Inside, the cold gush of air soothes the burning hives on my exposed skin and I want to bury myself in Ace’s side because he’s the only familiar thing in the spotless entryway. I comb the walls looking for a price-list but it’s nothing like Minh’s shop where the prices were painted on the glass windows since before I was born.
A tiny Vietnamese girl shuffles to the front in Gucci sandals and there’s a flicker of recognition in her eyes before she rushes toward Ace.
“Ace. You come back?”
He smiles down at her and that same ball of nerves from the day before in the cafe sneaks its way up my throat.
“What you in Houston for?” She throws her arms around his middle and the older white women stare at him from the pedicure chairs in the back of the salon.
I don’t blame them. He’s a sight—tall, caramel and carefree despite what people think about him.
“I live here now, Sunny,” he replies, talking around the Dum-Dum.
“Live?” she gasps. “Oh,Angie would love that!”
Angie’s name rings bells throughout the salon. The other employees shuffle from their stations at the sound of Sunny singing her name from the entrance. They all know Ace. They touch him like he’s theirs and there’s relief in his eyes.
Sunny notices me first. She tugs at Ace’s t-shirt and he grips her around the shoulders, pulling her toward me.
“Who you bring for me?” she asks, smiling.
“A lil’ piece of home,” he mutters. “Take good care of her, Sun. Lourdes cheating on her regular girl today.”
Sunny stares up at me with gigantic eyes like I’m not dressed in my best Walmart fashions and I don’t know what home Ace is referring to. Iain’tnever been to Los Angeles.
“Pretty girl.” She tugs at my hand and rubs her tiny fingers over Minh’s work. “Hahn take care of your nails and I do pedicure for you.”
* * *
Ace is socomfortable around campus and our house that I forget he has money sometimes. Not that upper middle class mini mansion out in The Woodlands money, but the type of money that affords him the ability to understand Sunny and Hanh’s conversation in Vietnamese while they cater to my every need from my pedicure chair. He’s so comfortable in Uptown Nails that he’s popping the cork on a bottle while they giggle at his story about him and Angie missing their connecting flight from South Korea to Vietnam one summer. It ends with them running into Magic Johnson’s wife Cookie in a Delta Airlines lounge while he’s shit-faced drunk because Angie kept sneaking him glasses of champagne even though he was sixteen.
“You like Veuve, Lourdes?” Sunny asks, patting my leg.
“Excuse me?” I choke out, glancing at the white lady next to us.
She keeps staring at Ace, who’s across the salon topping his solo cup off.
“Veuve. Champagne?”
“Uh… I never had it.”
My answer makes them smile, and Sunny rolls back from the chair. “Ace, you fix Lourdes some too?”
He tips the bottle over two other champagne flutes.
“Nope,” he says. “She a kid Sunny.”
“Awww.” She and Hahn giggle in unison until Ace brings them two flutes with the Veuve bottle dangling from his fingertips.
When they take sips, I’m glad they shut up because I don’t have much longer on Planet Ace and they’re hogging him with their Vietnamese inside jokes. He steals a rolling stool from in front of an empty pedicure station and rolls next to me.
I smell the Veuve bubbling from his cup as he pushes up the armrest that separates us. The champagne mixes with his earthy scent and acrylic.
“You always got a nail appointment when Mom goes to the doctor?” he asks.
“You always went to the nail shop with your mama?” I shoot back.
“Yeah...” He smiles with his lips, but not his eyes. “After I stopped playing ball, Mom moved back home, so I flew back and forth between her and Pops. We came to the nail shop every Thursday morning as soon as I got in from LA.”
