Chemistry of Desire (6 page)

E
mily’s prediction proved to be absolutely correct. She didn’t understand quite how they did it, but Alexis and Sherri had convinced her that she was overdue for a new look. They were kind enough not to use the word “makeover,” but that’s what it amounted to. That’s why she was sitting in Alexis’s styling chair on a Sunday. They had gone to the early service at church, and Sydney was spending the afternoon with her grandmother. Emily had so much hair that Alexis wanted to do her on a day when she didn’t have any other clients. She was glad about that, because she would have chickened out if a lot of people were in the salon.
Now, since it was just her and Sherri and Alexis, she didn’t mind sitting in the styling chair with a cape tied around her neck.

She’d never been in the salon for longer than a few minutes, and she was most impressed. It was a clean, uncluttered place with a robin’s egg blue and chocolate-brown color scheme that was soothing and chic. There were a lot of stations for other stylists, as well as a section for manicures and pedicures and other beauty services that Emily had never had. She hadn’t even heard of most of them. Alexis told her to take the elastic off her hair and Emily did so, then she laughed at Alexis’s reaction.

“Girl, this is a whole lotta hair,” Alexis said. “You’ve got enough for three people.”

“Yeah, I do. I’ve never had it cut, except for when you used to trim the ends every so often. And as you know, I’ve never had a perm or had it pressed or anything. All I ever did was wash it and braid it up to get it out of the way,” Emily admitted. In a burst of frankness, she said, “It just seemed kind of pointless. I was never going to look as good as my sisters, so why bother. Ouch!” She turned around to stare at Alexis. “You pulled my hair!”

“Yes I did,” Alexis said without a hint of remorse. “This is Emily time. This is when you look forward with positivity and joy. We are not
spending any time looking back with negativity and anger, you got that?”

Emily nodded and smiled. It was so good to have girlfriends who were completely and totally on her side. Every woman needed some friends who “had her back,” as Alexis and Sherri did hers. “Yes, Earth Mother, I got it.”

“All right, then, let’s get to work.
Namaste.
” Alexis loved having the last word. “And by the way, you’re still not getting a perm. Permanent waves make the hair curlier. Relaxers are what make the hair straighter. I wish people wouldn’t use those terms interchangeably,” she grumbled as she combed through Emily’s hair.

“I’m putting myself totally in your hands, Alexis. You can dye it, fry it, snip it or clip it, whatever you want. I do have one question. Can my hair be donated to Locks of Love?”

Alexis gave her a big smile. “Yes, it most certainly can. I’m not going to cut it too short. I’m going to cut it to right below your shoulders. That’s plenty of hair to donate, and you’ll still have a lot to play with.”

It sounded fine to Emily, and she sat patiently while Alexis took a load off her head. She really felt as if a weight was gone, and she told Alexis so.

“Just wait until I relax it,” she replied. “You’ll feel even lighter.”

Remembering how much Todd claimed to dislike relaxers, Emily gave her reflection a wicked little smile. She couldn’t wait to get it done. A thought occurred to her, and she asked Alexis if she was going to show her how to put on makeup.

“Of course! Your skin is so pretty you won’t need much, but I’m going to shape your eyebrows first.”

Emily stared in the mirror again and ran her finger over one of her brows. They weren’t bushy, but they didn’t look sleek and sexy like the ones on Alexis and Sherri. She resigned herself to the inevitable, but she had another question. “Does it hurt?”

“No more than childbirth,” Sherri said with a grin.

Emily braced herself and clutched the arms of the styling chair, preparing herself for the worst. Alexis rolled her eyes and leaned in for the attack. She held the skin taut and went to work.

“Just tell me when you’re going to start,” Emily whined.

“I’m done, you big sissy. It only hurts if you don’t know what you’re doing,” Alexis said as she changed brows.

“Wow.” She tried to look in the mirror, but Alexis blocked her. “Let me see how it looks,” Emily said.

“You can’t see anything until I’m all done. I want you to get the total effect.”

“That’s so not fair,” Emily protested. “You know I have immediate gratification syndrome. I want to see it in progress.”

