Complicated

by Kristen Ashley

  “Well, that’s good,” Shari mumbled.

  “Julie Baker would tear her own fingernails out by the roots before she’d miss a chance to do something mean,” Joyce shared. “But she’ll haul her behind to Styles and Smiles all of once before she puts her tail between her legs and comes back to you girls.”

  “Yup, I’m not bothered,” Lou declared nonchalantly, running her fingers through Joyce’s painfully short hair to distribute the product that only Lou put in to make it look cute since Joyce was a wash-and-go type of woman. “I lay witness to no less than five terror attacks on hair that came to me from Styles and Smiles. Francine never mastered the art of foils to the point it’s nearly criminal she keeps on trying.”

  This was true.

  I’d had two women come to me after their hair had come off with the foils put in at Styles and Smiles.

  This made me think I never should have worried about Lou and her House of Beauty. Some women budgeted not only for the style, but for the gas that would take them across the county to see Lou or me. They’d take a floozy sleeping with their sheriff and having a foul-mouthed momma working there in order to get good hair, no sweat.

  And I’d met Francine. She was a nice lady. But unless you wanted a straight-up dye, bleach, set or cut from the era of Shirley Jones to Dorothy Hamill to her most contemporary look, the Rachel from Friends circa the first season, your best bet was to go to Lou’s House of Beauty or the Cutting Edge, which was miles away in Morsprings.

  We weren’t only the only shop in town. We were one of the only choices in the county.

  While Lou whisked off Joyce’s drape, Mrs. Young’s dryer binged and she pulled up the bonnet, doing this talking.

  “Hix’ll bring his girls back to you, Lou. Hope might not be levelheaded enough to understand her girls’ll lose their minds, they go somewhere and get bad hair. But Hix adores his daughters and he might be a man, but he’s also the father of two girls, so he’ll understand it. Not to mention, he won’t be too fond of wastin’ the gas money to get them to Yucca to see Francine.”

  “I hope so,” Lou replied, taking cash from Joyce for her cut and style. “They’re good girls and they’ve got great hair. I’ll miss having my hands in that.”

  “And anyway,” Shari put in, “he won’t dis the salon where his girlfriend works.”

  I felt a heavy weight hit my chest as my eyes shifted from combing out Mrs. Swanson’s hair to Shari.

  I felt Lou’s attention on me and I had a feeling she was about to say something.

  But I beat her to it.

  “I’m not his girlfriend, Shari.”

  “But I heard—” she began.

  “We met and we . . .” I slid my glance to Lou then back to Shari. “It’s too soon for him. He’s a nice guy and I’m glad I met him, but it was a one-time thing.”

  “Has he lost his marbles like his ex?” Joyce asked incredulously and my attention shifted to her.

  “It’s too soon for him.”

  “Too soon, shmoo-soon,” Joyce snapped at me. “Hixon Drake never struck me as stupid. In fact, the opposite. And everybody knows, good drops itself in your lap you don’t shove it off and say, ‘Now’s not the right time. I’m dealin’ with the fact my addled wife didn’t see the good thing resting his head on the pillow beside hers.’ No. You snatch up that good and hold it close and process all that dealin’ while life reminds you, you survive the bad, good always comes slidin’ back in right after it.”

  “That’s a nice thing to say, Joyce,” I told her quietly.

  “I’m not bein’ nice,” she retorted. “What do the kids call it today?” She didn’t pause for an answer. While hefting her tall, strong, sturdy, farmer’s wife body out of Lou’s chair, she declared, “I’m bein’ real.”

  That was when I looked right at Lou.

  Lou didn’t need me to look at her.

  She was already ordering, “Okay, let’s stop talking about this.”

  Joyce walked up to Mrs. Swanson and me at my chair.

  “Have a mind to stroll right into the Sheriff’s Department and share some of it with Hix,” she informed me.

