Maya stood up. “She saw a chick do a haircut by tying her hair into two ponytails then leaning forward and—”
“It was the wolf cut challenge,” Isla interrupted, getting a glare from Maya. “What? They know hair, so they’ll know what the wolf cut is without describing it to them.”
Well, Sonya had fucked up the haircut. What we were looking at was a diagonal hairline on the longest chunk of hair, and the shortest looked like chin length bowl-cut.
Moving in front of me, Jacinda gestured for her to turn around. “How the hell did it end up like this?”
Pulling her phone out of her pocket, Sonya unlocked it and held up the screen to show us a photo of a celebrity with slightly layered hair that flicked out at the ends.
“She has the shorter layers at the front, and her bangs are part of it. I figured I could do it like that.”
I hated to say it, but she wouldn’t be doing much with her hair after this.
Pinching the bridge of my nose, I tried to figure out how to break the news to her.
Instead, all I could say was, “Well, shit.”
“Oh, God, that sounds so bad,” she wailed. “Can we stick it back on? I saved it and brought it to you right after we cut it.”
“You cut it,” Maya corrected, getting a snort from the other women.
Spinning around, Sonya hissed, “Y’all were going to do it as well, so don’t try and be all blah about it going wrong. This could be one of you right now.” She held out a chunk of bowl-cut bangs to back her words up.
Nudging Jacinda out the way with my hip, I put my arm around her and pointed at the only empty chair in the salon.
“Okay, let’s sit down and see what we can do to fix this.”
Holding up the hair again, she whimpered, “Should I have put it on ice? I wasn’t sure what to do.”
Still recording, Hannah snickered. “This ain’t a finger or a toe, Sonya. This is your hair. I don’t know what these hair goddesses can do, but I’m telling you now that hair ain’t going back on your head.”
“Ignore her. We’ll fix this.” Somehow. I didn’t say it, but it was implied.
Her hair had been in excellent condition when she’d cut it. Blonde, long, silky smooth, and hassle free. Now, she looked like a psycho had taken a pair of scissors to it.
Squatting down beside the woman who was bent into herself, I took a deep breath and prepared myself to break the news to her.
“There’s no easy way to say this, Sonya, but we can’t reattach that hair. What we can do is either cut it into a shorter style and fix this chunk at the front, or we can put extensions or a weave in to disguise the shorter part.”
Putting her face into her hands, she burst out crying. I didn’t know what to do for her. It was a process of fear, worry, embarrassment, and devastation she was going to have to go through. Some people might say it’s just hair, but for others, it was part of their identity. Having it go wrong or losing it had a massive impact on them.
“Use this,” Sayla murmured, thrusting the salon’s iPad under my nose. “That might make it better for her.”
“Are you going to put on a movie?” Ebru asked as she joined us. “I’m not sure that’ll fix this.”
Tapping the screen, I opened the app that we’d bought to help out in situations like this. It was called ‘Style Me’ and showed people what they’d look like with certain styles. Going by how short the front was, it narrowed down her choices, but it’d still help her.
Finally, once I had it open and ready to go, I shook her hand.
“Sonya? Honey, can you look up for me, please? I’m going to take a photo of you for this app, then we’ll put the hairstyles over it to show you what you’ll look like with them.”
“You—“ her breath hitched, “can actually do that?”
“Sure can. We use it when people don’t know what they want, or they want a new style. I think this is a sign you’re ready for one, too, so let’s make sure we get one you love.”
It took all of five minutes for her to decide—a cut with slightly longer layers at the back that she could either keep flat or flickout if she wanted to. It always reminded me of Jane Fonda in Monster-In-Law and was a gorgeous style.
Honestly, there wasn’t a lot of hair to cut off, but I was still careful to distract her as I got rid of the diagonal sheet of hair at the back.
When she was done, I held up the mirror behind her to show her what the back looked like.