Split Ends (14 page)

Gulp.

“Call day or night, Sarah. I'm a light sleeper.”

I feel my mind start to wander into places it shouldn't. I hold the card up. “Thank you, Dane.”

He comes closer to me, and I focus on the cleft in his chin rather than the sable eyes that seem to hypnotize me at will. There's a current running between the two of us, and my stomach surges with the warmth. I wish I could just fall into his arms.
Honestly.
I wish I didn't know better. It's as though we can't separate, and I close my eyes and drink in this moment. It's lovely and toxic all at once.

chapter 8

Nothing makes a woman more beautiful
than the belief that she is beautiful.
~ Sophia Loren

I
've read through Yoshi's manual a few times. The gist of it is this: be a doormat and like it. Luckily, I'm well-prepared for that. I study the labels on all the clothes Scott threw at me and check the Internet to decipher a few. May I just say, anyone who buys clothes simply because of a label needs to go live in a third-world country for a while—even a small town in America. Well, okay, maybe that's harsh. Designers need to make a living too, I suppose. But do they have to fuel the inadequacies of women to do it? I do notice the stitching and cut are nice, but when you get into couture, it's just ridiculously expensive as far as I'm concerned. And I'm worried about impressing people . . . why?

When I log on, there's an e-mail from Kate.
Ah, normal
Sable style
.

TO: [email protected]
From: [email protected]
Subject: Men stink

So after you left, Ryan decides to get his panties in a bunch because he feels like now that you're gone, I'll spend my time with him. I mean, I love the man and all, but please! A girl needs her space, you know? I spend all day twirling pin curls and coloring old ladies' hair various shades of Easter egg. I want to relax. He wants me to listen to his mother so she can tell me all about being a rancher's wife and how to cook properly. Hello? Am I not a hairdresser? Do I want to be nothing but a rancher's wife?
Maybe raise a Cindy Simmons of my own?

Speaking of which, the new rumor is that it was Ryan who got you pregnant, so we're not friends anymore. Ah, the
National Enquirer
Sable style. We really need a movie
theater here. Any empty chairs there at Yoshi?

Luv ya, miss you already. Me.

P.S. Did you see the ocean yet?

To: [email protected]
From: [email protected]
Subject: Men do not stink—especially Ryan

Chill, girlfriend. You have a fabulous catch in Ryan, and don't go thinking the grass is greener like I did. Sable is your town, girl, you own it! I'm here in California and the men are all prettier than me. Probably skinnier too. I was good with that until I met a personal trainer today at Cary Grant's star. AAAAHHH, can you stand it? I saw it!!! Had a moment. Anyway, met a trainer, whose bulging pecs actually made his chest bigger than mine (he wasn't wearing a shirt—don't ask!) Anyway, that was a little disconcerting. I can handle being smaller than the plastic chicks, but sheesh, muscle men? That's just wrong.

Scott was engaged! Do not pass that on—he'll kill me, and he's already looking to throw me out. Not really, but I am annoying him. We're annoying each other. His fiancée is so beautiful, but they're not getting married. Not sure why yet, but I think he's an idiot. Of course, I guess I always did.

Next month I get a blue peel. Not sure what that is,
but it sounds painful, and soon my skin should look like Barbie's. (Everyone's skin here looks like they applied Vaseline. Apparently, being shiny and completely void of pores is a good thing—so much for our Noxema days!)

Scott has a roommate.
To-die-for hot—wears a Bogey
hat!
I want to bear his children. Do you know what it's like to live down the hall from that kind of gorgeous? He's a Christian too. Invited me to his church this week, but he doesn't talk much. Can't say I need him to; as long as I can gaze longingly, I'm good. It would be great if he was blind and I could just stare unencumbered. Oh, and you'll never guess. He wears a suit. Don't know what he does yet; his business card is weird. (Oh, he gave me his card so I could call him for a ride. Isn't that sweet?)

