Liz ended up getting the Fine Line inspired nails. She and I had an almost hour-long discussion about what the colors of the nails meant. She refused to believe that they were just the colors of the theme of the album, even though I had told her repeatedly so. But with how stubborn this adorable old lady is, nothing would change her mind.
I couldn't find the courage to tell her Harry was actually my boyfriend, fearful that she would tell her granddaughter and then it would get out.
I walk through the front door of the salon, preparing myself mentally to get my workday started. Usually, if I had been gone this long, I'd be working from the time the salon opens to the time it closes, trying to get all my clients caught up. But since Harry's staying with me, I feel obligated to keep my schedule normal, not wanting him to have to be alone for too long.
"Hey, Lili!" My coworker Allie greets me as I make my way to my workspace. She was folding up a foil as she worked on her client's hair.
"Hi," I say back, forcing a smile. After being with Harry for so long, and spending practically every waking moment with him for the past few weeks, I missed him.
I missed the way the tip of his nose wiggled up and down when he talked. It only moved the slightest bit and it's just barely noticeable, but when he was smiling, it was easy to see. It's such a small thing, but it was adorable.
"So...how's your boyfriend?" I could've sworn I heard Allie ask, causing me to literally choke.
"What?" I say, coughing a few times after.
"Your boyfriend," she says again, confirming that my speculations were true. "Linda says that's where you've been all this time...with your boyfriend."
And that pissed me off. It was none of Linda's business to go around telling everyone that I've been sluffing work to hang out with Harry. I don't even see it like that. First of all, I had everything planned to go to London long before it happened. Then it was very sudden that I was going to Anguilla, and it was only for a few days!
If anything, I feel like I deserved the time I took off!
"I uh...yeah, I went on a vacation with my...now boyfriend," I tell her. As annoyed as I was with Linda, I wasn't going to lie to Allie about something so stupid.
"Oh my God!" She gasps, smiling brightly as she continued to work on her client's hair. "You haven't had a boyfriend in years!"
"Ouch," I say, feeling slightly offended.
"No no, I didn't mean it like that!" she's quick to defend herself. "I meant it as a good thing. Like, 'Oh my God! Go you. You're a queen. You have one lucky ass boyfriend!'"
I couldn't help but let out a laugh as she rambled to try to make me feel better, not that my heart was really that damaged from what she said to me.
I suck in a breath before exhaling deeply, a way I've found calms down my laughter in a split second. "Thank you."
"So what's he like?" She asks, reaches over to her little cart to pick up another piece of tin foil.
"Incredible," I tell her. And it's not like I was lying, either.
"That gives me a lot of information, thanks," she says sarcastically, rolling her eyes. "You're not gonna tell me what he looks like? Or even his name?"
"He's very beautiful, calling him godlike would be an understatement," I say, not wanting to give away too much information about Harry. "And...his name is Harry."
Allie snickers before looking over at me. "That's an old man's name."
"Hey," I say defensively.
"I'm just saying." She holds her hands up in defense. "I'm pretty sure that's what my great-grandpa's name is."
"Well, I'll have you know that he is not old. He's only 25, thank you."
"Older than you." She winks. I roll my eyes in response. "Okay, but all jokes aside, how did you even meet this guy? It seems like you go on vacation then come back to work having a boyfriend all of a sudden."
Well, I went to his concert in London, was brought backstage, took pictures, went for coffee a few days after, ended up sleeping with him that same night, debated choosing another guy named Noah over him, ran into him as I was leaving to come home, ended up asking him to come home with meâwhich he did, went to Steamboat Springs with him, ended up sleeping together again (in a different way though), came home, then went to Anguilla with him and started dating officially, I debated telling her.
But of course, I didn't tell her the whole story.
"I met him in London," I tell her simply with a shrug of my shoulders.
"How are you still together then?"
"It's a long and complicated story," I say, shaking my head. "But to sum it up, and as crazy as it sounds, he ended up coming back home with me."
"Wow," she says, looking a bit taken back, "sounds like a Hallmark movie."
"That's exactly what I was thinking!"
She chuckles softly and continues her work. Then, with perfect timing, as if right on cue, my first client of the day walks through the door, a beaming smile on her face.
* * *
"Alright girlie," I say, finishing up another client's nails.
"Thank you so much," she says to me, drawing her hands away from the table to get a closer look at them. "They look incredible."
"I'm glad you like them." I give her a nod. Even after years of doing this, I never know whether I should say 'you're welcome' or 'thank you' in response to them saying they like them. It's like, I'm doing them a service, but they're complimenting my work. It's complicated, to say the least.
My client pays me, giving me a $5 tip which I greatly appreciated. After doing so, with me saying goodbye and telling her to have a good day and good luck with the finals she had coming up, she left. I let out a sigh, utterly exhausted from my busy day of being both a nail tech and a therapist to some of my clients.
"Was that your last one?" Allie asks, sitting in her chair, waiting for her next client as well.
"No," I sigh, "I have one more. But after her, I'm finished."
"That's good," she says. "How has Jess been, by the way? She hasn't come in for quite a while. Are you two still living together?"
"Yeah, we are," I tell her, nodding. "But she's been fairly busy with work and her wedding planning."
"Oh my god, do they have a date a date set yet?" She asks excitedly, looking up from her phone.
"Sort of," I smile at the thought of my best friend's big day, "They're thinking sometime in early December."
"Aw, I'm so happy for her." Allie smiles. Everybody loves Jess. She's funny, outgoing, and the biggest social butterfly. I honestly would give anything to be like her.
"Me too." I smile softly, truly and genuinely happy for my best friend. If anyone deserves to be happy, it's Jess. She's been through way more shit than I have.
