Katana (14 page)

“Rileigh?” Dr. Wendell called.

Crap. I froze.

“If you’re having trouble with anxiety, I could prescribe you something.”

“Oh really?” I laughed quietly as I moved to face him. “How about a new life? Can I get that in a capsule? Or does it have to be applied topically?”

He frowned.

“That’s what I thought.” Before he could answer I spun on my heels and marched down the hallway into my room.

Chewing on my thumbnail, I sat down on my bed and tried to pinpoint what it was about Dr. Wendell that gave me the heebie-jeebies. Was it merely a coincidence that he’d showed up shortly after I spotted someone sneaking around the house? Or was what he said true? Was stress getting the better of me?

When I couldn’t bite my nail any shorter I switched to my other hand. In any case, Dr. Wendell was in my house, directly down the hall. I didn’t know how I was supposed to sleep with him here, but I had to try. My shift at the salon began in less than seven hours.

With a sigh, I got out of bed and locked my door for the very first time.

20

W
hen I entered the salon the next morning, Quentin stopped sweeping hair and dropped the broom on the floor.

“Oh my God!” He ran up to me and put his hands on either side of my face. “Ri-Ri, what is wrong with you? Jeannine sent you home yesterday because you looked bad and you come in today looking even worse.”

I tried to tilt my head, but he was squeezing it like a vise. “I didn’t sleep very well last night. Mom had a
friend
sleep over and I couldn’t get comfortable with him in the house.” The dojo attack, bar fight, and crazy dreams didn’t help much, either. But it wasn’t like I could tell Quentin about all that. How could I expect anyone to believe me when I myself could barely believe those things happened?

He tsked. “Well, you look just awful.”

“Thank you.”

He released my face and tugged me back to a stylist chair. “Brie, I’m using your station!”

Brie, the salon’s resident Goth girl, nodded to him from behind the retail counter as she painted her nails an emerald blue color.

“Sit,” Quentin ordered.

I groaned. When the alarm went off this morning, I had only slept for four hours. I didn’t waste more than five minutes in the bathroom getting ready because I knew there was little chance of improving my haggard appearance. “Not today, Q. I’d really rather just get to work.” I tried to move past him, but he sidestepped along with me.

“Nonsense.” He gripped my shoulders and shoved me down into Brie’s chair. “There’s always time for a makeover. Besides, there’s no one to shampoo just yet. I’ve already called dibs on Mrs. Cooper over there.”

Plump Mrs. Cooper sat a few chairs over, getting her rolled hair doused with perm solution while she thumbed through a worn romance novel.

I pointed a finger at Quentin’s reflection in the mirror. “You snake!” He knew just as well as I did that Mrs. Cooper was one of the few women that tipped five dollars after a shampoo.

Quentin grinned back. “You snooze, you lose. Anyway, I’m sure you’ll be busy in a minute.” His eyes gleamed.

“Maybe I should just check to see if the stylists need anything first.” I tried to stand, but he pushed me back down and buttoned a smock around my neck. I craned my head to see around the corner of the partitioning wall that divided the salon in half, but all I could make out were several women sitting under the dryers, paging through wrinkled magazines.

“I’ll let you know when someone needs you.” He twisted my hair into several loops and pinned them to the top of my head.

“Alright.” Reluctantly, I leaned back into Brie’s chair.

“Why are you so crabby, anyway? I’d be doing backflips if I had a date tonight with Mr. McHottie!” He unraveled a lock of my hair and clamped it between the ceramic plates of a flat iron.

“What are you talking—?” But before I could finish my sentence the realization hit me harder than a six pack of Red Bull. My date with Whitley was tonight! I slumped deep into the chair. For as long as I’d dreamed of this moment, there was no way I could go now. First of all, I looked like hell. Second, until I got rid of the spirit living inside of me, I couldn’t risk triggering another awakening. What if I dropped a spoon on the ground, the barista brought me another one, and the spirit misinterpreted the action as a threat and punched him in the face? What would Whitley think of me then? I groaned and buried my face in my hands.