The salon is fancy and weird. No one talks to each other without sneaking around, and today wasn't even a “working” day. It was a teaching day. It's a “team salon,” meaning basically that it's communism with Yoshi as our fearless leader. Too warped, but if I get to cut hair like him, it will all be worth it. The stylists make good money, though they spend a lot on upkeep for themselves (clothes, accessories, apartments), and any one of them is better than what we saw at the hair show that time (except the guy who cut my hair—think that was a test). Gotta run. Kiss Ryan for me, you loser.

Love, Me.

P.S. Saw the ocean from the plane, that's it. More later.

The good mood is not to last. The next morning as we exit the elevator, Alexa is standing there in long, lean jeans and a flowing shirt in aqua, which only makes her eyes seem that much more hypnotic. She locks onto Scott and her eyes turn pleading. I think about pushing the Close elevator button and just disappearing from the scene, but if I know my cousin, he'd just leave me here to find my way to Yoshi's. To teach me another lesson.

“Please, Scott, just hear me out.” She tries to take his hand, but he won't touch her. “We can talk about this.”

Scott won't look at her and tries to walk around her as if she is a mere figment of his imagination. She stands in front of him, placing her hands on his elbows, and tries to force his gaze to her, but he doesn't relent.

“Go away, Alexa.”

“You owe me at least a good-bye, don't you think? Even if you can't forgive me.”

“I don't owe you anything and you know it.” Again he tries to get past her, and she fumbles to retain control of him. He finally gets around her, thankfully, before he pushes her. I'm numb with culture shock. I feel like I'm in the middle of a
Dynasty
rerun, and with a dash of guilt, I see that such scenes are anything but entertaining.

“Scott, if you want to call this off, be a man and say so! Take your ring back. Make a stand!” Alexa screeches, and I can see this hits Scott between the eyes. At the rise in her voice, I'm not sure where to run. Scott's car is locked, or I'd gladly hide from the turmoil, but the truth is neither one seems to care that I'm here.

“You want me to be a man, Alexa? You never gave me the chance, did you? Just decided you always knew what I wanted without ever asking me.”

“I made a mistake, Scott. People make mistakes!”

He stops and looks back at her, his eyes steely and cold as ice. “You're right, Alexa, people do make mistakes. And if I could forgive you, I would.”

He chirps his car open and I run for it.

“This is it, Scott. I'm not waiting around for you forever. If this is the way you choose to end this, it's something you have to live with.” She's got her fists on her hips with one long leg outstretched. She means it. Everything about her body language says so.

“I'm good with that.” Scott gets into the car, and Alexa stands in front of it, somehow looking both sexy and pathetic. That's an art. Scott opens the window to her. “ Before you go placing the blame on me, I think you might want to do some soul-searching about who really said good-bye.” Then he pushes the button to roll the window up shutting her words out one at a time.

“Scott, can't you just talk to her? Hear her out?”

“Never mind, Sarah Claire.”

My heart is pounding, and I can't bear to leave Alexa here like this, broken. “Why did you make her think you'd marry her if you wouldn't? No woman wants to be a man's courtesan forever. You've turned into one of my mother's men!” I cross my arms and close my eyes rather than look at Alexa's broken spirit.

“I
did
ask her to marry me! You said you saw the ring.”

“What are you so afraid of, Scott? She loves you, and it's obvious you're not over her. Do you want to end up like my mom and your dad? Who even came to your dad's funeral, Scott? Is that how you want to end up? With no one to love you or look after you when you get old? Not ever having someone you can trust?”

His current coldhearted, distant demeanor aside, I know Scott has a heart. He was always the one who took care of me when Cindy picked on me, or when the kids made fun of my shoddy clothes. Now he looks at me with the first true emotion I've seen from him since I've been in California, and it's hard to watch.

“I've always been loyal to you, Sarah Claire.” His voice breaks slightly. “Can't you give me the same respect?”

I feel my eyes sting. Scott turns the ignition, and slowly Alexa steps out of the way and begins to walk backward, never taking her eyes off of Scott (and never looking remotely disheveled). It makes me sick to my stomach, watching her stand there, her arms hanging at her side, long and lifeless, like a rag doll's. There's not a woman alive who hasn't felt like she does right now, and her beauty didn't protect her.

