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The old courthouse—a three storey monster with beams two feet thick holding up the floors—barely looked recognizable to its former glory on the inside. Gracen and Delaney kept the oak floors but stained them the same dark cherry as the beams that stretched across the ceilings. Matching the building’s support beams jutting up from the floor to ceiling spread twelve feet apart with two rows of four. Those beams continued through the second floor where it supported the third, a square gallery that overlooked what had once been the courthouse.
Now, the second floor—bare of the benches and seating that had been sold in an antique auction shortly before Gracen and Delaney signed their names to the mortgage—was used for Margot’s aesthetician and piercing studio.
It had been beneficial when Delaney suggested they fill the second floor with something other than chairs for other stylists to rent. They already had an extra two on the bottom floor where they rotated students from the nearby town’s beauty school where they gained practical hours, and the salon took a fifty percent cut of their earnings. No chair rental on top. The same offer was made to Margot when Gracen approached the twenty-eight-year-old who’s beauty parlor had been closed because the church didn’t like sharing their view on the hill with an aesthetician and piercer.
Money could make anything move, it seemed. Even an almost ten-year-old small business who had continued to fight against the bullshit town ordinances for non-existent infractions that kept showing up on Margot’s door until her long-term landlord finally had enough.
Thankfully, Margot had the clients. The very nature of their business allowed them all that privilege. Ask a man in his golden years about his barber—or a mom of three who kept her same cut and color for years. Their customers were loyal for a reason. Beauty was a very personal business that came with a lot of trust and respect.
Gracen and Delaney provided the space where Margot could do her thing, and without question, the choice had been a good one.
Beyond, really.
Gracen was having second thoughts about saying so while Margot leaned in the doorway of the stairwell that led up to her studio and stared her employer down while she tossed back a few pieces of popcorn.
“Something’s definitely wrong,” Margot muttered around her food.
She’d already pointed out the tension between Gracen and Delaney earlier when the two arrived late, and in separate vehicles. Something that was foolish and unheard of for them. No doubt, her first clue that things weren’t right between the best friends. Clearly, their denials and desire to get a start on their fully booked workday hadn’t been enough to throw Margot off the scent of trouble.
“Don’t talk with your mouth full,” Gracen said. “That’s disgusting.”
Margot rolled her eyes and swallowed her remaining popcorn. “Okay, Mom.” She crushed the bag she’d come downstairs to pop while Delaney used her thirty-minute lag between clients to run for coffee and tossed it into the glossy faux-marble trashcan next to Gracen’s station. “But you’re bullshitting me. Something’s wrong. I’ve been listening. Stuff from down here travels upstairs, and you know it. You’ve barely spoke to Delaney all day, and you guys didn’t even have any students working in the salon today to hide it.”
Gracen’s brow dipped. “What?”
“You know, they buffer between you guys with conversation. I like listening in more than I do joining in, you know what I mean?”
“I gues—”
“Point is,” Margot interjected, cocking an auburn eyebrow high and narrowing her attention in on Gracen, she quickly added, “I was starting to think I might be working alone.”
Jesus Christ.
Gracen scoffed at the idea. “We’ve had a full day, talked to clients. It wasn’t that quiet, Margot. Come on. Be serious.”
“I am. Why do you think I’m asking again?”
God.
They really were that obvious.
At Gracen’s silence, Margot shrugged her shoulders. “I’m just saying, okay?”
No, it wasn’t okay.
Without a doubt, if Gracen just snapped at Margot to leave it alone, the curly redhead would. She didn’t overstep her boundaries when it came to the business side of things. She made good money without having to worry about all the other bills that came along with owning a business, but still had the set-up, control, and self-sufficiency at the Haus that she was practically her own boss. Each of the women handled their own clients, taking appointments for them, and seeing the workday through. They didn’t technically answer to each other unless it was owner-determined.
All in all, she had it easy there. Margot wouldn’t fuck that up, but at the same time, two years of working together with Gracen and Delaney led the three into an easy friendship.
As a friend, Margot sensed something wrong. It also happened to be between her employers. A tricky situation, certainly.
Gracen tried to keep that in mind as she pulled in a deep breath meant to quell her irritation. Grating on her nerves since the fight with Delaney that morning, it had only gotten worse the longer the two worked in silence at their respective stations separated by just twenty feet on gleaming hardwood floors and sunshine spilling in through the tall windows.
Apparently, they shouldn’t have agreed to talk about it later. The wait only served to give Gracen time to stew in her thoughts and feelings about the entire engagement situation, and Delaney’s prior knowledge. Or rather, all she could think about was how it left her staring in the mirror asking the same questions she had all those years ago when Sonny Masterson left her heartbroken while a dial tone spelled out the end of more than just their phone call.
Why me?
Why not me?
What’s not good enough about me?
It really wasn’t Delaney’s fault that those old insecurities and unanswered questions haunted Gracen throughout the day. She hadn’t ended their long-term relationship with little else but a coldly delivered it’s over. In fact, Delaney was there to pick up Gracen’s shattered pieces.
