She was definitely tipsy.
But it felt good, her whole body like rubber, her mind, her heart.
“I’ve got a ton of hair dye in my trunk,” April said, heading toward the parking lot behind the lodge. She popped her car’s trunk, then started rooting around while Daphne leaned against the cool back door. “You sure you’re up for this?”
“I’m sure,” Daphne said, her words only slightly slurred. She knew she should feel tired, but she only felt exhilarated, adrenaline and tequila cocktailing together in her blood. She not only wanted to be wild, shefeltwild.
And she never wanted to feel anything else.
Never wanted to feel weak or scared or stupid again.
Never wanted to feel like a hungry kid begging for crumbs.
She took her phone out of her back pocket, stared at the blank screen for a second. No notifications. No texts or missed calls. But in this moment, that didn’t feel like a bad thing—it felt like freedom. Like a new start.
But if she was really going to start over, she had to finish something first. She needed closure, needed to be seen and heard. So even though her head was fuzzy, and somewhere in the very back of her mind there was a tiny, reasonable voice telling her to slow down, put her phone away, she unlocked it anyway.
She tapped on Elena’s name in her text app.
Then she thumbed two tiny, devastating words into the message box.
April Evans.
“Purple or turquoise?” April said, emerging from her trunk,her eyes a bit glassy too. She held up two bottles of hair dye, shaking them in Daphne’s direction.
Daphne hesitated, but only for a moment.
“Purple,” she said, then hit send, catapulting her text message into the ether.
Chapter
Nine
Sasha must haveslipped twice the amount of alcohol into April’s drink. Either that, or she’d hit her head and just didn’t remember. Maybe the lake was poisoned, and jumping into the water after Daphne last night had caused toxins to soak into her pores. Some bodily malady was the only explanation for agreeing to help Daphne wild up her life. Daphne, who was not onlyDaphne Love, but was now April’s competition for the Devon exhibition.
Still, as soon as April’s acquiescence flowed out of her mouth, Daphne’s face had illuminated like the Bristol Family Farm’s holiday light display, and there was no way to take it all back. Not with Daphne looking like April had just saved her puppy from becoming roadkill.
The tequila certainly hadn’t helped matters, that was for sure, not that tequila ever did.
And now, as April pulled a chair from their small breakfast table into the bathroom and set it up in front of the sink, her last bottle of lavender hair dye ready and waiting, she couldn’t help but feel a little nervous.
“Okay, I’m ready,” Daphne said, appearing in the bathroom doorway.
April glanced up, her nerves cresting even more, because Daphne didn’t have on a shirt. Granted, she had on a very staid sports bra—a sweat-wicking material in a cerulean blue—but still. There was suddenly a lot of skin in April’s vision, and it didn’t really matter that the skin belonged to Daphne Love. It was still skin, and it was very smooth and soft-looking, and it swelled over small boobs, dipping into a subtle cleavage and—
April shook her head, squeezing her eyes closed. Damn tequila. Never led to anything good.
“I need some water,” she said, sliding past Daphne and into the main room, grabbing her water bottle and tossing half its contents down her throat. She was suddenly very aware that the entire process of dyeing someone’s hair was pretty intimate, someone else’s armpit or boobs or face was usuallyveryclose…
“April?” Daphne called from the bathroom.
“Yeah,” April said, swallowing a few more gulps. “All good.” She capped the bottle, then walked back to the bathroom. Daphne was already sitting in the chair, her hair loose and a bit frizzy around her bare shoulders.
A client, April thought as she walked to the sink and snapped on a pair of the black latex gloves she used at her shop.Daphne is just like a client.
“You ready?” she asked.
Daphne nodded, her cheeks still a bit pink from the alcohol. April wrapped a towel around Daphne’s shoulders and secured it with a hair clip at the base of her throat. She picked up the jar of coconut oil she used when dyeing her own hair, started applying it around Daphne’s hairline.