We drive out of the garage. I look back to see Alexa get into her Mercedes and slam the door, and I hear myself let out a small sob for her. No one deserves that kind of treatment. No one.

But Scott is biting his lower lip, and to his credit, it's trembling. He is not heartless.

I wish for Alexa's sake I could give her back her future with Scott, and most of all the part of her heart that Scott will always have. I pray silently for both of them, wondering if there's anything more I could have done. We ride in complete silence until we're at Yoshi's doorstep.

“Don't be upset all day,” Scott says as I open the door.

“Why can't you just break up with her, Scott? Take the ring back and put an end to it.”

“It's complicated, Sarah. I owe her something.”

“You owe letting her go.”

He nods. “I probably do, but I can't do it. Not yet. There's some things I have to work through, all right?”

“Please come with me to find a church this weekend.”

He laughs. “You and Dane, you think your God is going to solve everything, don't you? I took Dane's advice once before. I asked Alexa to marry me, and look where it got me.” He snorts and rubs his fingers and thumb together. “Money you can always count on. An invisible God, not so much. I'll call you at six and let you know if I can pick you up.”

“Dane told you to marry her?”

“Go. You're going to be late.”

I shut the door, feeling as though I've lived an entire day already. But I refocus. I have to. Right now, a man named Yoshi holds my future in his sought-after fingers.

chapter 9

Getting ahead in a difficult profession requires
avid faith in yourself. That is why some people with
mediocre talent, but with great inner drive, go so much
further than people with vastly superior talent.
~ Sophia Loren

T
wo weeks. Eight hundred and forty-nine dollars in clothing. And I still have yet to touch a head of real hair. Unless you count “Strawberry,” my new best friend and head from the Yoshi School of Beauty. Luckily, we start shampooing today, so I'll have real contact with something besides the espresso machine. Yoshi sort of fudged the truth with shampooing being the first order of business. It's actually “accounting,” as in keeping a careful accounting of all the Yoshi product you sell and learning how to make clients feel as though their hair will wither away without it.

To sum it up, I am a grunt. As in
“Grunt: one who does
routine unglamorous work—often used attributively work>.”

It's official. I have flown across three states and left my mother to fend for herself for the highly glamorous job of being a well-dressed coffee runner at a Beverly Hills salon. I can hear Cindy cackling now in her expansive digs. She's probably right now getting a pedicure, at the new salon that just opened up, and she's wondering what happened to little Sarah Claire who used to cut hair. She's laughing her rhyme right now. I can hear it echoing across the Grand Tetons.

Today I'm currently walking into the local coffee shop because I'm going to find out what makes people drink this rotgut and why I must smell like java everyday. For this experiment, I refuse to make the coffee myself, because the service has to be a part of the experience.

Inside the Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf there seems to be some sort of system that I'm ignorant of. People are divided into distinct milling groups. A gal comes in behind me and heads straight for the proper line. I know I'm going to be one of those people who has to stare at the menu for an eternity. Like the people who tick me off at McDonald's:
Get the hamburger and fries and let's move on!
Back at the shop, I could suggest the appropriate drink for a person's mood, but I'm clueless as to what I'll actually order now that someone is going to serve me.

There's clearly a line for ordering and another more loosely connected line of people waiting until the coffee gal calls something out. Then they zap to life as though they've been hit with a stun gun.

“You in line?”

I turn around, and of all things, it's my one friend in California: Hollywood trainer to the stars and girl wimp, Nick Harper. Granted, he thinks I'm a crazy woman who sobs over Cary Grant's star and has a
Fatal Attraction
stalker, but then again, I think he's a muscular wuss, so I guess we're even.

I nod and smile. “I'm in line. I'm going to get a coffee.”
Brilliant.

“Sarah, right?”

“Yeah.” I turn back around. He remembers my name.

“Did you get home all right? I was worried about you.”