Maybe that was it.
The loyalty.
Or lack of it.
Delaney knew good and well how Sonny left Gracen, and how it fucked with her head for ... Honestly, it seemed like that side of things wasn’t over yet, right? Gracen couldn’t stop thinking about it, after all.
“Anyway,” Margot said, snapping Gracen out of her internal battle that sucked her inside a whirlwind of hell. Glancing sideways, Gracen found the redhead with a puckered mouth and wide-eyed expression that said she was holding something back.
“What?” Gracen snapped.
“You don’t have to say it for something to be wrong. That’s all.” Margot pointed at something beyond the windows overlooking the parking lot in front of the salon that extended to the road, and the river on the other side. “There’s Delaney. Just give me some head’s up if it’s going to affect my situation here, all right? Give me that respect at least.”
Gracen didn’t react to the familiar rumble of the Jeep’s engine belonging to Delaney cutting off in her parking spot closest to the front doors. She did muster up what she hoped was a confident smile for Margot.
“No worries,” she told Margot. “Nothing’s affecting what we’ve got going on here at the Haus.”
Margot nodded over exaggeratedly as the bell over the front doors jingled. “Right, you say that now.”
“It’s true!”
“What is?” Delaney asked at Gracen’s back.
Margot had already disappeared up the stairwell with only the echo of her footsteps left to answer Delaney’s question.
“Nothing,” Gracen said as she went back to her station.
“You sure?”
“Positive, Delaney. We’ve got clients coming in.”
The station and chair she used needed cleaned, and that gave Gracen a distraction to use while she dropped combs and scissors into the glass jar of Barbicide waiting to disinfect her tools. Soon, the high school would let their students out for the day, and the remainder of the Haus schedule for the day would filter in to be the buffer to fill the silence between Gracen and Delaney.
Not that it would help with Gracen’s growing bitterness. The festering pit in her stomach had turned into a fist squeezing her insides to death.
No, that felt like it was here to stay.
*
The three hours after Valley High let students out for the day tended to be smooth sailing for the Haus and its clients. Teenagers, mostly girls with a few boys thrown in the mix—some with friends, others with adults who were either paying or signing legal waivers upstairs for Margot—flooded the three levels of the salon from the black chairs and benches under the windows on the bottom floor to the gallery over the piercing studio where they waited for their names to be called.
Everything was fair game.
Town gossip.
The school’s most popular.
Even the occasional rumor slipped into the mix while the Haus employees worked and everyone else intermingled. For the most part, the adults kept the teens from overthrowing the place or crossing any lines. Especially in their conversations.
Kids really could be cruel.
Sometimes.
Nonetheless, Gracen liked the fast-paced and friendly atmosphere on most days, but each of her smiles felt faker than the last as the clock made of gun metal high on the far white wall ticked on and time crawled. It was only her lull in the last hour of the evening that allowed Gracen a chance to get a start on some of the closing chores. Sweeping the gallery, pulling out garbage bags in the studios and bathrooms. Even wiping down the high-touch areas with cleaning disinfectant to keep up on cleaning.
Margot and Delaney helped by rotating the chores in the mornings and afternoons while Gracen liked doing it to wind down in the evening. It allowed her to close her schedule for that last hour of business to make sure the place was mostly open-ready for the following day. Cleaning and tidying were two things Gracen never complained about, but it wasn’t OCD like Delaney complained whenever she went on one of her daily sprees in their own home.
Doing something just meant Gracen was busy. Not thinking. Less anxious because her mind had a task to focus on until it was finished, and wasn’t there always something else to clean in a house? She could find every nook and cranny.
Gracen tossed the last black garbage bag into the dumpster at the rear of the Haus before taking a moment to glance up at the towering maple soaring higher than the roof of their salon at the caw of a raven. Keeping the rear of the building shaded for most of the day with large limbs full of big maple leaves that scattered a canvas to the ground for them daily in the fall, it saved them on heating in the summer so they couldn’t bear to cut it down despite the way its growth over the decades caused it to lean hard towards the salon.
Margot said it best.
The trees were here first.
“Hey, you missed this one in the staff bathroom.”
Gracen caught the small white bag of trash Margot tossed from the rear exit doors. She opened the dumpster again to heft the feather-light bag inside. “Thanks; I knew I left one somewhere.”
She always counted the bags.
Margot shrugged off the help. “I heard Delaney’s last appointment canceled. She said she wasn’t calling anybody on the cancellation list, and I just have Shelly’s daith to do, and I’m done. So, if you wanna close a half hour early, we’re game.”
Gracen nodded, already heading for the doors. “Sure.”
“Cool, so hey.” Margot’s eyebrows jumped high to make a statement with her own.
“Hey, you.”
Margot chirped out a light laugh. “Anyway, I wanted to say sorry about earlier. I don’t mean to be a nosy bitch, I’m just—”
“We’re all nosy bitches.”
That earned Gracen a grin.
