Help is good.
I know this.
But I still distract myself while he works the knot—which is coming free—by staring at his phone.
And then I get mad all over again because while I’m twisting the phone to try to keep the light aimed correctly, I catch sight of the picture on his phone’s home screen.
It’s his Demons soccer team that he won’t let Junie try out for.
“Mom?” Junie says again. She’s close now. I can tell by her voice.
“Got my hair tangled,” I tell her. “I’m fine. I’ll be fine.”
And now my daughter is sighing just like the man whose fingers keep brushing mine, making sparks shoot up my arm and my vagina flip inside out.
You are getting nowhere near this man, I remind her.
His breath on my ear makes her flip again.
Clearly, I have a type.
I like the guys who don’t like me.
“How did you get it this knotted?” Flint asks.
“I asked myself, Self, what’s the very worst way we could tie our hair up around this chain and make for a super-uncomfortable situation for everyone tonight? and then I did that, but worse.”
Yep, I am totally at my best today.
“Back up,” Junie says to Flint. “You’re making it worse. Mom, stay. I’ve got this.”
“Junie—”
“Remember last Fourth of July parade? And the lamp chain on your float?”
I wave Flint’s phone at him, gesturing for him to take it back. “She’s right. We’ve got this. Thank you so much for thinking of us and bringing our dinner. That was very kind.”
“I’m half done,” he says.
“Half done isn’t all—”
A howl cuts her off midsentence.
A not-soft howl. A not-distant howl.
It’s answered by three more howls.
Chills race across my body. The hairs on the back of my neck stand straight up. My stomach flips, and my shoulders hunch in on themselves.
That’s an I’m on the hunt, and I can smell you howl.
“And we’re done,” Flint says.
I’ve barely registered the click of his pocketknife snapping open before I’m free.
“Where’s your car?” he asks.
“Oh my God, my hair,” I gasp.
“Mom.” Junie grabs my hand. “The truck. Where’s the truck?”
Flint grabs me by the shoulders, turns me toward the main drag, where streetlamps are flickering on just a bit away, and shoves. “Turn on your flashlights, and be as big as you can be.”
“Are wolves going to eat us?” Junie asks.
“Probably not. Be big, Maisey.”
My hair.
My hair.
And also—“I’ll offer myself first, baby,” I tell Junie while I stumble in the darkness, one hand grasping for hers, the other testing the spiky hair on the side of my head while I tell myself the lie that if the wolves eat me today, Junie will know to put me in a good wig for my viewing.
Won’t she? Crap. I need to tell her. But probably not before I’ve patched up our relationship a little more.
Are those wolves?
Or coyotes?
And does it matter? “When they attack me, you run, and know that I love you.”
Flint snorts.
Junie sighs.
And then we’re back in civilization, which wasn’t that far away, with raucous laughter spilling out from Iron Moose just down the street.
“There’s my truck,” I blurt. I have to get in my truck. Get Junie safe from the wolves. And then I’m taking us both home, where I can park in the garage and shut the door before we get out and then find out what my hair looks like.
And then also deal with the mess that I left all over the house as I was cleaning out the last of Uncle Tony’s belongings from the room that the estate sale people left them in before our moving truck arrives tomorrow.
I am so ridiculous.
And this was a terrible idea.
All of it.
Dinner. The park.
Moving Junie somewhere with predators who like to eat women who have done their research and can theoretically but not actually handle wildlife.
“Thank you for our dinner,” Junie says stiffly to Flint.
He grunts out a “welcome,” and then I’m hustling my daughter to safety.
We get buckled in, her holding our dinners in her lap, and when I’m sure the windows are rolled up, I turn to face her. “I’m so sorry I was too late in getting us here for you to try out for soccer. I’ll make this up to you.”
She snorts.
“I mean it, Junie. I’ll get you a private coach or find another league somewhere in the state for you to play in, no matter how far we have to drive, and—”
“Mom. It’s okay.”
Seven thousand pounds lift off my shoulders even though I don’t entirely believe her.
“I don’t think it is.” I squeeze her hand. “I know this is hard, and I keep disappointing you.”
“I don’t want to play soccer if he’s the coach.”
“Junie—”
“Stop, Mom. I get it. You have to do this life-adventure thing and figure out who you are now that you’re not Dad’s second fiddle and everyone hates you for what Grandma did. And I’m stuck in the middle, the semikid, semiadult who has to finish high school because that’s what society says I have to do, even though I could take care of myself just fine if I faked an ID and a diploma and got a job and an apartment.”
I ignore the amount of thought she’s clearly put into this. Junie’s conversations only show you the tip of the iceberg when it comes to what she’s researched.
Teenagers are smart, and they have entirely too much information at their fingertips.
“You forgot the part where you have to learn to drive,” I say.
“I’m also going to get a sugar daddy who comes with a chauffeur.”
Hand me a paper bag. I need to hyperventilate. But I stuff it all down inside to peer at her in the growing darkness. “You’re not mad anymore?”
She snorts again, but this one is decidedly less funny. “Right now. Right now, I’m just glad to still be alive.”
Right now.
I’ll take it.
Chapter 6
Maisey
Getting to know a new stylist wasn’t supposed to be the first thing on my to-do list this morning—our stuff is being delivered in a few short hours, and I still need to finish clearing out the last of Uncle Tony’s things from the room Junie picked as her own, plus formally register her for school—but here we are, with my hair taking priority over turning my inherited house into our new home.
“Oh, you did a number on this, didn’t you?” Opal of Opal’s Cut ’n Curl says as she studies the crazy clump of hair sticking out sideways over my ear.
No amount of washing, combing, styling, or hiding it with my longer hair worked to pin it down.
My options were spending the next year in a bandanna or moving a haircut to today’s top priority.
When I called Opal this morning and said I was new in town with an emergency, she knew exactly who I was and told me to come on in.
I’m having regrets.
Don’t get me wrong—the salon is charming, and I adore it. The bright-white walls are tastefully covered with artistic silhouettes of chic women having good hair days. There are two massive windows on either side of the glass door, letting in a ton of natural light. Translucent globe lamps hang at various lengths through the space, supplemented with recessed lighting. The waiting room chairs are bright and fun, in yellows and pinks and purples, and the end tables have piles of recent celebrity-gossip and women’s magazines.