Lost in Silence (The Lost Series Book 1) (13 page)

“Honey, you’re the prettiest brunette I’ve ever seen and I’m one myself,” Marjory says as she steps back studying her creation in the mirror. She really is an artist at her craft. Even I have to admit I look amazing. I barely recognize the woman staring back at me.

“Marge, you outdid yourself but clients like her make our job so much easier. Natural beauty,” Bobbi walks up behind me and places both hands on my shoulders, squeezes gently. She looks down at my hands and notices the nervous twitch of my fingers. She gives me a friendly smile. “Cherry red? Very lovely, fits you perfectly.”

She looks up. Her eyes meet Missy’s in the mirror. Something passes between them. My guess is Bobbi knows what Hudson’s favorite color is and she guessing Missy chose it for me.

“What are you girls doing later?” Marjory asks, her smile is a dazzling white against her caramel skin. “I was thinking about hitting the town and having a drink or two.”

“Actually, Alice has a date,” Missy glances at me, our eyes connect in the mirror. She winks at me. “With Hudson.”

“Are you kidding me?” the woman seated in the chair behind me yelps. Batting away her hairdresser, she manages to turn her chair and face us. She scowls heavily and purses her lips, giving me a once over. “Tell me you’re not the reason that hot piece of sex on a stick stood me up last night.”

“Holly,” Bobbi’s voice is sharp. I cringe a little and keep my head down. The woman, called Holly, is a knock out, despite a head full of foil and the shapeless smock covering her body. Her piercing blue eyes burn a hole right through me.

“What? Cat got your tongue?” she hops out of her chair and I notice her banana yellow platform stilettos. “Or are you just stupid?”

Missy moves quickly, placing herself between Holly and me. She step into Holly’s personal space.

“Sit down,” Missy’s voice is dead cold, sending shivers down my spine. The entire salon has grown quiet from the commotion. I look up suddenly aware of the eyes on us.

“Get out of my face Missy,” Holly spits but Missy doesn’t move. “What are you her bodyguard?”

“From bitches like you I am.”

“How dare you—”

“How dare I?”

“Missy, calm,” Bobbi advises remaining relatively calm herself, which freaks me out a bit. I can feel the tension rolling off her but she keeps it in check, under control. Missy is more than ready to throw down with the bleach blonde but I have a feeling Bobbi’s about to prove what it means to fuck with a true southern woman. “Take a breath and walk away.”

“Yeah,
Missy
,” Holly sneers, emphasizing Missy’s name with contempt. “Listen to your girl before you get your ass beat.”

“Keep that mouth of yours shut if you know what’s good for you,” Missy smiles menacingly. I could tell by her stance she was ready and she knew what she was doing.

“You could try,” Holly snorts, her eyes roam the room. Missy steps forward again but Bobbi moves just as quickly, squeezing in between them. Both women step back, making room for her.

“She isn’t worth it Missy,” Bobbi pleads and Holly gasps, the insult hitting the intended target. “Your brother has some sense, standing her up.”

“You southern fried bitch,” Holly sneers, her venom eyes are pinned to the shop owner. A collective gasp echoes through the salon, all eyes on the scene before them. The black smock covering Holly’s body sticks out at odd angles were her arms are placed on her hips. She looks like a broke down medusa. “Who the fuck do you think you’re talking about?”

“Oh honey, you don’t want to play the insult game with me,” the buxom redhead turns, her copper eyes on what I assume is now a dead woman walking. I don’t know Bobbi well but I get the sense she is not a woman to mess with. “Kelly, remove this woman’s smock and show her the door.”

Kelly, the woman who had been attending to Holly’s hair, snaps to attention, ripping away the smock. She then reaches for Holly’s arm but she pulls back, refusing to budge.

“Oh hell no,” Holly hisses, her eyes flying wildly around her. “Can you believe this? I’ve been a loyal customer for the last decade and this is how I’m treated?”

“Loyal?” Bobbi crosses her arms and scoffs at her. “You’re about as loyal as a bitch in heat. I know how loyal you are honey. Do you ask Tammy for the same deep pocket discount you ask my girls for each visit? If it wasn’t for your daddy and all that he’s done for this town, I would’ve refused service to you years ago. You think you’re hot shit in this town but you got it all wrong. You’re nothing but a white trash whore whose mama wasn’t smart enough to swallow or spit.”