“Well, mostly true,” Margot countered, “but I’m also serious. I don’t mean to, like, cross a line with you and Delaney.”
“You’re not. And you didn’t.”
If the other woman wanted to argue the point with Gracen, she opted not to with a jerky nod before stepping back from the door to let her employer inside the rear of the building. A small corridor of stairs led up to the back of the salon where the office, staff bathroom, and exit door was sectioned off with an employee-only hallway. Gracen had just climbed the last stair when she heard voices traveling from the studio floor she shared with Delaney.
“I thought her last appointment canceled?” she asked Margot.
“Oh,” Margot said like it wasn’t a big deal, “I saw her cousin drive in with some other girl when I came down to use the bathroom.”
The news should have made Gracen turn around on the spot and head for the private office where she could shut the door until Delaney handled her unexpected—or was it? —visit with Bexley Reed. It had to be Bexley. None of Delaney’s other family would be caught dead speaking to her in public unless they absolutely had no other choice to save face and appear polite. Everything boiled down to appearances for those people.
Instead of hiding away with her feelings, Gracen decided she could and would power through it. Or maybe she was just a little too nosy and determined to prove something to Delaney. Not that she entirely understood what that something was now when it could be a variety of things, and none of them were particularly good.
Like pretending she wasn’t bothered by Delaney’s cousin showing up. It was a good, solid plan. Until the second Gracen walked out from the rear of the studio to find the other woman standing side by side Bexley. Alora Beau’s profile was hard to miss when her father was the pastor of one of two churches in town.
And not the one that opened its doors to all.
From afar, it might be hard to tell the two eighteen-year-olds apart. They were about the same height with a similar shade of dirty blonde hair that wasn’t quite as light as Gracen’s own wheat-gold locks. Longer than even Gracen’s hair when she let it out, the younger ladies hid their feet and feet of hair with flawless chignons. In modestly cut black, long-sleeved dresses that didn’t show off their figure and swept their ankles, the only thing different between the two were the red and blue shawl each wore tossed around their shoulders.
As the rumors went, after marriage, they could dress in something other than black, but until then, the only color women and girls were allowed came in their accessories. Something else Gracen had been told the church was known to control. Respectful—but not loud—bags, scarves, and shawls were permitted. No jewelry, of course. Not even wedding bands were permitted. Modesty was key, which would be fine, if it didn’t seem like the entire congregation looked exactly alike when lined up in rows.
At some point, it got creepy.
If not a little concerning.
Not that Gracen was ever rude enough to say it out loud. She kept those thoughts—as judgemental as they sometimes felt, even if she had a good reason to be more than a little wary about the tabernacle on the hill—to herself. Not everything needed to be said when certain things spoke for themselves.
Delaney sat in her swivel studio chair holding what looked like printer paper—although Gracen couldn’t see what had been printed on them—while the other two young ladies nodded between one another. About something Gracen couldn’t hear, but she tried to keep that from bothering her too much. They didn’t notice her approaching the station directly across from Delaney’s, but her friend did.
Margot lingered in the entry to the second-floor stairwell but said nothing as she observed the newcomers, and Gracen’s suddenly quiet demeanor.
Delaney, who had taken note of Gracen when she swept up the remaining items on her station to put them in their respective homes, told her guests, “Sure, we can do these—here, you keep them until we need them, all right? I’ll only need a quick glance to know who is doing what.”
“Sure, we’ve got a whole binder for everything to keep all the details straight,” said one of the girls.
Delaney’s cousin.
The other one, Alora, added in a chirpy voice, “I really appreciate you doing this for me. It’s one less thing to figure out.”
“No big deal. It’s just a favor for Bex. I’m sure you could have found—”
“Someone else to do twelve girls’ hair for practically nothing? Not likely.”
The natural bristle comb Gracen had been cleaning fell from her hand and landed to the shiny metal top of her workstation with a loud clang. She didn’t want to make it seem like the noise was purposeful, so Gracen acted like nothing happened and finished tidying her station as Delaney said goodbye to her guests. It was only once the bell overtop of the entrance door chimed that Gracen broke the silence in the salon first.
“I thought you were just helping with some things?” she asked quietly.
From the side of her gaze, she could see Margot still in the same spot. Silent, and watching.
“I was going to get around to telling you—” Delaney tried to say.
Gracen didn’t even want to hear it. Swinging around, she grabbed her bag that hung from a hook on her workstation and headed for the front door without explaining where she was going or why the sudden change in her mood.
It wasn’t needed.
Delaney knew.
“If you’re really over Sonny, it shouldn’t matter if I help my cousin with his wedding or not!” Delaney shouted at Gracen’s retreating back.
She’d almost reached the door.
God dammit.
She wished she had.
Gracen could have said a lot of things to deny Delaney’s accusation—she wanted to say it all, too. Instead, she continued rushing out the door without looking back because every word she felt like saying stuck on her tongue.
A lie she wasn’t ready to speak.
Even if it wasn’t one.
What did it matter?
Sonny wasn’t what chased Gracen out of her own salon.