  Mrs. Swanson made a frightened peep, likely because Joyce wasn’t only a wash-and-go type of woman. She was no-nonsense, ballsy and known not to care if you had a problem with her speaking her mind, in which she had a lot of opinions she felt the need to let out.

  I whispered, “Please don’t do that.”

  “I won’t, girl,” Joyce stated. “Have a mind to do it but I like you too much to meddle. He’s got his head planted in his keister like his ex-wife, he has to sort himself out. And if he misses out on a good thing doin’ it, that’s his problem.” She leaned into me. “But just to say, don’t you worry about Hope. Known her since she was a little thing. She can get up to some antics, but the minute she realizes it’s makin’ her look bad, she’ll back down. Everybody in this town knows that, and most everybody in this town knows you, so you won’t have any problems. Not a good girl like you. Just ride it out, Greta. It’ll be over before you know it.”

  “Thanks, Joyce,” I replied on a smile.

  “Whatever,” she muttered and turned to Lou. “Six weeks, Lou.”

  “You’re in my schedule, Joyce,” Lou returned.

  On that, Joyce walked out.

  “I hope he changes his mind about it being too soon,” Shari said, and I looked from rolling a thin rod in Mrs. Swanson’s hair to her. “Even my Rich says something’s wrong in the cosmos, you don’t have a man. I always told him I wasn’t sure there was a man that was man enough to be good enough for you.”

  At that, my chest warmed.

  “Wow, Shari, that’s so sweet,” I told her.

  “Maybe, it’s also true,” she replied. “I heard about you and Hix, I thought, there it was. I shoulda thought of that the minute I heard Hope’d kicked him out.”

  That didn’t make my chest warm.

  It made it feel heavy again.

  “My great-nephew, Owen, just moved back into town, Greta,” Mrs. Swanson said to me from her chair, and I looked down at her. “He’s a good boy. His dad’s gettin’ on and needed help with things. His wife had her head in her bottom too. But she messed things up at least three years ago. It won’t be too soon for him.”

  “I’m not looking for a fixup, Mrs. Swanson,” I said gently. “But it’s nice of you to think of that.”

  Her eyes turned to the mirror as I used the pointed end of my teasing comb to separate another bit of hair to roll, “Well, you just say the word when you’re ready, sweetie. Be my pleasure to introduce you two.”

  I again looked to Lou to see she was unravelling Mrs. Young’s curlers but doing it watching me.

  We had a hectic day seeing as we always had hectic days. Because of that, I hadn’t had the opportunity to share the fullness of what happened with Hixon in the back room with her.

  Lou and I had met years ago when she had to come out to Denver for her cousin’s wedding and the salon I’d worked at had sent stylists out to do the bride and her bridesmaids’ hair. Lou had sat in to keep an eye on things, we got to talking, and I knew she was my kind of people within minutes of meeting her.

  She didn’t hide she felt the same.

  We kept connected through email, texts and occasional phone calls, and not long after Keith ended things with me, she told me about Sunnydown, and the fact her stylist was moving to Omaha because the man she met online was there and things were getting serious.

  I’d then taken vacation out in Glossop, stayed with Lou and her family, looked into Sunnydown for Andy and found it was cleaner, nicer, the people were great, and it cost a whole lot less than where he was at in Denver.

  So I’d moved, and as his guardian, I took Andy with me.

  And Lou, with her long history of living in Glossop (she’d moved there from Yucca when she’d married Bill sixteen years ago) and all her connections through her work, had settled me right into that town like I’d been there since birth. />
  So we hadn’t known each other since forever, but we worked together every day, she’d looked out for me from afar, and she meant the world to me.

  In return, I gave great hair at her joint, treated her daughters like they were my own, and didn’t point out Bill was an asshole when she was at my place, drinking whiskey and telling me all the reasons Bill was an asshole.

  In other words, we were tight.

  And looking at her right then, I knew she was worried.

  Worried that word had gotten out about Hixon and me. Worried that my mom had thrown down. Worried that Hope Drake had declared war. And worried that Hixon had walked into the salon and talked to me in the back room about things I hadn’t yet had a chance to process through with my best bud.