The color drains from Holly’s face as each word hits her like a punch to the gut. She looks away and stumbles backward to her chair, reaching for her purse. Without a sound, she crosses to the door, stopping only as she reaches it. She pauses for a moment and finally turns toward Bobbi.  

“Mark my word, Bobbi Lee, you will regret this,” Holly’s words lack fire but her eyes rage war.

“Get gone girl,” Missy cuts in.

“Fuck you Missy and your brother,” Holly hurls the words at her, hatred burning across her face. “I hope he chokes on it.”

She flings open the door and slams it closed behind her. The force of it shakes the building. Everyone sits dazed for a moment, watching the glare of the sun bounce off Holly’s tin foil head as she stomps away. As soon as Holly drives away in her red sports car, all eyes land on Bobbi, who is now staring at the smock in Kelly hands like it’s the plague.

“Kelly, get yourself a new smock from the back and burn that one,” Bobbi mutters, breaking the silence and the tension. A few nervous snickers sound off around the room. She looks over at me and smiles before addressing the salon. “Shows over ladies, time to get back to making the world a beautiful place.”

The room once again fills with noise, a soft buzz compared to earlier but there was hair to be cut, color to be rinsed and toes to be painted. The confrontation with Holly wasn’t a big deal to these women, which has me wondering about her. While I was sure she in fact is the world’s biggest bitch, I felt a little sorry for her.

“Don’t feel bad for her Alice,” Missy places a hand on my shoulder, interrupting me from my thoughts.  I look up at her, careful to mask my thoughts. “Holly’s done a lot of fucked up shit to a lot of people in this town, my brother being one of them.”

I nod, but it still didn’t sit well with me. Shaking my head I attempt to clear away the thoughts, I wasn’t going to be here forever so it didn’t matter what her story was. Still, she is the one Hudson was in a hurry to meet up with. What did that even mean? Were they a couple or something? Holly said he stood her up and I can’t help wondering why? He left the house last night. His truck was gone when I left for my walk. Where did he go if not to meet her? Was there another woman somewhere?

Meeting Holly only led me to stand firm in my belief that Missy is crazy to believe Hudson has feelings for me. I’m nothing like Holly. She is gorgeous, big breasted, styled and obviously worldly. I’m small, frumpy and I wore clothing three sizes too big for me. She might’ve been a bitch but there is no way I could compete with someone who looks like her.

Alice

I’m wearing dress number eight, when I hear Missy gasp. I just stepped out of the dressing room and swung my head to see what has her attention. She’s looking at me, her eyes slowly moving up and down my body.

“That’s the one,” she whispers. “You look stunning. Buy it.”

I smile and turn towards the mirror, stopping short of the woman staring back at me. This is the second time today I question the person looking back. I’m almost ready to pound on the glass for the old version of me to come back. I lift my arm, waving to the new version, she waves back. The transformation is difficult for me to swallow.

“The color is perfect Alice,” Missy says but I barely hear her words, the thump of my heart is so loud, I’m surprised she can’t hear it too. “Hudson’s going to love it.”

The pressure of tonight, the new haircut, the nails and now the dress, suddenly it was too much. My heart feels overwhelmed. Today wasn’t supposed to be like this. I just wanted a simple dress, not an entire makeover. Hudson and I were friends, nothing more, all of this made it feel like it was something more. As much as I wanted it to be something else, I couldn’t be dishonest with him or myself. Missy’s eyes catch mine in the mirror and her voice calms me almost instantly.

“Stop doubting, Alice. You’re good enough and completely deserving,” she sees my hesitation and my excitement. She knows my heart. “If nothing else, allow yourself one night to experience something good. The problems will be there in the morning for you to shoulder.”

Her words echo around in my head, hammering at every emotion I’ve felt in the last twenty-four hours. I want to be good enough but I’m afraid of what they’ll think when they find out the truth about me.

“There’s more to you than you let us see and sometimes I don’t think you see those parts either,” she’s right, I don’t. It’s a defense mechanism though. I had to shut those parts of me down in order to survive for as long as I have. “I told you early on, I don’t sugar coat anything. Today wasn’t about a date Alice, it’s about you, as a person and a woman. You’re hiding and you keep yourself locked up so tight, I’m surprised you can breathe. Today was me trying to get you loosen up a bit. It was to remind you what it feels like to be human again. Having dinner with Hudson is the icing on top of it all. It doesn’t mean you have date him, it doesn’t mean you have to sleep with him. What it means is you need to let yourself enjoy it.”

