Page 31 of Buy Back My Love

“I love it. Only bitch I’m ever working for again is you.”

I laughed. “Don’t start.”

“I’m serious.”

She started filing my nails, then looked up at me. “Plus, half them girls that went over there with Hannah ain’t even there no more.”

“Why?”

“Because she mean.”

Anika laughed from the chair beside us.

Wren kept going. “Her work still fire, don’t get me wrong, but she can’t keep nobody. She stay booked because she can do nails her damn self, but she gotta stay on that floor working.”

I nodded, but hearing all that felt strange.

Love-Lee had been gone for years, and I knew that. Still, every time somebody talked about Hannah running a shop in that same building, my mind went straight back to what it used to look like when my name was on the front.

I didn’t feel like sitting there getting sad over it, so I changed the subject.

“Aight, who done fell out with who since I been gone?”

Wren’s eyes lit up. “Baby, how much time you got?”

Anika leaned back in her chair. “Now you asking the right questions.”

For the next couple hours, them two caught me up on everything I had missed. Who got married, who got divorced, who got caught cheating, who got their body done and swore up and down it was the gym.

I laughed so hard my stomach hurt.

When Wren finally finished, I had almost forgotten I was supposed to be sitting still.

“What you think?” she asked.

I looked down at my hands and turned them from side to side. She had done a mauve-pink set with black, blush, baby blue, ivory, and pale-yellow swirls across the tips.

“Girl, these hard.”

Wren smiled. “They are called Pucci French.”

“I don’t know what the hell that means, but you snapped.”

“Look at your toes.”

She moved the footrest, and I started laughing when I saw she’d matched them.

“Okay, bitch.”

“You like them?”

“I love them.”

I reached for my purse.

Wren slapped my hand. “Don’t even.”

“How much?”