  So I set Mrs. Swanson’s hair and put in Shari’s foils while Mrs. Swanson was under the bonnet. I then finished with them both while Lou took care of her clients that wandered in, got their hair done, had their say about Hope, Hixon, my momma and me.

  And when we had a lull with one of Lou’s appointments flipping through a magazine waiting for her dye to set, and I had a break to go out and get us a late lunch, she cornered me in the back room while I was getting the stuff I was going to need for my next client.

  “One-time thing?” she asked.

  I turned to her. “Lou—”

  “Got three calls last night about what happened at the Dew, you know that, told you when you got here. Not ten minutes after, Hix strolls right in like he comes to visit you every morning before you start work. Then he leaves and smiles at you like he smiled at you. And it’s a one-time thing?”

  I stared at her. “How did he smile at me?”

  “Girlfriend, he aimed it right at you. How’d you miss it?”

  What was she talking about?

  “I . . . he . . . we . . .”

  How did he smile at me?

  I shook that question out of my head and spit out what I needed to say to Lou.

  “It’s his idea that it’s a one-time thing. He just came this morning to share that Hope was on the warpath. I . . . he . . . we . . .” On that, I just shook my head then whispered, “He was just being nice because what happened with us . . .” I sucked in a big breath and finished softly, “It was good, Lou.”

  She leaned back and threw out both hands. “Of course it was good. God can be a jokester but He wouldn’t play a joke so cruel as to make a man that fine and not give him the talents to see that concept all the way through.”

  God had definitely done that.

  “How did he smile at me?” I repeated.

  “Like he didn’t want to walk out that door, leaving you behind, but instead he wanted to drag you out right along with him.”

  I started breathing hard.

  She was right.

  How did I miss that?

  “Always liked Hix and Hope together,” she announced, and I again stared at her. “They looked good together. Both of ’em love their kids like crazy. Both of ’em loved each other like crazy. She can be a spoiled brat, and he’s a man, no escaping any man having his moments of being totally clueless, not even a man like Hix. But he loved her. Way he looked at her stated plain he didn’t care everyone knowing just how much. Thought it was a shame, them going through that rough patch.”

  As much as I never really liked Hope, and I hadn’t known Hixon at all, I’d felt the same.

  “Until I got my first call about what happened at the Dew,” she went on. “And then he walked out of my place and smiled that smile at you. Then I thought, God works in mysterious ways. He looked at his wife the way he did for years and now it’s been proved she didn’t deserve it. But one night with you has proved he has it goin’ on, seein’ as he realized what he’d found with the way he looked and smiled at you.”

  I again shook my head. “He was . . . what happened . . . it was just a mistake. Not a mistake, exactly, but bad timing. Nothing’s happening. He just divorced her a few weeks ago.”

  “I don’t care if he divorced her yesterday,” she retorted. “He may be in denial, Greta, too much coming at him too soon. Got no idea what it takes to rebuild your life after a marriage of near on two decades falls apart. Don’t wanna know. But even a good guy like Sheriff Drake doesn’t hear his ex is on the warpath and then walk his ass to the local salon to warn his one-night stand to batten down the hatches. He gets on with things and lets the sisterhood work out their issues and the chips fall as they may. At best, he sends his deputy, who’s one of your clients, to give you the warning. What he doesn’t do is take his time to have a private moment with you in the back room of your place of business, then walk out after sharing with you it was what it was and now he’s moving on by looking at you and smiling at you the way he did.”

  “I can’t believe that,” I told her.

  “I can since I saw it with my own two eyes. And just sayin’, I wasn’t the only one.”

  I couldn’t think on that.

  She had to get me.

  And I had to get me too or I might do something dangerous.

  Something I never did.

  Hope.

  “No, you don’t understand what I’m saying. I can’t believe that in the sense I won’t.”

  She shut up.

  I piped up.

