by Ray, Marika
“Yeah, who wouldn’t want their mom in Hell with them?” Amelia smirked. “I’m a twenty-eight-year-old woman and I can’t get my mom to quit checking in on me every day. Thank God I live at the hotel or she’d be even nosier. I love my mom, but damn, give me some space. Don’t even get me started on my dad.” She rolled her eyes and I frowned.
Hazel nodded. “I swear your dad has eyes in the back of his head.”
“Who’s your dad?” I’d have to keep my own eye out for this astute father. I’d been acting erratically lately and there was no telling what I could get up to around the wrong people now that my filter was gone.
Amelia lifted one perfectly sculpted dark eyebrow and my own cried in envy. “My last name is Waldo.”
My jaw dropped open. “Your dad is Chief Waldo?”
“Ding, ding. We have a winner.”
“Ohhh, you’re a legend around here.” And I meant it. I’d heard about the chief’s daughter for years even though she was significantly younger than me and we hadn’t run in the same circles. Rumor said she was quite the handful. And the rumor mill in Hell was never wrong. Maybe exaggerated a bit for good storytelling, but never wrong.
Lenora stood up and clapped her hands. “We can talk all about this stuff later. First, we need to get Lucille to the bathroom where we will assess hair and makeup. After that, clothes shopping!”
The girls dragged me into the bathroom after asking politely which way it was. I directed them down the hallway and shook off their hands, leading my own damn self to what was surely to be a frenzy of pulling, tugging, spackling, and revealing. I still couldn’t decide if the butterflies in my stomach were there because I didn’t want to get made over or if they were there because I did and couldn’t wait to see the final outcome.
After we all filed into the small bathroom, I had a seat on the closed toilet lid and let them stare at me, hands on hips, eyes narrowed, brows furrowed. I felt like a spermatozoa under a microscope. Thankfully I kept a clean house and didn’t worry about their level of scrutiny expanding to my decor or level of cleanliness. Although right about now, when Lenora picked up a lock of my hair and got a frown on her face, I was wishing for some distraction.
“I think we need to lighten this up. It’s spring already and this light brown color just isn’t doing much for your skin tone.”
“Agreed,” Amelia said firmly.
Hazel nodded and I guessed that was that.
Lenora clapped her hands again and practically skipped out of the bathroom. “I’ll go get my stuff out of the car,” she tossed over her shoulder.
“We’ll get started on the makeup.” Amelia’s eyes positively gleamed.
The butterflies beat their wings faster and I regretted not eating more than a piece of toast for breakfast. I needed sustenance to get through this makeover.
“Does she know how to do hair?” I asked, tilting my head in the direction Lenora had gone.
Hazel swiped a hand through the air. “She’s not licensed or anything, but she does all our hair for us. Has for years. Don’t worry.”
I tried to smile, but my facial muscles weren’t going for it. “How old are you ladies, anyway?”
Amelia pulled something out of the back pocket of those jean shorts and grabbed my head. “Hold still and this won’t hurt.”
“Huh—ouch!”
If I could have jumped, I would have, but Amelia had vise grips for hands, holding me in place while she plucked the hairs from my skull. They had to have been rooted that deep based on the pain level with each one she pulled.
“We’re all twenty-eight. Same graduating class. How old are you?” Hazel was quickly becoming my favorite. She wasn’t currently causing me pain or anxiety.
“I’m thirty-six, so I graduated from Auburn Hill High before you all started.” I suddenly felt ancient.
“So how come you aren’t hanging with your friends today?”
A lead weight sat on my chest. “Well, I don’t really have a lot of friends. I had a few in high school, but then I left for college and when I came back home, they’d all moved away.”
“Well, that’s just sad!” Hazel exclaimed, her mouth dropping open like it was a national tragedy.
Amelia tsked as she continued to yank out my eyebrows. I would have shrugged, but I was afraid of moving and having Amelia miss my tiny eyebrow hairs and pluck my skin instead. Could you go blind from a misplaced tweezer jab to the eye? I didn’t normally pluck eyebrows, so I didn’t know.
