Until I looked in the mirror. “My hair is a mess.” I groaned.
“Wide-tooth comb and put it in a bun,” Kate directed.
“I could flat iron it.”
“No!” Kate yelled.
I didn’t listen to her. I shimmied the dress back off and set it carefully on my bed.
“Bad idea, bad idea!” Kate insisted as I plugged the flat iron in.
“What, no!” I said as I clamped down on a piece of my hair. It came out smooth and shiny.
“This looks great,” I said happily, grabbing another chunk close to my face. “I can’t go out with Hunter with frizzy hair. This is my chance to make a good impression.”
“You guys had sex on the floor of your office!” Kate shrieked through the video call. “You’re way past first impressions!”
Sex in my office.Damn, it had been good. Hunter sure knew what he was doing.
The smoke alarm went off.
“Shit, shit!” I unclamped the smoking flat iron and set it on the bathroom counter… along with a chunk of my hair.
“Oh my god!” I shrieked.
“Lord have mercy,” Kate declared. “I can smell the burning hair from here.”
“What am I going to do?”
“Let me see…”
I huddled in front of my phone camera. A good patch of hair on my head had been burned off. It was right at my left temple. There was no way to hide it, especially because the burnt ends looked like one of those cartoons after they had stuck a fork into an electric socket.
“I look insane,” I cried.
“It will be fine.” Kate tried to talk me off the ledge.
“No, it’s not! I’ll have to cancel my date. I’ll have to drop out of the race. I can’t go out looking like this!”
“Use some hair gel and shellac it in place. Make it seem like part of your bun.”
I moaned and slid to the floor.
“Hunter’s going to be so infatuated with you, he won’t even notice,” Kate assured me.
* * *
“You look amazing in that dress,”Hunter told me an hour later. I had been watching the street, anxiously waiting for him to arrive. My apartment was a disaster, and I also didn’t want him to come in, have hot, heavy, and rough sex, then have my missing chunk of hair fly up and ruin the moment.
I was waiting downstairs for him when he drove up in his fancy sports car. I anxiously felt the side of my head as he stepped out. I grabbed the passenger door and hopped in before he could help me. I didn’t want him too close to my head.
Hunter leaned over to kiss me once he got back behind the wheel. I tried to keep my head straight and direct his hands away from my hair. I started to sweat. I was sure I could feel the burnt tuft slowly start to peel up.
Hunter peered at me in the dark.
“I’m hungry,” I blurted out before he could ask me what was wrong. I didn’t need him to give me grief about my hair.
“Oh, okay.” He gave me an assessing look.