“Nope. Just sit there and be patient while I work my magic. And please remember that I have some very hot curling irons here. You wouldn’t want to get a little burn, would you?”

Sherri looked up from the catalogs she’d been perusing. “Be patient, Em. You know she means it,” she said. “How do you think she keeps her clients in line?”

All three women laughed, but Emily resolved to sit quietly through the whole process, especially since Alexis was doing this solely from the goodness of her heart. She had absolutely refused any kind of payment, which made Emily treasure her friend even more. It really didn’t take as long as Emily had anticipated. In a few hours her hair had been cut, relaxed and styled, her eyebrows had been shaped and Alexis had put on a light application of makeup. Sherri and Alexis were very pleased with the results.

“Okay, close your eyes. I’m turning you around,” Alexis said.

Emily did so at once, her hands tightly clasped together. She felt the chair moving and heard Alexis tell her to take a look. Her eyes popped
open and she stared at the woman in the mirror. Her reflection was so unfamiliar that she half turned to see who was standing behind her. She realized what she was doing and turned back to view her new look. Emily was stunned.

“I look…good,” she said slowly.

Sherri patted her shoulder. “You are beautiful, honey. You look like you from the inside out.”

“I look like my mom.” For the first time in her life she saw the resemblance to her gorgeous mother. Her hair was silky and shiny, parted on one side with a deep wave that highlighted her eyes. Her eyebrows were still thick, but cleanly shaped. The effect was so dramatic that it drew attention to her big eyes, framed by long eyelashes. Bronze highlighter and soft plum blush brought out her cheekbones, and a nude lip gloss showed off the shape of her lips. Emily was stunned. “I really look nice,” she said softly. She got a little teary-eyed, which caused Alexis to thrust a tissue at her.

“That mascara is good, but it’s not waterproof. And you don’t look nice, girl. You look fabulous!”

Emily smiled widely. “I do, don’t I?” She stood and hugged Alexis tight, then Sherri. “You know what I feel like?”

“A million bucks,” Sherri said.

“A new woman,” Alexis guessed.

“Oh, absolutely. I feel brand-new and I feel like
ten million bucks. But I really feel like shopping,” Emily said as she turned her head from side to side. “I need new clothes. Lots of them.”

Sherri rubbed her hands together gleefully. “Okay, it’s time for me to work my magic. Ladies, let’s hit the mall!”

Two weeks later, Emily was leaning back into her rather uncomfortable seat on the plane that was taking her to Chicago. She’d made the trip many times since Ayanna had moved to Illinois, but this was going to be a totally different experience. Even the most mundane aspects of this trip were foreign to her. For the first time ever, Emily had to pay a hefty fee for having overweight luggage. She’d always been indifferent to her attire and she could roll everything up into a small suitcase. If her clothes got wrinkled, she didn’t care because clothing was functional, not decorative, as far as she was concerned. Those days were totally over. Now her luggage was carefully packed and loaded with fashionable outfits and accessories.

She couldn’t have cared less about the extra fees. It was worth it, as a matter of fact, because it was her time to shine. Her mother and her sister would be tickled about the new Emily, but she couldn’t wait until she bumped into Todd Wainwright. Emily was going to show him what a huge mistake he’d made by dumping her so crudely. She
couldn’t wait to see the look on his face when they encountered each other again. She could run into Todd in the airport and it wouldn’t make any difference to her—she was more than ready. There was a time when she’d wear old jeans and a sweatshirt to travel in, but not anymore. She was wearing black skinny jeans with a bright red turtleneck sweater and some really sexy black over-the-knee boots with a black wool peacoat. No more flying slob for her.

Emily looked fantastic and she knew it, which is a great confidence builder for any woman, even one as brilliant and accomplished as she was. Going to work after her haircut and shopping spree was gratifying, to say the least. Reactions ranged from disbelief to open awe to confusion. Two of her colleagues didn’t recognize her. Jessy, the department administrator, was delighted with the changes to Emily’s appearance and told her so.

“Now that’s the real you,” she said, beaming. “I could never figure out why you wanted to hide behind clothes that were all baggy and why you never let anyone see how pretty you are. And all it took was a little haircut and some clothes that fit you right. Now people can see that great figure of yours and those pretty legs, too.”