Hazel kept talking, oblivious to the physical or emotional pain being inflicted on me at the moment. “What kind of life is it if you don’t have your girlfriends around you to keep you sane? Or go shopping with you and tell you your ass looks fat in those jeans? Or cover for you when you sneak off into a sea cave with that hot guy vacationing here for the week?”
Hazel was no longer my favorite.
Despite my best intentions, heat built behind my eyes and my throat closed. Amelia must have noticed an increase in moisture as she took a step back, a look of pity stealing across her face. That expression was worse than the plucking.
“Wow, pulling eyebrows really hurts.” My voice was thick, not at all helping me out with a plausible story for why I was now crying. I swiped at my eyes to try to collect the moisture. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Hazel and Amelia dart a look at each other. Not even ten minutes into a hangout with potential friends and I’d already ruined it by crying. See? This was why I didn’t have friends. I was different. Always had been and apparently always would be. People who are different don’t have besties.
With youth on their side, the girls moved faster than a pouncing puma. They both leaned down and wrapped their arms around me, pulling me into a group hug I didn’t expect.
“What’s going on here?” I heard Lenora ask from the doorway.
I couldn’t see her since I was face-first into a bosom. Another body joined the top of the pack with a thud and the air got warm in the middle of the huddle.
“We’re adopting Lucille,” Amelia stated firmly.
“We’re a crew of four now,” Hazel said with a hitch in her voice.
Lenora squealed, sounding just like Hazel. “I’m hella stoked!”
I’d never been stoked in my life, nor had I used the term “hella” that so many of my Northern California peers dropped in conversation, so I guessed from her tone of voice this was a good thing according to everyone currently huddled together.
The weight sitting on my chest lifted and a sense of calm smoothed my ruffled feathers. All my old hurts from not having a friend to call with good news, or a bestie to do things with on a Saturday night, drifted away. Like a gust of fresh ocean air had removed the old stink of loneliness and brought in this new blast of women who had open arms and hearts, ready to love so easily. Could friendship really be this hella easy?
Despite my earlier thinking about being the older, mature one of the group, I let out a watery giggle, followed by another. Each one rocked the group as a whole unit as they held me tight. The giggling spread like a wildfire in summer and pretty soon we broke apart, all cracking up. I didn’t even know why I was laughing, so I surely didn’t know why they were. But it was either laugh or cry from the sheer beauty of new friendship. I chose laughter.
We chatted as Lenora got busy on my hair, swiping all kinds of noxious cremes onto my strands and wrapping my head in a whole roll of aluminum foil. Amelia and Hazel did my makeup, which was far less painful once the tweezers went back in her pocket. The whole time, they caught me up on their lives, their families, their occupations. They asked all about me as well, and I told them everything.
Barring my recent blackmailing.
I wasn’t ready to share that with anyone. And maybe I also just didn’t want to share the muscle-bound goodness that was Bain Sutter. I had him all to myself for now and I wanted to keep it that way. I’d analyze the ridiculousness of that thought later.
Lenora shut off the blow-dryer and grabbed me b
y the shoulders. “Are you ready for the unveiling?”
They’d kept me away from the mirror for three hours now while they did all kinds of things to the area above my neck. While I was excited to see what they’d done, I was also seventy-five percent sure that whatever changed wouldn’t make much difference. I’d had bouts where I’d tried makeup before and it never really did much for me. It always felt like I was wearing a mask or trying to be someone I wasn’t.
“Close your eyes!” Hazel demanded.
I squeezed them shut and coached myself on what to say. They’d been so sweet to spend this time on me, and no matter whether I liked it or not, I’d say all the nice things they expected.
Amelia spun me around and I felt them all huddling behind my back. I fluttered my eyes open and peered into the oval mirror I always looked into when I got ready in the morning.
