He gave me a look that made it clear that wouldn’t be happening.
“Okay,” the woman said a few minutes later as she emerged from the back carrying several large boxes. “I’ve got a few places to start. I’m Megan, by the way.”
“I’m Jeff and this is Amber,” James said.
Her smile spread. “Pleased to meet you both. I think we’re gonna have fun!”
I sat in the chair, and she put my hair up, talking me through how to do it so my wig would fit better. Then she put a thin wig cap over my hair before opening the first box.
Megan pulled out a long blond wig and moved over to me. “I pulled this one because it’s a honey blond, which will work well with Amber’s skin tone. And I chose the length carefully, because while it’s long, it’s not too long.” She tugged it over my head, scooting it around to get it straight.
I gaped at my reflection. “I look completely different,” I whispered.
The ends of the hair hit about six inches past my shoulders, and fringe bangs lay against my forehead.
“I had a feeling you could pull off bangs,” Megan said in a satisfied tone. She glanced over at James. “What do you think, Jeff?”
He didn’t say anything for several seconds, then seemed to come to his senses. “You do look completely different.”
That was the goal, obviously, but the way he was looking at me made the words sting.
Megan froze. “Is that what you were going for?”
“Yeah,” James said, tearing his gaze from the mirror.
“Good!” Megan said, beaming. “The beauty of this wig and the length is you can wear it a lot of different ways. It’s made with human hair, so you can wash it, dry it, and curl it.”
I jerked my head around to look at her. “Human hair?” That had to be extremely expensive.
“It’s the most natural-looking wig,” Megan said. “Synthetic hair looks so fake.”
“We want real,” James said in a tone that let me know he wasn’t budging. He had to know I would balk at the price.
“You can style it just like natural hair,” she said as she gathered it up on top of my head. “You can curl it. Wear it in a ponytail.” She twisted it into a knot. “You can put it in a messy bun. What do you think?”
I glanced up at James, and he nodded. “It looks great.”
“So we’ll keep this one in mind,” Megan said cheerfully. “Let’s take a look at the next one.”
“Yeah,” I said.
She had me try on two more—a long brunette wig with golden highlights, and a shoulder-length auburn one. When the third wig was on my head, Megan squealed. “I knew it,” she exclaimed, holding her hands against her chest. “You were born to be a redhead.”
They all made me look like a different person, and I wasn’t opposed to what I saw. If anything, it made me realize I’d been phoning in on the whole femininity thing. Now I had to figure out which one to get.
“We’ll take all three,” James said, giving me a look in the mirror that told me it was pointless to argue.
While I took off the wig cap and pulled out all the pins, Megan repackaged the wigs and carried them to the checkout counter, talking in an excited rush about how happy we were going to be with our decision.
She rang up our purchases, and I nearly had a panic attack thinking about how much James was about to put on the credit card he’d pulled out of his wallet.
I stepped out of the store before I could hear the total, already feeling guilty. They would be useful—my notoriety made me recognizable enough that the wigs would come in handy for my work as a PI—but I didn’t feel right letting James pay for them. I’d pay him back once I got my mother’s inheritance. Whenever that turned out to be.
He walked out of the store, carrying three heavy white paper bags with white cord handles. “What happened in there? Why’d you leave?”
I gestured to the bags. “We should have just gotten one. Three is too many.”
“I disagree. Once I saw you in the first one, I knew a wig was a good idea. And three gives you options.”
