“Yes,” I answered, focusing on the blond’s question, even as Ginny snorted into her beer. “I prefer hair artiste, but yeah.” Doing hair color was my favorite and what I made more than half my money off, but who needed to be specific?

“You wanna cut mine?” the flirt just went ahead and asked.

I scrunched up my nose and smiled. “No.”

The big laugh that bubbled out of him made me grin.

“It’s nothing personal, I promise,” I explained, smiling at him and Ginny, feeling a little like a jerk for how that had come out.

Ginny’s cousin shook his head as he continued cracking up, his handsome face getting that much more good-looking. “Nah. I get it. I’ll go cry in the bathroom.”

My boss groaned as she put her beer mug up to her face, rolling her eyes. “Don’t believe anything that comes out of his mouth.”

“I wasn’t going to.” I winked at her, earning us another laugh from the only man talking to us.

“Fuck, you two are brutal.”

We didn’t even have to say “thank you.” Ginny and I grinned at each other over his compliment that wasn’t supposed to be one. I had just sat back into my stool when, out of the corner of my eye, I spotted my neighbor’s face. He was looking right at us.

Before I could process that, Trip leaned his forearm onto the counter, catching my attention once more, and asked, “What did you say your name was again?”

Chapter Five

Fuck.

Ginny pulled the words right out of my mouth. “Why is it so bright out today?”

I squinted against the shaft of sunlight beaming through the glass doors and windows of the shop. Despite suffering through the worst of my hangover yesterday, I still wasn’t back at 100 percent after our drinking fest. My head ached and my mouth still tasted faintly like a dead animal.

God, I was getting old. Five years ago, I wouldn’t still be feeling like shit almost forty-eight hours after going out.

“I’m never drinking again,” I muttered to the redhead who had woken up on my couch the day before.

“Me neither,” she moaned, practically hissing as the door to Shear Dialogue swung open and even brighter sunshine poured into the salon at eleven in the morning as Sean, the other stylist, stepped inside with his phone to his ear. He gave us a chin dip in greeting, but we were both too busy acting like we were Dracula’s children to care.

God.

Why did I do this to myself? I knew better. Hell, of course I knew better than to drink so much in one night, but after we’d left the biker bar, aptly named Mayhem, in a cab together—because there was no way either one of us had any business behind the wheel of a car—we’d gone on to drink a bottle of wine each.

When I’d woken up the day before on my stomach and felt that first stir of nausea and flu-like symptoms hit my body, I’d promised God that, if he made my nausea and headache go away, I would never drink again. Apparently, I had to accept that he knew I was a damn liar and wasn’t going to do a single thing to ease my suffering. My mom had always said you could lie to yourself, but you couldn’t fool God.

“Why did you make me drink that entire bottle of wine?” Ginny had the nerve to ask.

Slumping deeper into my work chair, I slanted a look in her direction. I didn’t trust my neck to do what I requested. “I didn’t make you do anything. You were the one who said you wanted your own, remember? ‘I don’t want white. I want red.’”

“I don’t remember that.”

“Of course you don’t remember it.”

She let out a snicker that made me smile until my head hurt worse.

“I don’t know how we’re going to make it through the rest of the day.”

“I don’t have that many appointments left. You?” Mondays and Wednesdays were my slowest days of the week usually; those were the two afternoons I picked the boys up from school.

She groaned. “I’ve got two hours until I’m busy. I might go take a nap in the break room.” She paused. “I’m thinking about going to buy one of those travel-sized bottles of wine from the gas station and drink it. I think it might make me feel better.”

Ginny had a point. I had eyed the last bottle I had in the fridge that morning and talked myself out of a few sips to ease my hangover. My next client was in an hour, and then I had a fifteen-minute break between customers after that until I got off. Actually, having clients when you were hungover was a curse disguised as a blessing. “Go. I can wake you up if you want.”

We both let out a moan of suffering at the same time Sean slammed the break room door closed.

Slumping in my seat, I folded my arms over my chest and tried not to taste my saliva. “Your cousin is pretty cute.”

“Which one?”

How had I forgotten my neighbor was her cousin? I didn’t have the energy to ponder Dallas and his brother, whose name I didn’t know, being related to her. It didn’t make sense. “Trip.”

That had Ginny making a noise that sounded like a pathetic attempt of a scoff. “Don’t even go there, Di.”

“What’s wrong with him?”

“How can I say this? He’s a great friend and family member, but a partner in a relationship…? No. He has two baby mamas.”

“Oh.” Oh. One baby mama? All right. Two baby mamas? Nope.

“Yeah. He’s great. Don’t get me wrong. He’s a great dad, and other than my dad, there’s nobody else I love more in my family, but he’s a player, and I doubt he’ll change any time soon,” she explained in a way that gave me the feeling she’d gone through this spiel in the past. So… Trip was her favorite, not the cousin who sat on the other side of the bar from us and not once came up to her to say hi. Shocking. “His oldest son plays competitive baseball like Josh.”