The creature staring back at me looked like me, but like a Sim version of me. My skin appeared airbrushed. My eyebrows were arched perfectly like I’d seen on a women’s fashion magazine cover the other day at the grocery store. My lips were full and lush and just barely a deeper color than my natural shade.
And my hair.
My jaw dropped open and all the words I intended to say flew out the bathroom door and into the ether. This wasn’t a time for words. This was a time for staring. And stare I did.
My brown, lifeless hair now had subtle streaks of blonde throughout, as if I’d just come back from holiday somewhere tropical where all I did was lie out on a beach chair and drink mojitos while the sun kissed my skin and hair. Lenora had trimmed it too, then blow-dried it so it lay flat and shiny, not a frizzed-out piece to be found. It swung easily, and for the first time in forever, I didn’t want to just sweep it back and into a bun to get it off my neck.
“Well? What do you think?”
I tore my gaze from my own reflection and saw Lenora looking over my shoulder with her lips pulled back and her teeth bared, like she was bracing herself for my wrath. She’d mistaken my silence. The heat was back again, this time roaring in with a vengeance, turning my vision into a swimming pool of three blobs behind me. I spun quickly and pulled them all into a hug, my arms barely making it around them before the waterworks started. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d had a good cry. Looked like today was the day.
“Good cry or bad cry?” Amelia asked somewhere to my left.
“Good,” I warbled out in between sobs. Jesus, Joseph, and Mary. I was ugly crying in front of my new friends, ruining the makeup they’d worked so hard on. I really was shitty at this friendship thing.
Their arms just tightened around me as they let me cry. A hand rubbed my back until the sobs quieted and eventually stopped altogether. A tissue appeared under my face and I let go of their necks to wipe my face and blow my nose.
“Sounds like that was really needed, huh?” Hazel cracked a joke and my mouth trembled into some semblance of a smile.
“I’m so sorry. I ruined your makeup.” I couldn’t even meet their eyes.
“Hey. Makeup is easy.” Lenora put her hands on my shoulders again and waited until I looked up at her. “We all take turns having good cries. Trust me. Gonna take a lot more than some tears to push us away.”
“Now have a seat.” Amelia pushed me back down to the toilet and I dutifully went, letting them reapply everything they’d already put on.
When they were done, they rushed me to my bedroom to get dressed.
“Time for the retail therapy at Hell Girl,” Lenora announced.
“My clothes are fine,” I said with a smile, opening my closet to find something casual. I usually got my clothes at the big box stores a few towns over, not the trendy little boutique in town.
“Oh girl, you don’t even know what you’re talking about.” Amelia took one finger and ran it down the length of the wool skirts hung up in my closet. “Haven’t you ever wanted to wear something that caught the eye of every man in the room?”
I grimaced. “Ew. No.”
I turned away to pull on some khaki slacks and a cute floral blouse with puffy sleeves that let the wind through the thin material. Although if I thought about Amelia’s question, I wouldn’t mind catching Bain’s eye. Not that I liked the guy or even tolerated him. It would just be nice to know he saw me as an attractive female. Which made no sense because I couldn’t stand the guy. Maybe walking in on him fisting the mister had addled my brain. Putting him and The Cock firmly out of my head, I slipped my feet into some ballet flats and looked over at the girls.
“Ready.”
Amelia put her hands on her hips, looked me up and down, and raised that damn eyebrow again.
“You sure about that?”
12
Bain
Monday morning came all too soon. I’d spent all day Sunday, my one day off, unpacking the boxes of crap I’d brought into the house when I moved to Auburn Hill. For a single guy, I sure had a lot of crap I didn’t need or have any use for. I briefly considered setting fire to the lot of it, but decided against it as it wasn’t a burn day and I didn’t need Chief Waldo breathing down my neck after that inmate had gotten out last week. Besides, I needed all the kitchen utensils so I wasn’t eating out at Hell’s Tavern every night. I wasn’t getting any younger and my belt wasn’t getting any looser. I needed to cut back on the nightly beers.
