Until Jinx - Happily Ever Alpha World

I was free, and I loved it. But not as much as I loved Jordan Jinx Quinn.

One week later…

“Stop staring at it,” Maddie snapped, smoothing a hand over her hair. “You’ll get used to it.”

“Uh huh. What color are we calling this?”

“The stylist said it was ‘pink rose.’”

Pink rose was a magenta pink with purple added in, and the best way to describe it was as a dusky, purple-hued pink color. It was beautiful and suited her, but it’d been a shock when she’d turned up earlier with the new color shining brightly in the sun. I’d been meant to go with her, but I wasn’t quite ready to get my hair done. Next time I’d go with her, but there was no way in hell she was even looking at colors for my hair.

“What was the alternative to this one?”

Pulling out tubes from the box of makeup that’d arrived, she squinted at the end to read the name on the tiny label. “Emerald.”

Given that the tube in her hand had a beige liquid in it, I doubted she was reading its name out loud. That meant… “You were going to dye it green?”

Lifting her eyes away from it, she ground out, “No, it was a gray-blue color with a dash of green in it. Why it was called emerald, I don’t know. Emerald’s a green-green, this wasn’t even close to that.”

Opening up one of the other boxes that’d arrived, I pawed through the contents, barely recognizing anything in it. Yeah, Maddie had done some shopping online for me, and I’d held off opening anything until she’d arrived. I also had a good reason for that—because it was freaking scary.

Proof of which was the small bottle I was currently holding, as I read the back of it out loud.

“Salicylic Acid exfoliating concentrate. Removes dead skin cells…” My head snapped up to look at her. “Wait, why would I put acid on my face?”

Not looking up from the tubes she was laying out on the couch cushion beside her, she muttered, “It’s not like normal acid. That one just cleans the yuckies off your skin and tightens your pores.”

“How tight could acid make them?” Shaking my head, I threw it back in the box. “I’ll pass on this one.”

That got her attention away from the makeup. “The hell you will. Before now, you’ve existed with,” —she waved her hand in a circle—“whatever the hell you’ve done to clean your skin. And, honey, I’m begging you never to tell me what it was because I know it wasn’t good enough. You’ve been blessed with beautiful smooth skin, let’s keep it that way.”

Sighing, I looked back in the box, but all it did was scare me even more, so I closed it up again and put it on the table.

The next one was filled with sachets of stuff that didn’t look that scary—sheet masks. Fortunately, I didn’t have to ask what they were because there were photos and instructions on the back of the packet.

Sit with it on my face for thirty minutes? Even I could do that.

The next one sounded like a typo, though. Snorting, I held it up. “I think this one’s wrong. It’s meant to be an intensive thing for your feet to make them pretty and soft, but it says it peels the skin off them.”

Looking from me to the packet, she pressed her lips tightly together before opening them with a popping noise. “It amazes me that we’re best friends, you know. How haven’t you seen stuff like this by now?”

“Because I don’t hang around in beauty stores or on weird websites?”

With patience that I knew was costing her a lot to muster up, she leaned forward. “Okay, today is education day, and I’m the one doing it. There are two little baggies in there you slip your feet into, and then you sit back and leave them on for the time it says on the back. After that, you soak your feet daily for two weeks, and each time more skin comes off.”

I dropped that damn sachet like it was a hot coal. “That’s—“ I spluttered. “That’s barbaric.”

“It’s amazing, is what it is. You might look like you’re infectious for a while, but once all the layers—”

“Layers?” How many layers were we talking about?

“—come off, you’re left with baby soft feet.”

“That’s because it’s down to flesh that’s never seen the light of day before, Maddie. Whatever happened to moisturizer?”

Ignoring me, she picked up another box and ripped into it savagely. “Ah, these are hair masks.”

The mental image of what a hair mask might possibly be was too much, and I leaned forward and covered my face with my hands.

“Why am I masking my hair?” I’m sure Grams or her mom did that back when they were younger, tying oversized scarves around their hair.