Will to Way, Wilt Away

Chapter 15

"Haircut, outfit, shower, shave, makeup....mmm....open your mouth."

I opened my mouth and Shiloh wafted my breath to his nose, immediately crinkling his face in disgust.

"Yea, okay. Gum. A lot of gum," he added to his mental list. "We have a busy day ahead of us!"

"Shiloh, I never agreed to this," I grumbled, hoping that he would leave me as the single, sloppy loner that I was.

"No, two weeks ago we both agreed that we needed boyfriends, remember?"

"Can I at least see a pic of the guy?" I complained.

"No, I told you his name is Benjamin and that's all you need to know." Shiloh giggled with a smirk that made me uncomfortable. "Let's see, it's 9:30 AM. Our date is at 7:30 PM. Hmm, yea we gotta get going right now or we won't be ready in time."

"You think I'm that much of a wreck?" I questioned.

"I was talking about me, too," Shiloh reassured and grabbed my wrist to yank me out of my apartment. "But mostly you," he jokingly whispered.

The audible contrast between my sluggish, dragging feet and Shiloh's pep in his step was very apparent as we walked to Felicity's Hair Salon. Since I moved to Napa, my hair had grown out considerably, leaving a lovely combination of scraggly dead ends and huge knots that I was too lazy to brush out. Cynthia, the old Russian lady cutting my hair, made no attempt to ease my pain as she ripped through the tangles with her sharp comb. To distract myself, I turned my head slightly to the left and right to get a glimpse of the tiny salon. The walls, floor, and ceiling were all white, while the borders around the mirrors were bright ruby red. There were three of those hair drying chairs with the weird bowl-like cap that made the people in them look like they were part of a mad science experiment. I began listening as Shiloh anally described what he wanted to do to his flowy onyx hair.

"So I still want to keep it long in the front. I like it when there's that one curly strand hanging over my forehead. You know, it gives me that really sexy vibe," Shiloh's hair dresser, a small, middle-aged Asian woman named Lisa, nodded in agreement that the strand of curly hair did in fact make Shiloh look sexy. However, she barely spoke English, so she was probably just using the classic smile-and-nod response.

After Cynthia waterboarded me while washing my hair, she combed my long mahogany hair while asking, "What do you want?"

When I was growing up, my mom would just snip my hair into a crooked bob every six months. By the time I was thirteen, I started cutting my hair myself, though not very well of course. I usually cut my hair to right below my breasts, and I claimed that the uneven ends just gave me a layered hairstyle. As I contemplated what to tell Cynthia, who was not so patiently waiting, Shiloh chimed in from the chair next to me.

"Let's see, I think we should first cut your hair to this length right above the boob area," Shiloh started. His suggestion instantly made me nervous, as I intentionally left my hair longer to cover my boobs. "And then, OMG we should do some blonde highlights all over. Oh Aspen, it will look so good!"

"Uh, Shi—"

"Okay, I do," Cynthia interrupted me with her thick accent and a stony expression on her face.

Shiloh smiled and sat back in his chair, surely thinking that he should quit his job as the doorman and become a professional stylist. But based on the way that my hair turned out, maybe he should. I wasn't sure if I just had very low expectations because I was usually my own hair dresser, but I looked like a whole new woman. The natural cocoa brown still remained at the top of my head, but now honey blonde streaks ran through every other strand of my hair, making me look like I had more fun, if you know what I mean. My hair now stopped right beneath my shoulders, and Cynthia curled it into effortless-looking beach waves to finish off the look.