chain faster. “You are not cutting my hair!”
“Mom?” Junie calls.
The light’s fading fast, and I have no idea if there are streetlamps or park lamps or anything here, and I’m suddenly acutely aware of the fact that someone once told me mountain lions are most likely to pounce at dusk.
Are there mountain lions this far east in Wyoming?
I’m safe because I’m basically in a populated area . . . right?
Hello, sudden regrets. I should’ve offered to buy Junie an ice cream cone, packed her into the car, and driven back to the ranch.
It would’ve worked a few years ago.
But that was before I screwed everything up trying to save my marriage by making my husband happier than I made my daughter.
“I’m not giving you a haircut,” Flint says. “I’m cutting six strands loose so you can go about your business.”
“This is way more than six strands.”
“It’ll grow back.”
“Cut my fingernails. Ruin my manicure. Rip my clothes. Steal my makeup. Throw a berry smoothie all over my best dress. Scuff my boots. I don’t care. But do not touch my hair.” It’s the one thing I’m vain about. The one single thing I spend any time on in the morning and any significant money on for beauty-supply products.
Vanity and I aren’t all that well acquainted—not really—but my hair?
I love my hair.
“It’s already stuck in the chain and ruined,” he says.
One lock comes free, but there’s another clump still stuck. “Is this how you handle your students? Let me take the nuclear option because you’re being emotional, and I don’t want to handle it now?”
“I handle emotions just fine.”
“Oh, I’m sure, Mr. Calm Down. Mr. Couldn’t Tell Me He’s Been Putting Me at Liability for a Lawsuit since Uncle Tony Died. Mr. I Don’t Like You, but I’m Not Actually Going to Tell You Why to Your Face. I don’t need this way of your handling emotions. Thank you for bringing my dinner. Now please excuse me. Again. I need to untangle myself and take my daughter home.”
If the past year has taught me anything, it’s how many facets there are to the diamond of life. I have friends—good friends—who picked Dean in the divorce because they thought I was what was wrong with my marriage.
And you know what?
I was part of it. Takes two, right?
But I wasn’t all of it, and their thinking that he was totally innocent has been a blow.
Especially when he’s already out promoting his upcoming new show with his mistress, who will forever be his mistress to me, no matter where their relationship goes. According to the private detective my divorce attorney recommended, Dean was already heavily involved with her before he filed the paperwork to make me his ex.
“I was going to talk to you about the kids and the ranch,” Flint says quietly.
Like he’s being the reasonable one.
I fucking—yes, fucking—hated it when Dean would logic me after he did something stupid that I had every right to be upset about, and I’ll be damned if I’ll let another man—even a man who’s hotter than the Deep South in August—ever again make me feel less than because I have emotions.
Dammit.
“I’m sure you were,” I reply as I work the knot in my hair. “And I’m sure you think I’m an absolute stick-in-the-mud for telling you no. But if my choice is between disappointing you or putting myself, and therefore my daughter, at risk, then it’s pretty clear what I should choose, isn’t it?”
If that’s not another sigh coming out of his mouth, he really needs to have that loud breathing checked out by a doctor. “Can I please help you get out of there before Earl smells your dinner and comes to check it out?”
My heart leaps into my throat. Yes, I knew it was getting dark, but why didn’t I think about the smell of our food?
Which he brought here and is clearly happy to blame me for. “I’m doing just fine.”
“You’re making it worse.”
“Do not mansplain to me how to untangle hair, please.”
“And how much experience do you have with hair in chains?”
“You’d be surprised.”
“Shit. Right. You did it all the time on your show.”
“You watched my show?”
“Tony watched your show. He talked about you all the time. Whenever I’d swing by, he’d make me watch it too.”
A wave of grief for a man I talked to not nearly enough in my adult life stabs me in the chest.
He finally had a tie-severing falling-out with most of Mom’s family several years ago, and I talked to him less and less after that.
Knowing what I know now, I wish I’d made more of an effort to stay in touch beyond the occasional email or phone call. He always had a way of making me feel so happy anytime we’d communicate.
While we’ve been talking, Flint’s approached me like I’m a wounded mountain lion.
I hold a hand in front of myself. “Do not cut my hair.”
“Hold the light,” he replies gruffly, handing me his phone, the pocketknife nowhere in sight. “You can’t see to untangle it from that angle.”
I take his phone. Our fingers brush, and I smell salt and lime. The man smells like a margarita without the tequila burn. Ironic, considering all he does is burn me.
“Shine it on your hair,” he orders.
“I am.”
As well as I can, anyway. When he tugs gently to untangle the strands, I feel it on my scalp, and my scalp is a freaking traitor.
I used to love it when Dean would play with my hair, but that was eons ago.
“Hold still,” Flint says.
I grit my teeth and try to hold still. I could do this myself, but that time I got my hair caught in the chain on Dean’s show?
When it aired, the editing made it look like I spent the entire job trying to get it untangled.
Much like every bit of the rest of the show, it wasn’t an accurate representation of what I did on that job—we shot and worked that house for a full week, and I was not stuck to that swing for very long—but it still took three of us a good fifteen minutes to accomplish the task.