Read My Way Home (St.Gabriel Series Book 1) (St. Gabriel Series) for Free Online

needed her to get a grip.
    When we walked into the salon the next day, there was an awkward silence, and Tina was waiting for me. Her arms were stretched out wide and everyone looked on with pity as she wrapped me up in her full, soft body. She smelled of the musk oil that had always comforted me. But that day, I was overwhelmed by the odor and turned my head for a gasp of air.
    I broke loose. “Tina, this is my friend Loretta Scott.”
    Tina did a double-take as many people do. “Friend, not sister?” she asked.
    “Friend and sister,” I said, and I stepped to Loretta’s side and circled her waist with my arm, “Since sophomore year of college anyway.”
    “Nice to meet you, Loretta.”
    I was ready to get started and walked toward the row of sinks in the back of the shop.
    “I’ll wait out here,” said Loretta.
    “No, I want you to come back with me. Tina, Loretta can come back too, can’t she?”
    “Sure.”
    Tina had a shampoo girl, two in fact, and never did that part of the gig herself. But that day was different. Tina wet my hair slowly, lathered slowly, and massaged my scalp slowly. It was like the last supper of haircuts.
    It made me think of Race and miss him. We used to lie in our big bathtub and he would shampoo my hair, massaging my scalp, and then he’d massage everything else. I missed him. I missed being touched.
    Had he shampooed her hair? The thought catapulted me back to the Anger Stage. I wished I could pass through those doggone stages and be done with them already. I didn’t realize that I shook my head a little to clear my mind while Tina was rinsing.
    “Too hot?” she asked.
    “No, fine.”
    Tina finished the rinse, then with my hair wrapped in a towel, she escorted me to a chair as though I might not make it without her assistance. It took three clicks before she chose just the right snap to fasten the cape around my neck.
    Carefully, she combed my hair out.
    “So,” said Tina, standing behind me as she ran her fingers through my hair, starting at my temples, just as she always did and then she would ask, “What’s it gonna be?”
    I would always answer, “Just a trim.” Then she would look disappointed at my lack of daring. But not today. Today is a new day.
    “Little boy short,” I said.
    Tina inhaled deeply and then let it out slowly from puffed-up cheeks. She turned on the blow dryer and reluctantly pulled the big round brush from my scalp to the ends of my hair, moving the dryer back and forth as if she was conducting a symphony. Chopin’s Funeral March should have been playing in the background.
    A hair salon with no talking, nothing but the whir of hair dryers and the clicking of curling irons, it was a little creepy.
    When my hair was dry, she braided a fat ponytail from the base of my neck, to the ends of my hair, and tied it off with a band. When she was finished, she bounced the braid in her hand, looked at me in the mirror, and counseled me, “Cammy, darlin’, during a time of personal crisis is not the time to drastically change your hairstyle.”
    “I’ve heard you say a new hairstyle can give a person a whole new lease on life.”
    “Yes, a style, not a scalping.”
    “Tina, please.”
    Tina opened the vanity drawer and fished around for a pair of scissors. I got up from the chair, chose a pair, and handed them to her. “How ‘bout these?” I asked her.
    She dipped them in the jar of the mystery-blue hairdresser’s solution and then wiped them dry. Looking at me in the mirror, she said, “Cammy, I just think—”
    “Tina, should I go someplace else?” Tears glazed my eyes. She was stealing my joy and she didn’t even know it.
    Loretta stood up from the neighboring chair and hit the air with her fist and yelled, “Off with her hair! Off with her hair!”
    I looked at Loretta, her fist still in the air, and another involuntary smile spread over my face. I threw my fist in the air and yelled, “Off with her hair!”
    Then Loretta yelled again,