The sound of the back door opening startles Allie and me, both scrambling to make it seem like we were busy while we waited for our clients. We wouldn't want her to ever think we were just sitting and doing nothing. We always had to seem like we were working, or she would give us something to do like organizing the backroom or folding towels or something.
I pretend to be organizing my gel polishes in my drawers, even though they were already organized to their full potential. And then, as if the timing couldn't be any worse, just as Linda enters the room, my phone begins to ring.
No one ever calls me, and the people who do know I'm working right now. With a huff of frustration, I peer over at the screen where my phone sat on my work desk to see who was calling.
Harry.
Why would Harry call me? He knows I'm working and he was supposed to be adventuring around today, so there shouldn't be any reason as to why he would call me. Was he really that bored?
Considering my options, I decide the safest route was to just let it ring. Harry would take the hint that I was supposed to be busy and I wouldn't have to hear it from Linda about being on my phone while "on the clock". Trust me, I've experienced that one too many times before.
My phone's buzzing comes to an end, causing me to let out a sigh of relief.
"Working hard or hardly working ladies?" Linda says with a smirk on her face as she walks around the room, observing what everyone was up to. There were only three of us in today; me, Allie, and another girl named Brooke that I wasn't too close with. She only came in every once in a whileâdoing hair was her side job.
"Working hard," we all fearfully respond almost in unison.
"Hmm," she hums, not believing a word we said.
And just like that, my phone begins ringing yet again. Of course, it was Harry. This was his second time calling me, so whatever he had to tell me must've been urgent.
Slipping my bottom lip between my teeth, my eyes never leaving Linda as her back was faced to me as she spoke with Brooke, I pick up my phone slowly.
"Hello?" I answer softly. Just as I made a single peep, Linda's body whipped around to stare me down.
"Lils," Harry says in distress, but sounding relieved at the same time. "I've got an issue."
My heart drops as Linda strides over to me, the literal devil's grin playing on her face.
"W-What is it?" I ask nervously. Linda stands in front of my work desk, her silence and hawk-like stare throwing daggers at me.
"Well my dumb ass didn't check my gas before I started driving home," he tells me, sighing, "and now here I am, sitting here with absolutely no idea where a fucking gas station is."
"Do you know where you are?" I ask, avoiding eye contact with my boss at all costs.
"No idea."
I let out a stressed sigh. "What's your phone percentage?"
"Um," he says before pausing to check his phone battery, "15 percent."
"Okay, just...send me your location and I'll bring you some gas," I say, furrowing my eyebrows. "Stay in your car so no one sees you."
I know I had a client on her way, but I couldn't just leave Harry stranded there. For all I know, someone could drive past and seriously hurt him.
"Okay, I'm sorry," he says softly.
"Don't apologize," I tell him sincerely. "You didn't do it on purpose. I'll be there as soon as I can, just send me where I need to go."
"Thank you so much. I feel so bad for making you leave work."
"Don't worry about it. I'll be there soon."
Harry and I say our goodbyes before hanging up. Soon after, I get a notification that he had shared his location with me.
I sigh as I pick up my purse, turning off the lamp over my desk, preparing to leave.
"Where do you think you're going?" Linda asks as she had just waited for me to finish with Harry on the phone.
"My boyfriend got stranded, I really need to-"
"When is your work ever going to be more important than your little boy toy?" She snaps, folding her arms. This woman was like 50 years old, she's been married like 6 times, and she had the audacity to tell me to put my work life before my love life? Girlfriend needs to check herself before she speaks.
"And you know the rule. No leaving unless you don't have any more clients for the day," she reminds me of the dumbest rule ever created for the salon.
"I know, I know. And I'm very sorry Linda, but I really need to do this," I say as nicely as possible, careful to not upset her. "Look, I will come in early tomorrow and scrub the floors with a toothbrush if you want. I just really need to go to help my boyfriend."
"I don't want your pity cleaning," she says through gritted teeth. "You're going to stay here and finish up with your clients of the day because I'm not going to let some idiotic millennial ruin my salon's reputation just because her boyfriend is too poor to fill up a gas tank."
"You have no right to say that," I tell her, my insides boiling with anger.
"Oh yeah?" She takes a step closer to me, getting up in my face. "And what are you gonna do about it?"
She was right, there wasn't much I could do. But I was so sick and tired of putting up with her. She treated everyone in the salon like shit and used our fear of her against us. But she picked on me more than anybody else that has ever worked here and I was done with it.
My phone buzzes in my hand. Half expecting it to be Harry, I look down. But to my surprise, it wasn't him. It was my next client.
Kennedy: Hey Lili! I'm so sorry but I had to run to the hospital with my son, so I won't be able to make my appointment in a few minutes. I'm so sorry for the inconvenience and I hope we can reschedule.
A smirk appears on my lips as I realized that I was not technically breaking any rules anymore. I shove my phone into my pocket and readjust my purse on my shoulder.
With a very big and dramatic step, I begin to walk away from Linda, leaving her gawking there.
"What the hell do you think you're doing?" She gasps as I continue to walk away.
I don't respond, but keep walking. Harry was right, I don't deserve to be treated the way she treats me.
"Liliana Mason, if you walk out that door, you are done working here!" She threatens, making me stop in my tracks.
I turn around, the smirk still playing on my lips.
"I'll be back to pick up my things tomorrow," I tell her with a wink. I give her an up and down look once before turning back around to continue walking away.
"Liliana!" She practically screams.
Completely fed up with her bullshit, I throw up a middle finger as I reach the door, thinking of how that would be exactly how Jess would've handled it. Maybe I was a little like her after all.
I push open the door, leaving behind one of the biggest problems in my life to go rescue someone I knew actually cared about me.
I wasn't sure what I was going to do as of a job now, but I knew whatever it was would be a billion times better than working for Linda ever was.
* * *
a/n: how we feelin ?