  “Listen, Lou, he made things clear, now twice, that it was what it was and it’s done. You may be reading it a certain way because you love me and you like him and you like the idea of him with me. But what you saw wasn’t what you saw. Even if it was and he’s got things screwing with his head, I can’t believe it was what you saw because I’ve got enough on my plate, and I can’t take on all of that and how it might play out.”

  “Greta, girlfriend—”

  I stepped closer to her and gave her a small, not-happy smile.

  “He’s a good guy and that’s the reason he came himself. And there was another reason, that being him explaining where he’s at. And I appreciate that, Lou. Because there was something between us and it was good. I felt it and I think he did too. But at this time in his life, he goes there, taking me with him, with Hope being the way she is and him being put through the wringer by her, he’s trying to save me from being put through that wringer too with things up in the air with how that’d play out. He’s protecting me from that. And we only had one night, I don’t know him all that well, but that says a lot about him.”

  “I know how it’d play out,” she declared.

  “No you don’t. And I don’t. And he doesn’t either,” I replied. “You said yourself, and I saw it too, how he feels about her. It’s too fresh and they’d been together a long time, they have three kids, they live in a small town, anything could happen.”

  “Are you saying you think they’ll patch things up?”

  I shrugged. “Maybe.”

  Her brows knitted. “Are you saying he told you he wants that?”

  I shook my head. “I don’t think so. She didn’t seem like his favorite person.”

  “Well you know what?”

  Oh boy.

  I knew some whats.

  I also knew sometimes I didn’t want to hear Lou’s variety of what.

  She was worse than Joyce.

  “Lou—” I tried to waylay her.

  “Hope Drake is gonna be a lot less than his favorite person when someone stops keepin’ their mouth shut, waiting to see how it’ll play out between them, now that those papers have been filed. Someone is gonna share that the reason she put him through that wringer is because she wanted him to use the inheritance he got from that uncle of his to buy her a twenty-five thousand dollar twentieth anniversary ring instead of what he wanted to do with his inheritance.”

  I tried again. “Lou—”

  And failed.

  “That being save it in case of emergencies. But if those didn’t come around, use it to put his girl through law school and maybe have a little extra to help his other girl with whatever she wanted to be in this life, and use what they’d saved f
or both of those things to give his daughters the best weddings they could dream up.”

  Yeah.

  I had a feeling Hixon wasn’t going to be too happy with his ex-wife when that someone got around to sharing just that about Hope.

  Lou kept on.

  “Probably the person in this town who was most freaked Hixon signed his name to those papers was Hope. She thought he’d cave. He didn’t cave. And now she’s scrambling. She screwed the pooch, and huge. And she’s not as stupid as she seems. She needs to get him back before Hix is the wiser to her bullshit. If they’re back together, no one will say a word. He finds someone worth his time in the meanwhile, she hasn’t just screwed the pooch. She’s plain old screwed.”

  “This doesn’t have anything to do with me,” I pointed out.

  “Honey, you’re wrong. I don’t know what happened at the Dew, or after it, I just know he walked in somehow knowing the time you were on today and arriving at that time so he was the first person you saw, besides me. And he did all that with one thing on his mind.” She leaned into me again. “You. That doesn’t say one-night stand. That says protect your woman.”

  Protect your woman.

  Your woman.

  His woman.

  “Please stop,” I begged.

  She leaned back.

  “It isn’t that,” I reiterated.

  She looked at me for a second then advised, “Greta, sometimes to carve some good in your life, you gotta work for it and even fight for it.”

  She might be right.

  She was still wrong.

  “It isn’t that,” I said yet again.

  Her voice got gentle. “Love you, honey. You know it. Never doubt it. But you let life happen to you and sometimes it’s a good thing to fight back.”

  “You’re right. Definitely. You’re right about that. But this isn’t the time for that.”

  “I think—”

  “Keith was it for me.”

  She closed her mouth.

  I felt my eyes sting but pushed through it. “He was my everything.”