Please don’t ask how I know they’re recent.
All I’m saying is, in the six years that I played the comic, inept supporting role in Dean’s Fixer Upper, it never got popular enough to warrant pictures of us on the covers of celebrity magazines. We were a D-list show that the network kept renewing because we weren’t controversial and Dean was a smooth talker. The tabloids never even picked up on my mom’s trial.
But my regret in being here isn’t even about being confronted with my ex-husband and his new girlfriend on the cover of a second-rate gossip rag, since he’s apparently at least B-list now that he’s dumped me and moved on with a new show in a more prime-time slot.
My second thoughts are all courtesy of how packed this place is.
I swear half of Hell’s Bells is crowded into this building. The salon has eight chairs, seven of them currently in use, and nearly all the chairs in the waiting area are occupied.
It’s a Wednesday.
Don’t people have nine-to-five jobs?
Or are work hours that flexible here?
I want to make friends. I do.
But I’m mildly intimidated and nervous that I’ll make the same mistakes with everyone else here that I somehow did with Flint yesterday.
“I didn’t do this,” I tell Opal quickly, trying hard to keep my tone light and amused. “Someone with a pocketknife and a death wish did this.”
“He was trying to save us from being eaten by wolves, so I guess he gets, like, two points for that. But he could’ve cut closer to the chain instead of trying to take your ear off.” Junie’s seated in a bright-pink egg chair along the wall opposite my salon chair, her eyes glued to her phone, which she occasionally lifts higher like she’s trying to get a better signal.
“Oh, are you the reason there was a clump of human hair in the park this morning?” Opal asks. She’s a white woman in her mid- to late fifties with her hair shaved on one side and the longer part flipped over her head dyed bright blue. Her smock loudly proclaims Don’t fork with me, and she’s wearing it over skinny jeans, high-top Converse sneakers, and a crisp white blouse. “There was a whole hullabaloo on the Facebooks about it.”
Junie snorts softly.
I try to catch her eye in the mirror to give her the Do not mock people eyeball, but I catch Opal’s eyeball instead.
And that eyeball is dancing merrily, like she’s waiting to see if either of us will call her out on hullabaloo or the Facebooks.
“I had a small mishap on the swing last night,” I tell Opal. “My hair had a larger mishap.”
“I’d say. Who’s this he who saved you?”
“A total basic snood,” Junie mutters.
“Ooh, a story,” Opal says before I can ask Junie what a snood is. “Do tell.”
“A local teacher from the high school found us outside in the park at dusk and startled us,” I tell her.
“Which teacher?” one of the other ladies calls.
“Mr. You Can’t Join the Soccer Team Because We Already Had Tryouts,” Junie answers before I can speak up.
There’s a collective gasp, and then everyone turns to stare at me.
No, not me.
Opal.
They’re staring at Opal.
Her lips quirk. “Mr. Jackson?” she asks Junie in the mirror.
Junie rolls her eyes. “Whatever his name is. He helped us bury a cow and made me think he was a decent human being and then dashed all of my dreams for an easy transition to a new high school.”
“That’s Opal’s nephew,” someone whispers.
I almost come out of my chair, but she plants her hands on my shoulders and keeps me down. “I’m a much better hairstylist than he is,” she says dryly.
I eyeball her half-shaved blue head. Am I that brave?
Am I?
Could I go drastic?
No, you’re a chicken, I answer for myself. You didn’t even participate in tattoo day in high school when all your friends turned eighteen. Also, Junie will be mortified and quit talking to you forever if she thinks you’re trying to be young and hip.
“Not the first time she’ll have fixed his attempts at a haircut,” someone says with a chuckle.
“He’s such a stickler for rules,” someone else adds, which, for the record, I do not snort at.
“And a heartbreaker,” the woman in the seat next to mine mutters.
Half the women in the room twitch.
I swear they do.
Opal ignores the murmurs. “I’m thinking we’ll give you a pixie cut.”
Junie gasps.
“Oh no, I can’t do short hair.” I cringe to myself—Who’s the stick-in-the-mud?—but I keep pushing anyway. “I have to be able to pull it back in a ponytail so it doesn’t get in my way when I’m working.”
“It’s called a headband and hair clips,” she deadpans. She runs her fingers through my hair, swishing it this way and that. “You’ll get used to it. And you don’t have a lot of options with this short clump here.”
“My hair—”
“New life, new hair,” Opal interrupts. “You can’t get out of a rut if you don’t make changes, and your hair’s a good change. Ponytail says I’m a mom who can’t fully get my life under control and is happy to let someone else take credit for my work. Pixie cut says Watch out, world, Maisey Spencer is sassy, ready, and fabulous for whatever you think you’re gonna dish out.”
“Hey,” the olive-skinned woman in the chair next to me says. She points to her own long hair. “Rude.”
Opal rolls her eyes, but she also looks amused. “On Maisey, not on everyone,” she corrects. “You make that ponytail look badass, Charlotte.”
“Thank you,” Charlotte says.
Opal ruffles my hair again. “Definitely a pixie cut. And if you truly hate it, it’ll grow back in another three or four years. What’s three or four years of learning to love your hair again in the grand scheme of things?”
“You don’t pull punches, do you?”
“Not when it comes to helping ladies step into the next fabulous version of themselves.”
“Can you talk to Coach Jackson and convince him that my fabulous version of myself involves being on the soccer team?” Junie asks.
Opal smiles at her. “You want on the team, you go talk to him.”
Junie meets my eyes in the mirror, then goes back to her phone. “His loss.”
“I love teenagers,” Opal murmurs. “They’re so very intelligent, and also so very belligerent. Sort of like newly divorced mothers who think moving across the country and into a random ranch they inherited from a free-spirited old guy will solve all of their problems.”
This could go really, really wrong. “You knew my uncle Tony?”
She arches a brow.
“Right. Small town. And Flint rents his gatehouse. Of course you did.”
“There’s not a person in town who doesn’t have a story about Tony.”
“Or Gingersnap?” Junie asks.
“Oh, that cow.” Opal chuckles. So do half the other people in the building. “She broke in my back door and got into my hair dye one night a few years back.”
“She broke into my law office while I was meeting with the governor and made a snack of his toupee,” Charlotte adds.