If I didn’t already love Missy before this moment, there would be no doubt I love her now. Not after those words of encouragement. She doesn’t treat me like a fragile piece of glass. She knows the shit in my life was dark but it didn’t stop her and I appreciate it. Patting the seat next to her, she motions for me to sit.

“There is nothing wrong with being a private person. My brother is a good example of the wrong kind of private though. Getting him to talk about anything is worse than pulling teeth from a feral cat. With you he’s different,” she pauses and takes a deep breath. I reach for her hand, squeezing it to tell her I understood what she meant. “There’s something I want to tell you about, things from before Hudson went dark. Things I can talk about because it’s part of my story too. Has he told you anything at all about our parents?”

I shake my head. He hasn’t. Missy reaches for her purse. Slipping her hand in she pulls out a picture for me to see. The picture has five smiling faces, two of which I recognize as their parents. Each sibling has a resemblance to either one. Hudson looks like his father, Missy like her mother and Ten is a mixture of both.

“Our parents were in a head on collision with a drunk driver. They both died on the way to the hospital, the airbags didn’t deploy. The driver walked away without a scratch,” she takes a deep shuddering breath. I’m know this is a difficult subject for her to talk about. “I was barely eighteen, Hudson was fourteen and Tennessee was eleven. We didn’t have much in the way of family. The boys were placed in a foster home while I filed for guardianship. It took a year before I was granted custody of them.”

Her brown eyes glistens with tears, my heart aches for her. Their parents must have meant a lot to them, they look so happy in the photo. I lace my fingers with hers, giving my silent support.

“The courts gave me so much shit that first year and I struggled to make everything right. I worked two jobs but it wasn’t enough. The boys wanted to sell the house, find something more suited to our budget,” her voices wavers and she looks down at our hands. “We were drowning. The mortgage, the upkeep and various bills, it was too much for the meager pay I brought home. As much as I didn’t want to, selling the house was our only option. I set aside a substantial amount for the boys’ college funds and I cut back on my hours to be home more often with them. The boys had another plan for the money though. Since I was the one supporting them, they thought it would be better if I had a job that was more career-oriented. They wanted me to go to school, so I enrolled in a technical school for nursing. Hudson was sixteen and looking for an after school job to help out since I’d have to let one of my jobs go to accommodate a class schedule.”

I sigh, wishing I knew this kind of dedication in my life. The love and support they have each other through such a difficult time in their lives was inspiring. Maybe if my parents had given me siblings I wouldn’t have had such a lonely childhood.

“It was shortly after this period in our lives that everything changed for Hudson. Crystal walked into his life,” she drags in a breath and her body tenses. I could tell she didn’t like Crystal at all. In fact I was sure there were many people in their lives who had the same regard for her. I want to push, to ask Missy more but it’s not her place to tell me this story. Missy shakes her head and looks at me from the corner of her eye. She laughs nervously. “What you must think of me telling you sad things when this is a day of celebrations and beauty.”

I reach for the pad of paper I carried around today, letting go of her hand to write.

I think you’re courageous, giving up your life to take care of your brothers. There aren’t many in the world that would be so selfless. The support you gave each other...I wish I had known that.

She laughs nervously again and refuses to meet my gaze.

“I did what I had to do, for my family,” she sounds far away again. Thinking about it isn’t easy for her. “You do have support Alice. You just have to accept it.”

My breath catches in my chest as she finally looks at me. She means it too.

“Now, are you going to buy this gorgeous dress, or are you going to trying on more?”

I stand on shaky legs, moving towards the dressing room. This was the dress, no doubt. I feel like a woman in it and if that is the point of this shopping expedition then we’ve met our goal. I drag in a breath and turn back to her. I want to say the words, in fact, I almost do. I never felt this close to anyone in my life before. Not until now, with Missy. When I look at her, she isn’t just
Hudson’s sister
anymore. She’s my friend, probably the first real friend I’ve ever had.

“Thank you Alice, for listening. I haven’t talk about them in a long time,” she stands and puts her arms around me, hugging me tight. She gives me a lighter laugh, her nervousness gone. “I don’t know who benefitted more from this day, you or me. It’s nice having a woman around to do girlie things with. You can’t imagine what my life is like with so many alphas around.”

I giggle silently, offering her a bright smile.