Page 36 of My Girlfriend is Not the Father

‘You okay if my aunt meets me here after hours and I use your station to do her starter locs?’

‘Yeah, of course.’ One of the benefits she had for her employees was the ability to use the salon after hours for family. Amanda didn’t have a licence and technically, Jade could get in a little trouble for having an unlicensed employee working on hair. However, she never once heard of a cosmetology board member slapping a fine on a salon owner for free after-hour services. ‘You’re a nice niece. You might want to have Uber Eats on speed-dial since you’ll be here for a few hours.’

‘I was thinking maybe we’d order pizza and make it a whole family affair. I think I’m gonna have my mom come help if that’s cool.’

‘For sure.’

‘Thanks, lady.’ Amanda grabbed a few water bottles from the fridge and bounced out the door.

Jade double-checked her tray. Spray bottle, rollers, and freshly sanitised combs. Check. Often, auto-pilot took over, and she returned to her station carrying supplies that she forgot she even loaded.

With an unexpected reprieve, she grabbed her phone from her pocket and peeked. Her heart leapt when an unread message from Lucy popped up.

Lucy: Hey, do you have plans tonight? Wondering if I can take you for dinner?

Dinner. Maybe this message was a gratitude offering since Jade helped Lucy yesterday. Maybe Lucy was asking for a date. Maybe Lucy was bored and just checking if her friend wanted to hang out to help pass the time.

Jade wasn’t sure which one of these scenarios sounded better. Or worse. Too many thoughts swirled in her mind, and after staring at the message one too many times, she slipped the phone back in her pocket without responding. Does she want to have dinner with Lucy? Yes. Should she have dinner with Lucy? Honestly, she didn’t know.

The back-room door swung open and Shayna bounced in, her sky-high, ultra-snug ponytail flapping behind her. The hairstyle looked damn good, but Jade couldn’t help but wince at the inevitable pounding headache Shayna would have by the end of the shift.

At six feet tall, Jade was used to being the tallest woman in the room. But Shayna was a fan of platform heels, and the ones she had on today nearly put her eye-to-eye with Jade.

‘You must have a spine of steel.’ Jade glanced at Shayna’s shoes. ‘I’ll never understand how you don’t jump into an ice bath as soon as your shift ends.’

Shayna reached for colour and developer. ‘Who says I don’t?’ She squeezed a dollop of deep red into a bowl and mixed. ‘I was born in heels.’

A conversation had to be had. Shayna’s profit’s downward spiral was ongoing, and Jade knew they had officially reached the point where she had to address the situation. She pulled in a deep breath. Elizabeth always said that Jade’s greatest fault was avoiding hard conversations – that she bottled everything up and stewed until she boiled over. She should just come out and casually ask if Shayna was okay.

‘Are you okay?’ Shayna asked as she plucked foils from the box. ‘You look like you’re off in la-la land.’

Ugh. Beat me to it.

‘Oh yep!’ Jade’s words were way too chipper. She was the boss, dammit. This was her salon, her employee, her profits. She needed to just spit it out. ‘Off to see if Mrs Dieterman arrived.’ Her face heated. She’d address the Shayna situation later. Right now, the text message from Lucy was playing in a constant loop, and she had to figure out what to do. Besides, if something was happening, a busy Saturday afternoon was not the time to have a heartfelt and possibly upsetting conversation.

Definitely not avoiding. Definitely.

Jade pushed the door open with her hip and smiled as her client walked through the door. ‘Mrs Dieterman. Looking as beautiful as ever.’

Mrs Dieterman scowled. ‘Well, now I know you’re full of mouldy baloney. My shampoo set cannot keep up with the humidity, and I refuse to go to church tomorrow looking like a raggedy doll.’

Jade set the supplies on her station and held out her arm.

‘You don’t eat fish, right?’ Mrs Dieterman gripped Jade’s arm and shuffled to the shampoo bowl. ‘I forget if you vegetarians count that as meat. You know, in the church, we don’t count fish as meat. You can have that during Lent on Fridays and it’s okay.’

‘Good to know,’ Jade said with a smile at the random food fact. Does Lucy eat fish? Can pregnant women eat fish? There are so many rules, she imagined, with pregnancy and eating, but she had no reason to dig into those. Wait … what did Mrs Dieterman ask? ‘Oh, uh, no, I don’t eat fish. Why do you ask?’

Mrs Dieterman sighed as Jade lathered the suds and scrubbed, rubbing softly on the top, and harder on the nape. ‘Mr Dieterman went with our oldest son fishing today in Brainerd. Last summer, they came home with almost fifty pounds of fish. They said this year they’re expecting to get more. Who can even eat that much? I figured I’d beer batter fry them and bring you some. You could probably use some meat on your bones.’

Normally, any comment about body or sizes, or someone being too fat or too thin, made Jade cringe. But Mrs Dieterman got a pass – it was clear in her tone it was more motherly love than societal judgement. As Mrs Dieterman continued chatting about the best spots for walleye, Jade’s mind wandered. Dinner. Tonight. Was this dinner dinner? Or was this just grabbing some takeout with a friend. And if it was ‘dinner’ dinner, was Jade actually ready for that?

Back at the station, Jade grabbed the rollers. Crap. Wrong ones. How the hell did she do that? She scurried back to grab the right ones and took one more glance at the text … wondering if I can take you for dinner.

Okay, that was definitely more than takeout. Jade took a second to pinch the tip of her nose, separate the flush of tingles from the coiling belly, then returned to Mrs Dieterman.

‘I don’t think I ever asked how you and your husband met,’ Jade said as she rolled. ‘Was it love at first sight?’

‘I’ll tell ya – I told him it wasn’t. But I knew he was the one, even though we were only fourteen when we met.’