Quentin snapped the flat iron together, drawing my attention to him. “Uh, no. I don’t think so.” He placed his free hand on his hip.

“What?” I spread my fingers apart enough to peek through.

He pulled another lock of my hair free from a pin with a sharp tug. “I know that look. You’re thinking about canceling, and I am not going to let you do that. You’ve been lusting after this guy from the moment he showed up at school.”

I dropped my hands and folded my arms under my smock. “Look, Q, I have a lot going on right now. I don’t think this is the best time for me to date.”

“Then when will be, Rileigh?” Uh-oh, he used my real name. “When you’re seventy and living alone with thirty cats? You think there’ll be anyone left then?” He tugged on another lock of hair. “You have to get past your relationship issues, Ri-Ri. I know you’re scared, but you’re also not happy.”

“I am too happy,” I snapped. “And I do not have relationship issues.”

Quentin snorted, rubbing pomade between his palms and smoothing down the hair around my part. “You harbor a great deal of resentment toward you mother because she spends more time with her clients than you.”

I stiffened against the vinyl cushion.

Quentin smiled, apparently pleased to have hit the nerve and made his point. “And,” he continued, “that’s why you keep going out with all the wrong guys—because even though they’re losers, they still give you the attention you crave from your mother. You don’t know how to pick a decent guy because you don’t know what to look for. It didn’t help that your daddy didn’t stick around to see you born—you probably have some guilt and abandonment issues associated with that. It’s a simple case of self-sabotage.” He wiped his hands on a towel and pulled Brie’s makeup case out from under her station counter. “Brie, can I use your MAC?”

Brie shrugged without looking up. “Don’t use up all the black.”

I angrily snatched the cleansing cloth Quentin offered me and wiped off my hastily applied morning makeup. “Thank you very much, Dr. Q, for the diagnosis.”

While I sat fuming, Quentin dabbed fresh concealer onto a makeup brush and covered the dark circles under my eyes. When he finished, he put the brush back on the counter and stuck a finger under my chin. “You know I love you, right?”

I nodded. I did know, and that’s why his words hurt so much. They were true. He never hid his feelings from me because he trusted our friendship enough to know that even if I didn’t like what he had to say, I would still listen. That’s what friends did. What they
didn’t
do was hide things from each other. Guilt curled around me like a python flexing its coils.

“Don’t wiggle,” Quentin scolded, reaching for an eye shadow palette.

Maybe he was right about the abandonment issues. Maybe that’s why I didn’t tell him what was going on right away, because I was afraid he wouldn’t understand. It was unfair of me not to have faith in him. I needed to tell him the truth. “Um, Q?” I closed my eyes long enough for him to apply a smoky gray shadow.

“Hmmm?”

“I need to tell you something.”

“Okay,” he said, reaching for an eyeliner pencil.

“I don’t want you to think I’m crazy,” I started.

“Oh, girl,” he laughed, “it’s way too late for that.”

I smiled. “Very funny.”

“Whatever it is, you know you can tell me, right?” He stopped applying mascara and stared into my eyes. “No matter what.”

I took a deep breath, struggling to hold the weight of his stare. “Do you believe in past lives?”

He laughed out loud. “How long have I been telling everyone that I’m a woman trapped in a man’s body?” he announced to the salon, eliciting a few giggles from the waiting area.

“Shh!” I ducked my head and motioned around the room with my eyes. “Q, I’m serious. I know you’re trying to be funny, but do you really think that maybe in a previous life you could have been a woman?”

He paused to consider it. “I guess it could be possible.”

“That’s what I’m trying to tell you, you see—” But before I could finish, Hillary, one of the veteran stylists, emerged from the other half of the salon. “Rileigh, I’ve got a client in the sink room ready for a shampoo.”

I started to rise, but was pulled right back down by Quentin.