Emily gave the older woman a smile and a cheeky wink, which made both of them laugh. She was getting used to the extra attention, and it
was rather pleasant. A few weeks ago it seemed that attention to one’s appearance was the height of social stupidity, something that indicated the paucity of true intellect in this society. But it was hard to apply that line of thought when fellow scholars with many advanced degrees were smiling at her with approval. And it was impossible to deny that she was feeling more confident as a result of a simple change in her mode of dress and style of her hair. She had even impressed those above her, as she found out when having lunch with the university provost.

Dr. Gavin Awerbuch had been at the university much longer than Emily, which was saying something because she’d started so young and excelled so fast. He’d been a mentor to her for a long time, and he was someone she could count on for good advice and counsel. They met off-campus at a nice restaurant that was frequented by faculty and students alike. He was one of her favorite people. He had a wild head of curly hair, a short beard, and he always wore unusual eyeglasses. This pair looked like something H. G. Wells would have worn, with oddly shaped wire frames that gave him the air of a keen-eyed mad scientist.

After a delicious seafood lunch and chitchat, Dr. A., as she called him when they were alone, got down to business.

“Emily, do you want my job?”

She started to laugh, but she could see he was quite serious. “No, I don’t. You’re not thinking of retiring, are you? You’re too young for that,” she said with concern on her face and in her voice.

“Thanks for saying that. My kids make me feel like an antique some of the time. Teenagers can do that,” he said with a grin. “The reason I bring it up is because we don’t know what to do with you. You’re so young, yet so accomplished that the only way for you to go is up, and right now there’s no place to put you. A lateral move would be ridiculous, and there’s no one for you to replace.”

“Is that a bad thing?”

“In a way yes, and in other ways, of course not,” he assured her. “You’ve been responsible for recruiting and developing some of the finest scientific minds we’ve acquired in the last decade. But you’ve also been instrumental in us losing them.”

Emily had to stifle a gasp as she tried not to choke on her iced tea. She was struggling to answer this cryptic statement when he hastened to reassure her.

“It’s nothing personal, Emmie. Everyone loves you and you do a superlative job in everything that you do. You are the kind of professor, department head and colleague that every university prays for, trust me. But,” he added, raising his index finger, “you are an impossible act to follow. The scholars you develop have to leave here in order to advance.
You train your people brilliantly, you stimulate their intellectual curiosity, you spur them to aspire to greatness, and just when they are primed to be of real use to us, they have to take everything you’ve given them and leave our gates because there is no place for them to go. In order for them to spread their academic wings they’ve got to fly away from the nest, which is, from the standpoint of the board both a blessing and a curse. A blessing because your name and reputation attract more of the same kind of eager scholars, and a curse because we want to keep them all,” he said, gesturing with both hands. “So, my dear Emily, my question is, what do you plan to do with the rest of your life? You’ve already accomplished more than many academics do in a lifetime, and you’re barely thirty. What’s next for you?”

Emily stared out the window for a long moment, watching the traffic go by. For once she had no answer, nothing that she could say that would make any sense. She finally looked into Dr. A.’s dark, clever eyes and told him the truth. “I have absolutely no idea. Just none.”

“Don’t look so stricken, Emily. I put it badly,” he apologized. “I was thinking out loud, which is always a bad idea. Since I’m treating, how about a huge slab of that pecan pie? You could use a nice sugar rush for the afternoon.”

“That sounds like a great idea.” Emily tried to
put a big smile on her face, but it would be a while before she could process the information she’d just been given. Thank God she was going on vacation next week. The long plane ride would give her plenty of time to think about what Dr. A. had just shared with her.

Emily could hear the sound of the jet going into a descent. It would be landing soon, but there would be no one to meet her, per her request. People didn’t go to the mass confusion that was O’Hare Airport with joy in their hearts, and she wasn’t about to drag her sister or brother-in-law out there when she was perfectly capable of getting to their house by herself. There were plenty of limos and cabs and other means of transportation available; she’d get there just fine. She was jolted out of her thoughts when the man sitting next to her asked if she needed a lift from the airport. He was a very handsome man named Jared and they had chatted almost the entire flight.