“Have fun tonight,” Seth says, smacking a kiss to my cheek. When he pulls back, he’s wearing his own grimace as he licks his lips. “Sis, you taste like room-temperature vodka.”
I snort, replying with my own take on a David Rose quote. “I plan on shampooing thrice so that I may wash the motherhood out of my hair.”
“Oh!” My sister raises her hand. “Schitt’s Creek!” she calls out, looking at her husband for approval.
He grins. “You got it, doll,” he tells her, looking proud of our once workaholic Twy, who couldn’t name a single pop culture reference if her life depended on it. But once she hooked up with Seth, who spoke fluently in movie and television quotes, that all changed.
When Luna tugs on Twyla’s hand and whines that she’s hungry, I smile and lean down to press a gentle kiss to Josy’s chubby little cheek. Stepping back, I give the four of them a wave and then head for the back room, knowing Seth will lock up the studio.
Chapter Two
Since I have the place all to myself for the next hour and forty-five minutes, I don’t bother closing the door to my Babe Cave. I turn on the lights that frame the huge mirror, then tug the hair tie that’s knotted inside the rat’s nest of a messy bun on top of my head. It takes some finagling, and I definitely rip a few blonde strands out of my head, but I finally get it loose. I sneer at my reflection when my hair basically stays in place and doesn’t fall past my shoulders like it would if it didn’t have an entire can’s worth of dry shampoo mixed in with the oil that has now formed into concrete.
I grab the hot pink Wet brush out of the drawer of the vanity and start at the ends of my mane, working out the knots and trying not to cry at the amount of hair falling out of my head. When I’m finished and peek at the brush, I see there are enough strands wrapped around the bristles to knit a sweater for our Australian Shepherd, Scout, and I let out a sigh.
“It’s fine. Everything’s fine. It’s just all the hair that would’ve normally fallen out naturally during the day if it was down and not all in a knot for the past… six… seven… okay, eight days,” I assure myself. “Plus, you grew lots of extra hair while you were pregnant. So you have some to spare. It’s fiiine.”
I undress and lay my dirty clothes over the back of my makeup chair, padding barefooted over to the beautiful stone wall my shower is hidden behind. There’s no door or curtain, just an opening, and the shower is tucked far enough away from it that water doesn’t get out into the dressing room. I turn on the taps and wait for it to reach the perfect scalding temperature before I step under the rainshower spray.
“Sweet baby Jesus, yeeesss,” I groan, closing my eyes and just letting the water pour over me for a good five minutes. When my body starts to sway as if I could fall asleep standing up, I know it’s time to snap out of it and get to work.
“Shampoo number one,” I murmur, pumping out a handful and then smearing it on top of my head. It barely lathers, and I grimace once again at myself as I rinse and repeat. “Shampoo number two.” This time, it lathers, and I close my eyes and take my time scrubbing my scalp with my fingernails. I rinse, and just because I told Seth I would, I fill my hand one more time with shampoo and soap up my hair, spending a few seconds scratching around my ears and my neck before using the ridiculous amount of bubbles to pull my hair up like a mohawk. With my arms straight up, my hands in prayer position with the ends of my hair trapped between them, I let go, giggling when it all flops to one side, smacking me in the face.
I sigh in pleasure as I rinse this round out, feeling how—literally—squeaky clean my locks are. “Conditionerrr,” I singsong, twisting the bottles around in the tiled cubby until I find the right one for my blonde hair. I smear the conditioner through the strands, wrinkling up my nose when my hands come away with more loose strands twisted around my fingers. “Ugh.” I walk to the opening of the shower and peek out toward the vanity where I left the Wet brush. I bite the inside of my cheek as I decide whether I really want it bad enough to get out of my cozy cocoon of devil’s-piss-hot water, as my husband so lovingly calls it.
“Man the fuck up, Astrid,” I tell myself, and take a deep breath, then run on my toes across the room, being careful not to slip as I grab the brush with a squeak as the air conditioner registers along my skin, and then hurry back into the shower and under the spraying water, shivering as the heat hits my goose bumps.