Something sharp and nagging snuck beneath her bafflement. She distantly recalled Will’s disdain for her white furniture, and his refusal to get the leather café au lait sectional she’d suggested. The café au lait couch that was nearly identical to the one she’d helped James pick out.
God, had Will known what she hadn’t? That nobody, not even James, wanted a woman with white furniture and piles of notebooks full of plans?
And suddenly Brynn realized that what was really eating at her wasn’t that James was breaking up with her.
It was that James was right.
She was sick of herself. Sick of her life.
Sick of the fact that her life plan was blowing up in her freaking face.
Brynn needed a vacation.
From herself.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Cosmetics should be used to enhance
one’s natural self—never to change.
—Brynn Dalton’s Rules for an
Exemplary Life, #8
Are you sure you wanna do this, honey? You’re a hot blonde.”
Brynn met the eyes of the hairdresser in the mirror. Her usual guy was out, and her regularly scheduled appointment wasn’t for another week and a half, but Brynn hadn’t wanted to wait. She was done waiting.
The old Brynn would have been freaked out by the orange-haired hipster holding a pair of scissors behind her head. The new Brynn wanted to bring it on.
Well, the new Brynn who’d had a glass and a half of Chardonnay for courage at lunch prior to entering the salon.
“I’m sure,” Brynn said with a reassuring smile. “It’s just time for a change, ya know?”
The girl gave a bored shrug. “Your hair, your life.”
Damn straight. It’s my life. It’s time to start living it.
Brynn had been giving herself these types of pep talks all day, every day in the week since James had walked out the door. One day to wallow. One day to be mad. One day to flip through her life list in an effort to get back on track…
One day to stash her precious life–road map on the top shelf in her closet for retirement. Temporary retirement. She wasn’t giving up on her plan altogether. She still knew what she wanted long-term. But maybe in order to get there, she needed to let go. For the short term.
“All right, then, if you’re sure…”
“I am.”
The hairdresser shrugged and went to work.
Brynn had come prepared. After the shampoo process, she dug into a pile of trashy magazines and didn’t look up
once. Not to see the hair fall away. Not to see it darken in color. If her peripheral vision caught big chunks falling to the floor, she refused to let her brain absorb it.
“All right, hon, take a look.”
Brynn took a deep breath, letting her eyes finish reading an article that she wasn’t really absorbing.
Then she looked up.