“That’s it,” the photographer grunted. “Got what I needed.”
Logan turned. “All right, then, Larry. Say hi to the wife and kids.”
The photographer was already shuffling away, but he tossed up a hand in acknowledgment.
“Guess we don’t need to, uh...” I glanced down at the small space between us.
“Right, of course.” Logan released me. “Show’s over and you want to go home.”
It was déjà vu when he swept me into the Town Car and shut the door behind me. Just like the video with the Rockets cheerleader, except against all odds,Iwas the glamorous woman now. As the car pulled away from the curb, I watched Logan through the window, standing on the sidewalk with his hands shoved deep in his pockets, so handsome under the streetlamps. And it dawned on me in that delayed way my feelings sometimes did that I didn’t want this fake date, or business meeting, or whatever it was, to end.
And that was a problem, wasn’t it? Because while I was letting myself sink into dreamy fantasies, Logan had been clear from the beginning about where he stood.I want to assure you the last thing you need to worry about is whether I have feelings for you.
I closed my eyes and leaned my head against the leather seat, repeating the words like a mantra so they would sink in.I want to assure you, I want to assure you, I want to assure you.
Stay awake, Alexis. No dreaming.
14
Pretty Womaned
“Don’t think of it as a makeover,” Nora insisted. “Think of it as apolishing.”
I eyed Logan, who sat in the hairdresser’s chair next to mine, covered by a black robe, face lathered with shaving cream. One stylist trimmed his dark curls while a second shaved him. His eyes slid in my direction, though he was careful to keep still. “It’s nice once you get used to it,” he murmured. “World of difference from my old BargainCuts.”
Nora hadn’t dragged me to just any salon—we were at Acid Betty, where even Lee struggled to get an appointment. It was one of those new places Austin was famous for, both painfully hip and wildly expensive. The salon was so grunge it looked like the kind of place that would eschew money as a form of capitalist propaganda, but, as it turned out, was quite the opposite. A huge chandelier made of metal spikes hung from the vaulted ceiling, and stylists dressed in black buzzed everywhere with their hair half shaved or dyed slime green. The hypercool stylists both intrigued and intimidated me, but none more than the woman standing behind my chair, running her fingers through my hair with a scowl.
It had been four long days since my dinner with Logan, and while the photos of us leaving the restaurant had popped up on bothThe Watcher on the Hilland theAustin American-Statesman’sOut on the Townblog—which had then circulated on Twitter, accompanied by a fifty-fifty mix of single-tear and heart-eye emojis—I hadn’t heard a peep from the campaign. No texts or calls from Nora or Logan. Not even aParks and Recgif from Cary, who’d been DMing them to me nonstop ever since the Antique Car Society meeting. Apparently, he thought my impassioned speech about education had “Leslie Knope overtones,” which I’d decided to take as a compliment.
At first, I’d passed the time by returning to the photos, admiring what an effective sleight-of-hand Logan and I had achieved. The pictures captured him stroking my hair and leaning in to whisper, and we’d genuinely pulled off the look of two people with natural chemistry. But as the days passed without hearing anything, I’d taken to checking Logan’s event calendar and reminding myself that he was a busy person. And then, of course, I had to chastise myself for even noticing how long we’d gone without talking, becausewe were not actually dating. It was sad enough to obsessively check your phone waiting for a real boyfriend to call; doing it for a fake one made me question my grip on reality.
So it was no surprise that in my emotionally fragile state Nora had been able to catfish me into meeting her on the Drag, a shopping-heavy portion of Guadalupe Street next to UT, claiming Logan had important campaign business he needed my help with. I’d driven straight over after school only to be unceremoniously yanked into Acid Betty, where Logan was in the middle of getting a haircut. Nora had announced, rather triumphantly, that it was time to “spruce me up.” No amount of insistence that I didn’t need a makeover had swayed her. Somehow, I’d blinked and found myself sitting in this hairdresser’s chair.
“Logan, your old BargainCuts charged you seven dollars for a haircut and got shut down for health violations,” Nora said.
“I didn’t even know hairdressers couldreceivehealth violations,” I said.
“Oh, trust me, they can.” Nora rolled her eyes. “And hestillgrumbled when I told him we were going to a different place.”
“I won’t apologize for appreciating a good deal,” Logan muttered. “I’m a simple man.” With an air of indignation, he leaned back and settled into his stylist’s head massage.
Nora cocked an eyebrow and turned to me, tugging a strand of my hair. “Is it physically possible,” she asked my stylist, “to turn this into a Jackie O sort of situation?”
I yanked my hair back. “We’re not cutting it.” I was attached to my hair. Lee had once told me it made me look like Belle fromBeauty and the Beast.
“Vat about a leetle trim?” It was the first my stylist had spoken since I’d arrived. I was astonished to discover that on top of her goth clothing, facial piercings, and matte black lipstick, she had an accent that could only be described as Transylvanian. “At least let me do za gloss. Your hair needs voom.”
“Voom?”
She waved her hand. “Interest. Life.”
Okay,ouch. Nora, whose picture was probably in the dictionary next to the wordvoom, gave me a pointed look in the mirror. “You’re about to be in a lot of photographs, Alexis. Do you really want the internet saying you have dead hair? Because you know they will.”
It was true. The internet wasvicious.
“Besides, you have that library conference coming up.”
I did?I spun to face Logan. “You got me a booth?”
