Purchase a haircut for a shelter dog: $50
Get your haircut to match your dog: $100
Get a haircut and an adoption voucher: $150
Donate any amount for a chance to win a free haircut and beauty products.
All proceeds go to the Second Chance dog shelter.
“I can’t believe you befriended the dog grooming place across the street. I feel like we’ve been weirdly in competition with them for years,” Blair said as she inspected the sign.
Aspen grunted and finally managed to lock the metal bar into the base of the display stand. “That was all Rachel. She’s quite persuasive when she wants to be. Apparently, all she had to do was tell them it was for a good cause and offer to put flyers for their services by our checkout moving forward. I talked to Susie about it, and she said if we could get some good photos of folks with their dogs today, we could probably display them with the flyers hereandat the dog grooming place.”
Aspen had only interacted with Susie a few times before this month, but she’d always seemed nice. They’d taken a chance two weeks earlier and walked into her office with a bunch of big ideas, and only a semblance of a plan. Since Thanksgiving, Noah had been inundated by calls from his parents and even his brother about baby stuff. He hadn’t been on his A-game in terms of planning, but Aspen had filled the gaps as best they could. They’d gone so far as to print out pictures of people with haircuts matching their dogs, and Blair had hyped them up the whole day before they marched into Susie’s office.
When Susie admitted she was actually a huge animal person, Aspen had nearly cried from relief. Charlie had officially heard back that he hadn’t received the final grant he needed, so it was up to their fundraising efforts to fill the gap so he could at least keep the lights on until he figured out something else. That, on top of everything Noah was going through, made Aspen feel like they really needed to start pulling their weight–and hopefully this fundraiser would do the trick.
“Rachelispretty badass,” Blair said proudly, as if she were the one who had brought her into their life.
To be fair, while Aspen had found Rachel, Blair had been the one to sweep her up into her queer commune and introduce her to the queer scene around town. Rachel was now a regular attendee at the Rainbow Bean drag show and was apparently going to a queer kink intro class that weekend.
“She is. And she should be here soon, I hope,” Aspen said, turning to stare out at the long line of folks and their pups who had come out today.
“Have you heard from either of them yet?” she asked, throwing an arm around Aspen and leading them inside.
“I know Dani’s plane landed on time, so it just depends on how much traffic they hit.”
Dani had called on the first of December to demand that Aspen redeem their plane ticket “credit” with her and come visit. If it had been any other time, they would have jumped on the opportunity to see her, but they couldn’t leave Noah right now, and they also had way too much planning to do. They’d looked at tickets around Christmas itself, and the prices had made them both gag. Then Noah had the bright idea to invite Dani out here instead, and the stars had all aligned for her to take a few days off around the fundraiser. Sadly, that meant she would miss seeing Noah, who had been summoned back home when the baby arrived 9 days early.
“I am medicated, hydrated, motivated, excited, and probably some other -ed words,” Aspen said, laughing when Blair tickled their sides. “What! I am!”
“You’re ridiculous, is what you are. It’s a good thing I adore you,” she said, giving them an air kiss so she didn’t get any lipstick on them.
“Are we ready to open the doors?” Kayla asked from behind the desk.
“I’m ready when you are!” Kristen called from the back. She was one of their more recent stylists. She specialized in haircuts for trans femme folk, a service they’d been severely lacking in before.
Aspen turned to Blair for confirmation, and she gave them a salute before trooping back to her station.
“Let’s do this thing,” Aspen said, giving Kayla a quick hug before they scurried back to their station as well.
They had set up the fundraiser so that folks who wanted to look like their dogs would walk through the salon and to the loading zone out back, where two dog groomers from across the street had set up a portable grooming station. They would get their dogs all dolled up, and then come back inside to get their own hair done. One of Blair’s several roommates had volunteered to take photos, and if everything went well, Aspen hoped to invite him to the shelter’s fundraiser in January to photograph the dogs there and make them even more adoptable.
Over the past two weeks, Aspen had begun texting Charlie to ensure the salon fundraiser aligned with his goals and to help with final plans for the fundraiser in January. Thus far, they’d organized a cake walk, a relay race, and a bandana decorating station, and Aspen had several more ideas they’d been thinking about.
Noah had been right. Aspen and Charlie hit it off immediately. It was a little weird to already know so much about someone they’d only ever texted with, but it felt like they were friends from the moment they started talking. Aspen had even begun sending Charlie dog memes and funny videos. Thus far, he had only hearted them and hadn’t sent back any of his own, but Noah said that was because Charlie wasn’t on his phone often. He had far too much to do with the dogs and the shelter.
The first hour of the fundraiser flew by, and Aspen styled one person to look like their dog and handed out an adoption voucher to another.
They were hunched over their cart, fighting to get two clips unstuck from each other, when someone sat down in their chair.
“I’ve been thinking that I might want to go with something a bit shorter, maybe even a little androgynous. What would you recommend?” a familiar voice asked.
Aspen scrambled around, finding their sister sitting in the chair, Rachel standing off to the side. “Oh my god, hi!” Aspen said, throwing their arms around her shoulders.
They hadn’t seen each other since before Aspen’s divorce was finalized, and like a papercut that only begins to hurt once you notice it, their heart ached over how much time had passed.
“Hi, little sib,” she said, standing up to hug them more fully. She was only a touch taller than Aspen was, with a similar figure. All of the AFAB kids looked just like their mom, and even their brother looked a little like her. She must have had some impressive genes.
