Page 104 of The Worst Best Man

“I just made it up to Aiden under his desk. What the hell do you want from me?”

Pru pointed at Frankie. “Oh, Christian! My friend here needs something done with her mop.”

A man dressed in head to toe black with a shaved head—irony of ironies—magically appeared behind her.

“Babe,” he said plucking a curl and holding it between his fingers. “We can do so much better.”

Places like this charged four-hundred dollars just for planting your ass in the chair, Frankie thought. She tried to stand, but Christian had some muscles under that tight black t-shirt.

“It’s my treat,” Pru sang out.

“You know I don’t like when you do this,” Frankie reminded her.

Christian whirled a cape around her and tightened it at her neck. “Now, what are we thinking?” he asked, holding her hair at varying lengths and glaring in the mirror as if looking for creative inspiration.

“We’re thinking a nice little trim,” Frankie said, snatching her hair out of his hand.

He just grabbed another fistful. “A trim?” he scoffed examining the ends. “You have what? Eight months of damage.”

“Don’t you think she’d be gorgeous with some highlights?” Pru suggested.

“That tin foil is messing with your brain waves,” Frankie shot back.

“Don’t mind her, Christian. She’s not usually this surly. Also, she’s from Brooklyn,” Pru said.

Christian spun her chair around and caught it by the arms. They were inches apart. “I need you to trust me. I do not do bad hair days. I do not deliver subpar cuts. If I give you highlights, you will wish you would have been born with them. I will make your hair into a miracle, but I need you to trust me.”

“Do it!” Pru hissed in a stage whisper.

Frankie pointed an index finger at him. “If you fuck up my hair, months from now when you’ve forgotten all about me, when you’re complacent, I’ll wait for you in the alley, throw you into a dumpster full of human hair and perm chemicals.”

“And if I make you look like the kind of woman who doles out whiplash from second glances, you’ll come back and let me touch up your highlights,” he bargained.

She offered her hand. “Deal.”

“Her boyfriend likes it long and wavy,” Pru added helpfully.

“Oh, so I have a boyfriend now, and I need to wear my hair to please him?” Frankie shot back.

Pru and Christian rolled their eyes heavenward in the mirror.

“I’ve got this,” Pru sighed. “Look Frankie. When you’re in a relationship, you don’t live your life to please your partner. But you sure as hell don’t figure out what they like and then run in the opposite direction to maintain some semblance of independence.”

Christian shoved his fingers into her hair like he was hand washing laundry in a river, turning her head this way and that. “One of the greatest gifts to give in a relationship is something very small that costs you nothing.”

Well, it was costing Pru four-hundred dollars.

Awesome. She was getting her hair cut by a Manhattan fashionista version of the poet Pablo Neruda.

She closed her eyes and let him do his worst. Flinching at the snips of the scissors and the tugs of the comb. She couldn’t stop thinking about Aiden’s face when he found her behind his desk. He’d lit up like Times Square. As if her mere presence was a gift.

She’d been holding on to the thought, the hope that Pru had been wrong. That she and Aiden were just having fun as they’d agreed. That he wasn’t looking for more. That she wasn’t secretly hoping he’d just disappear so she could be right. Would right have soothed her bruised heart if she’d succeeded in pushing him away?

She wasn’t a cruel, callous person. She wasn’t someone who crushed a person just because she could. Yet, she’d been so determined to keep Aiden at a distance she’d rejected him every step of the way. And he’d stuck.

Seeing himseeher? Unguarded joy. And if he was willing to be that vulnerable, the least she could do was meet him there.

After what felt like hours of fussing, she felt her chair spin around.