Nice Buns (Cheap Thrills 7)

“What do you think?”

She had such slight features that the style really suited her, but it would definitely be a shock for her.

“I think I like it?”

“It’ll be easy to grow out as well with the layers being longer back here, and in a couple of months, you’ll be able to tuck your bangs behind your ears.”

Lifting the bangs, I put them on the top of her head and pushed them forward slightly to add a bit of volume. “You can pin them up like this, and it looks adorable.”

“You know,” Maya mused. “It’s like a slightly shorter version of the original Rachel cut from Friends.”

She had to be high. This was nowhere near that cut, and calling it slightly shorter was completely wrong.

Still, I didn’t want to rain on Sonya’s parade.

Turning her head from side to side, she nodded as a huge smile broke out on her face. “I love it. I look younger, my neck doesn’t hurt so much with the weight of my hair, it makes my face look slimmer, and it won’t cost me a fortune in shampoo and conditioner anymore.”

Sometimes shit happens. There’s no avoiding it. Either other people cause it for us, or we do it to ourselves. But good things can come out of it, even when we think it’s impossible for that to happen.

Sonya had her something bad and good happen. I’d had my something bad and good happen. Cody had something bad and was still going through something good with all of the attention he was getting from the guys. And judging by how many people said Alex was happy nowadays—he was having something good, too.

I still wanted Neil to accidentally drop a pot of hot wax on his bare crotch and for him to have to rip it off to get rid of it, but that was progress. Cody hadn’t heard much from him since the disastrous visit, but that was typical of Neil and his parenting skills. At least he had positive male role models around him, on top of my dad and brother, who were amazing with Cody.

After Sonya left to go and show her husband, Tom, her new hairstyle, we finished up our clients for the day, persuaded Hannah not to post the video of her online, and then it was onto our second job.

As we sat around the pool with a glass of wine before we did the shoot, we discussed the changes coming to Delicious Divas Salon. We currently had aestheticians working out of there, but we’d had a Zoom call conference with Lilah Townsend early this morning about the possibility of expanding the business in a new direction.

Cosmetic surgery.

Well, technically not surgery, but procedures like Botox, fillers, and other cosmetic treatments like that. I’d seen her briefly when she’d come home from college from time to time, but she’d left before I’d moved here to become a nurse. Rumor had it that Mark Montgomery had something to do with her leaving, but I tended to ignore rumors as much as I could.

She was now an RN and had her NCLEX-RN and had then gone on to study to be a cosmetic nurse, so she had the necessary qualifications. This was something that’d boost traffic to the salon big time and may even end up with us needing to expand the place.

“I think you guys should do it,” Heidi said as she listened to us discussing it.

I loved Sayla’s sister. Their father was from South Africa, so they both had slight differences in their accents that emulated his stronger accent. They’d been born in the States but had lived in South Africa for about eleven years for their dad’s job, but then they’d come back when Sayla was fourteen.

Both girls were beautiful inside and out, and Heidi’s little girl, Nemi, was an absolute pistol.

Oh, and Heidi also made the best cakes I’d ever tasted. If she opened a shop up next to Nice Buns, I’d never fit in a pair of pants again. The only saving grace I had when it came to the yumminess they both created was that there was a distance between them, so I had to choose one or the other. If they were next to each other, I’d end up getting stuff from both at the same time. I had no cake willpower.

And Heidi’s cakes weren’t just sponge and icing, they were what she called ‘artisan cakes.’ The strangest flavors mixed together on the inside, and then the decoration was spectacular on the outside. Shards of tempered chocolate painted in metallic colors and dried fruits arranged all over the outside, or even edible flowers.

“I agree,” Jacinda nodded, topping up her wine. “There’s no harm in trying it, so long as we follow the health and safety regulations to the letter. Whatever we need to have in place, we do it and make sure it’s kept up to scratch.”