“Wait!” he ordered. He cupped my chin with his hand and applied a heavy, grape-scented gloss. “Perfect. Okay, now you’re ready.” He ripped off the smock in one fluid movement.

I twisted in the chair to meet his gaze. “I guess we’ll talk later.”

“Sure thing, Ri-Ri.” He smiled devilishly. “That is, if you are still speaking to me.”

“Speaking to you?” I let him pull me to my feet, noticing the nervous glances he kept making toward the partitioning wall. “What did you do?” I hissed over my shoulder.

He inclined his head toward the sink room, failing to repress a delighted squeal. “I think you’re needed back there.” He giggled.

With a heavy sense of dread, I walked past the four stylist stations and stopped in front of the sink-room curtain. Sighing, I parted it and looked inside.

Kim Gimhae gave me a small wave from the last chair, farthest from the door.

I spun on my heels to face Quentin, but he was conveniently at the reception counter checking someone in. “Please have a seat, Mrs. Walker. Your stylist will be with you in a moment.” He waggled his eyebrows at me as he spoke.

Cursing Quentin under my breath, I stepped inside and let the curtain fall behind me.

Kim cleared his throat. “I am sorry to surprise you at work.”

My new level of stress cracked the barrier inside of me that kept the hysteria at bay. A high-pitched laugh escaped from my throat, followed by a series of giggles.

Kim looked nervously around the room. “Is something funny?”

“Yes,” I said between giggles. “First it was Whitley, then Dr. Wendell, now you.”

“I don’t understand.”

I pulled a tissue from a box on the shelf above the sink and dabbed at the tears in my eyes. “It’s just that my life has spun so out of control, there’s no telling who will show up next!” I had a mental image of walking out of the sink room and seeing Elvis under a dryer. I laughed harder.

Concern flooded Kim’s eyes.

I cleared my throat and tossed the tissue in the trash. “Surprise visits seem to be a theme in my life right now.”

“Rileigh, are you okay?”

“No big deal,” I told him as I pulled a clean towel from the shelf next to the door. He wore a plain white cotton T-shirt, with athletic shorts and white tennis shoes. My eyes lingered on the hard lines of muscle that rose beneath his shirt as he breathed. Forcing my gaze away, I snatched the smock from a small cart by the sink and quickly snapped it behind his neck. I felt much better once his body lay hidden under shapeless black vinyl. “How short are you going to go?”

He shrugged under the smock. “I’m not here to have my hair cut. I came here because I wanted to talk to you. Your friend from the hospital told me to wait back here. A shampoo is really not necessary.”

“Yeah, well, my boss is going to get upset if people keep dropping by to see me. If you want to talk,” I pushed his head back against the sink’s porcelain neck rest, “you’re getting your hair washed. And you better leave a tip. Thirty percent should keep the Nair out of your shampoo.”

His mouth twitched. “Fair enough.”

“Good.” I caught a movement over my shoulder, and a quick glance to my right showed Quentin peering through the curtain. I opened my mouth to give him a piece of my mind, but he ran away before I could get the words out. He was
so
dead.

I turned back to Kim and started the water. “So, how did you know I worked here?” I did my best to sound casual.

He smiled. “I can’t reveal my sources.”

I snorted. “What a surprise. Kim Gimhae has more secrets.”

Kim’s brown eyes sparkled with amusement. “Yes. It took some work, but I managed to hack into your personal records.”

My eyes widened. “What kind of records? From school? Medical?”

He laughed. “No, more top secret than that. I found your profile on Facebook.”

“That’s really funny,” I told him, forcing myself to bypass the bleach and instead grab the shampoo. If only I could dye Kim’s hair pink without getting fired. “Maybe if this whole samurai thing doesn’t work out for you, you could start a career in comedy.”

“Maybe.” He smiled, folding his hands over the smock.

I dug my fingers into his scalp, not caring if I was a little rough. “Did you come here because you want something? Or are you just going to make harassing me a daily occurrence?”