So yeah, Monday morning was a little rough, but I felt satisfied with my progress. I only had two boxes left to unpack and they were books. I’d have to build a bookshelf first and then I could be fully unpacked.
“Morning, Bobby.” I nodded to the guard as I entered through the booking room. Behind the thick glass he lifted a donut in greeting and I would have smirked at his unhealthy breakfast habits if it hadn’t been for the bagel and cream cheese in my own hand. Mentally, I added a trip to the grocery store to my list of things to do this week.
“Morning, Meadow.”
My secretary smiled stiffly and looked back at her computer before I could ask how her weekend went. You know, for an eighteen-year-old, she sure does keep quiet. Guess we aren’t doing small talk.
I closed my office door and sat down at my desk to eat my bagel while I went over the emails that had come in yesterday. Movement out of the corner of my eye had me ignoring my computer and focusing on the building next door. Lenora, the new friend I met the other day at the bonfire, pulled into the fertility clinic. I smiled just thinking about Saturday afternoon.
Flying right by Lucille Eureka broken down on the side of the road set my soul on fire. Motivational gurus were always saying you should do what lights that flame inside of you, so I did. I left her blackmailing ass right there with a dead vehicle. But not before rolling down my window so she got a good gander at my smug smile before I left her in my dust.
Now, now. My smugness only lasted a split second before I dug my cell phone out of my pocket and called Lenora. She’d told me she was the only Uber driver in town. Figured she could come pick up Lucille. I was an ass, but I was also a gentleman who couldn’t leave a female stranded on the road. Plus, I knew we weren’t releasing any more inmates that evening, so she wouldn’t be hassled in the five minutes between when I left her and when Lenora came by to pick her up.
Lenora answered right away and said she just accepted a ride from that address and was already on her way. See? I got in a dig at Lucille and she got a ride. All’s well that ends well. I even passed Lenora’s little sedan as I made the turn onto Main Street. We’d waved to each other and I felt reassured Ms. Eureka would be fine.
That self-satisfaction reflecting on Saturday night only lasted a few seconds. The passenger side door of Lenora’s car opened up and an interestingly beautiful woman emerged. Her long blonde hair covered her face as she tugged down her short, tight black skirt. The woman had curves for days. For a split second I forgot all about my hard feelings toward Lucille and all I could think about was the gorgeous creature making her way to the front door of the clinic. If she was having fertility
problems, I was happy to offer myself as tribute.
Not that I wanted any babies of my own right now.
But I could sure have fun trying to get her knocked up the old-fashioned way.
Lenora jumped out of the car as the woman unlocked the front door to the clinic. I frowned, a niggling thought at the back of my mind making me pause in my baby offering musings. Lenora held up a tote bag and ran it over to the woman, then ran back to her car and headed out of the parking lot. The woman stepped her beautiful ass through the front door and I lost sight of her.
Who the hell was that?
And why was she carrying Lucille’s ridiculous tote bag and unlocking Lucille’s place of business.
I swallowed hard and the bite of bagel I was chewing turned to dust.
Did I just ogle my blackmailer and mentally offer to give her babies?
* * *
I finally buried myself in work, lost in the world of inmate transfer schedules, a food vendor doubling their rates, and an employee already filing a Workman’s Comp injury. Yesterday, one of the janitors was called in to clean up a huge mess where an irate inmate pissed on the cement outside their cell when they didn’t want to go back in after their mandatory outside time. The janitor slipped in the piss, fell face-first, and chipped a tooth. The whole thing gave me heebie-jeebies.
A loud bang had me jumping up and grabbing my service weapon before I could take in what was going on. In the doorway, hands on hips like a vengeful superhero, stood Lucille. The door swung back from where it had hit the wall in her mad rush to enter and almost clipped her in the face. She got a hand out in time and gave it another fierce shove, but moved inside before it swung back yet again and clicked shut.
“Easy on my drywall there, killer.” I put my gun back in its holster and sat down. Not because I wanted to sit but more because my legs wouldn’t hold me any longer. To say my knees went weak would be an understatement.
