Nice Buns (Cheap Thrills 7)

The woman was staring at Jacinda open-mouthed in the reflection of the mirror as she turned to leave her, but then my friend must have remembered something because she spun back again.

“Where are my manners. Would you like a coffee? Water? A soda, perhaps?”

The woman snapped out of her stupor and stood up. “I don’t have to bring my business to your salon, you know. I’ll just take it somewhere else, and I’ll make sure everyone I know does the same thing.”

Copying the woman’s sniff and shoulder shrug from only moments before, Jacinda followed them with a sigh. “If that’s what you feel counts as a wise choice, you go right on ahead. Seeing as how we’re the only salon within five towns, we get booked up pretty quickly, so if you’re canceling your appointments, you’ll have to wait four months for another one.

“Now, I saw the state of your rootie-toots when you came in here, and I’m thinking you can’t leave your colors to grow out for four months. And considering that when you first came here, it was an emergency appointment to get a ‘home job gone very wrong’ fixed….”

You’d think the customers watching this would get behind the woman and perhaps take offense at her going through something like this. The reality was far from it.

“Sofia, I know your parents didn’t raise you to be so rude. These ladies do things with hair no one can, and there you are, pissy ‘cause you can’t get a man you’ll probably drain dry and dump in a month anyway.

“Your vagina ain’t laced with gold or rare gems. It’s not even the holder of a cure for the common cold. So sit down and shut the hell up now. You’re ruining my happy hair buzz I’ve got going on,” Mrs. Laidlaw snapped and then lay back down and lifted a hand to Paisley. “There you go, darlin’. I apologize for sitting up like that, but someone has to tell that heifer how it is.”

“Amen,” one of the other customers agreed loudly.

“I hear ya, babe!” another crowed.

Amazingly enough, Sofia sank back down into her chair and said not another word.

“Sorry,” Jacinda whispered, coming up beside me at the desk. “I can’t stand that woman talking down about Naomi.”

“Thank you for putting her in her place. If I’d been on my own I’d have done it, but you have a true bitch card, whereas I’ve only earned a slightly bitch one.”

Patting me on the shoulder sympathetically, she sighed, “Just take notes, and you’ll get yours soon enough. I got my turbo bitch card in the post yesterday.”

“I’m just a twat,” Sayla mumbled, walking up beside Jacinda and laying her head on her shoulder.

Ever since Jacinda had filled me in on the whole Sayla-Roque thing, I’d been making plans.

And, at that moment, the first one was about to start as my brother entered the salon with a smile on his face.

“I brought y’all coffees.” He held up the cup holder in his hand.

We were just moving forward to relieve him of them when the door opened, and in walked Dave, Carter, Alejandro, Raoul, Garrett, and Mark.

“I don’t care if it gets me a death sentence, I did it,” Mrs. Tarquin breathed, holding her hands out.

It had to be noted, she’d just turned eighty-three, but she’d had a facelift when she was fifty-eight and was a firm believer in Botox and fillers, so she looked like she was twenty years younger.

If that’s how you wanted to live, go for it. I had no issues with people doing things like that if it made them feel better, so long as they didn’t harm themselves mentally or physically in the long run. Plus, she looked outrageously good for her age, so she was living her best life still, way past the age most women did.

Dave winked at her and then focused on me. “We saw Roque coming in as we were walking to a meeting with Mayor Townsend and followed in behind him to see if there was a problem.”

The words were said like it was standard practice for that to happen, instead of it being totally out of the norm.

“I was just bringing them coffee. Evie said she was exhausted, and the coffee here wasn’t cutting it, so I decided to bring some fuel to get her through the next hour until she can go home,” Roque explained, catching Sayla around the wrist when she went to say hi to the P.V.P.D. officers. “I need a word.”

I swear my heart jumped, but then I saw the muscle ticking in Roque’s jaw and realized it wasn’t a good thing.

“Is she getting arrested? To be honest, she was probably with me the whole time because we tend to do that, you know? And because his dad”—I pointed at Dave—“is a big twat who posted footage of us running around after chickens in the backyard on our social media accounts, you know I’ve got security cameras up that’ll corroborate what I’m saying.”