Canon (Klein Brothers 2)

And this was why I loved my work and why it helped me. Sure, behind closed doors, I was quiet, and it took a lot out of me to be the person I was in public, but work helped me feel comfortable in a setting that usually didn’t make me feel that way.

We absolutely had some nightmare clients, but salons tended to be where people went to feel better about themselves and get some pampering. Because of that, their personalities were usually relaxed and friendly, and the stories we heard would give Netflix years of material—this being the perfect example.

By the time I’d finished her hair, Cyn had been invited to Tony’s for dinner, out for drinks with the girls and me, and I guess we’d all brought her into the fold of Delicious Divas. I could attest to the fact a girl needed friends, and given that she was new to the area, I figured she didn’t have many of those until she’d come in here. Even if she hadn’t wanted them, she now had friends.

And trust me, as someone who’d felt what true loneliness and isolation was at one point—a girl needed real friends.

“How are those panties feeling now, girl?” Tony asked as he styled his hair.

“Like I’ve got the lovechild of a hedgehog and sandpaper between my legs.”

Looking at me in the reflection of his mirror, he pursed his lips. “Maybe you should have gotten a size bigger?”

Glaring at him, I picked up my scissors and snipped them through the air behind him. “I’m armed and ready to use these.”

Grinning, he winked. “Don’t forget, I know what Dariah sent you, and I’m not afraid to tell all of these lovely people what it was.”

Now that broke me out into a sweat. When I’d first moved here and had met Tony, I’d introduced him to my sister, Dariah, and her girlfriend, Giselle. My sister was a scientist who embodied and resembled the ‘crazy scientist’ persona perfectly, and they’d hit it off almost immediately. That’d been my biggest mistake to date. The two of them loved to torture me, and what’d once been a joke between siblings, sending random things that were totally crude, was now an outright war.

And she used Tony’s dirty brain for a lot of them. I really didn’t want to think about what they’d come up with this time.

Holding her hand up, Sayla called across the salon, “I wouldn’t mind knowing. We haven’t been filled in on what the last two things were.”

“Unless you want me to find the grossest challenge online and make you do it, I’d stop right there if I were you,” I warned her.

In addition to our salon, we ran a channel on YouTube and TikTok, which had become popular. It mainly consisted of hair and beauty tips and trying new products and giving our thoughts on them, but every so often, we’d do one of those awful internet challenges. Whoever thought that shit up needed help.

Smirking at me, she just shrugged. “It’d be worth it.”

That’s what we all said. Then again, every single person in the world lied, so we couldn’t really hold it against them when the public saw the truth.

“So, how’s it going with the hottie cop?” If I had a dollar for the number of times I’d asked this question, I’d be a rich woman, seeing as how a lot of my friends were involved with one.

This time, it was aimed at Naomi, the woman who was my squishy center. She’d been through so much and was a survivor in so many ways, but you’d never guess by looking at her how hard her life had been. She was just so ‘normal.’ In fact, she was the person I modeled myself on. If she could go through the shit she’d been through and still smile every day, then so the fuck could I.

“It’s going good, thanks.”

Glaring at her, I waved a hand. “Don’t stop there. I need more.”

Her cheeks turned pink with a blush that looked adorable on her but would make me look like a clown. Some women had all the luck.

“I don’t know what you want to hear?”

Turning on the couch to face her and crossing my legs, I clicked my fingers in front of her face to get her attention off of whatever was making her smile.

“I want to hear whatever just made you look like that, i.e., the good shit. Come on, share with the class.”

Naomi snorted. “If you want to hear things like that, you need to get your…furnace checked.”

I’d just taken a mouthful of water when she said it, and the laughter that choked out of me resulted in me inhaling and spewing water everywhere. It was an awful mix.

One part of me couldn’t stop laughing, while another part was desperately trying to save myself from being an internet ‘weird deaths’ story.