In the End

Troubleshooting

"Okay, Michelle, you're about done," Tiffany says, wiping off the remains of dye on her hands before rinsing the woman's hair one more time. "I'll dry you off."

The woman stands with the towel wrapped around her head and follows Tiffany to the styling chair. Her phone rings in her pocket, but she ignores it, mostly because she is on shift and does not answer for anyone except her children – and for that, she has a separate ringtone – and she also knows that most likely, it is Chucky who is calling her.

It had probably been a mistake to leave her new number with him. She knows it is a mistake. But she could not help it. At the end of the day, despite every flaw and ugly angle of him, she still loved him. She still loves him. She still wants to help him, and even if it is better for the both of them that they forgo their once Bonnie and Clyde romance, she wants him happy.

But unfortunately, this means that now her phone will go off almost hourly. Apparently, Chucky is much worse at amending his mistakes then she'd anticipated. Not that she wasn't aware that he was a general nuisance when it came to any emotional framework, but she was surprised that he had seemed to even lose his pride. He was not the type to come crawling for help, even from her. Especially from her, considering their last conversation.

"Thank you so much for this," Michelle says, eyes closed as Tiffany dries and curls her hair to perfection. "I really needed a new look."

"Bad breakup?" Tiffany asks, and it's probably because she is still going through a bad breakup, but it was a potential possibility for this woman.

Each of his voicemails sounded angrier as they came, with more aggressive and graphic threats, but she knew it only meant he was becoming desperate. She does not see the point in picking up the phone, when she's told him everything she felt she could tell him. She's not a psychiatrist, and she never wanted to be one.

She'd thought she wanted to be a wife and mother, but after tearing her heart out and swallowing it again, pulsating pain and all, she found being a single mother and hair stylist was where she was the happiest.

"Not quite," Michelle responds, with a little laugh. Then she sighs. Tiffany pulls away the towel.

"You're all done – go ahead, take a look."

Michelle stares into the mirror, and Tiffany catches it. The smile that makes her job worth the struggle to get here.

"It's wonderful," Michelle gasps. She fingers through her hair, still grinning. "You know, I want to start my own styling business soon. That's part of me needing a new look. A fresh start."

"Oh?" Tiffany asks. She doesn't want to pry, but she doesn't want to seem disinterested. "Well, I hope you got what you needed."

Michelle looks like she wants to say more, but her phone rings again, and this time, it's the ringtone she uses just for her children. She apologizes quickly and answers it to hear Glenda's loud and vivacious voice on the other end, impatient and on the bus. She can hear the other voices of students in the background, all yelling and most likely behaving like barbarians. She does not miss her pubescent years.

"Mom! I need a poster for my project tomorrow and Glen says he has a stomach-ache! I think he just ate too many of the popcorn shrimp, but he says he has a stomach bug. Tracey Hickman was sick last week and she threw up all over her desk in third period ..."

Tiffany begins to hum, the way she used to when Chucky would ramble about – well, whatever it is he likes to ramble about. There were so many times she just tuned him out simply because he talked so much. It was more humorous now, with his short stature, that he retained such long and winding sentences when he got into something.