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F I F T E E N
- Lucy -
I knew time was of the essence. Chuck was getting bolder which meant every woman in the salon was becoming increasingly vulnerable.
And now that Fiona had lost her job, I felt like all the pressure was on me to do something. For Fiona, for me, for the other girls, for my Mom.
Chuck was a bully and he had to be stopped.
But I was out of my depth.
I’d never dealt with this kind of bullying. Standing up for myself was one thing. I could knee someone in the crotch and cuss them out as well as anyone, but this was different. He needed to be punished. As far as I was concerned, he needed to be permanently kept away from working with women, and I couldn’t stop him on my own.
I did enough research online to know I needed a strategic plan. A few complaints wouldn’t cut it so Fiona and I couldn’t do it alone. Many of the sites I read said to go to the manager or cite the employee handbook. Neither of these things was an option for me.
And I didn’t want to run to the police and tattle with my fingers crossed. I was a grown woman and when it was time to get the police involved, I wanted to make sure I had the information I needed to be taken seriously the first time around.
After all, even though I knew I should’ve done something about it a long time ago, that was no reason to be reactionary now, when it counted most.
Plus, I didn’t have the money to experiment with a bunch of dead ends, and I didn’t want to run to my Dad or Aiden and get them all freaked out and make this their problem. They had their own shit going on, and I didn’t need rescued.
I needed to educate myself.
Fiona was still a mess. She’d managed to pull herself together a little bit after the shock of the whole thing wore off, but I could tell she was still shaken up.
And on top of Chuck’s assault, she was freaked out about our financial situation. But I wasn’t. Sure, I’d saved hard for a salon of my own, but if I’d done it once, I was confident that I could do it again.
In the meantime, I had enough money to keep us afloat for a while until she could find a new job. Of course, depending on what happened with the Chuck disaster, I might be looking for one sooner than I thought, too.
And while I promised myself the next time I changed jobs it would be to work for myself, I knew better than to think life could always go to plan. And sometimes, as Aiden’s recent interest in me proved, that wasn’t the worst thing that could happen.
But it was going to break my heart to throw my salon money away on rent and bills. As a result, I was determined to cut corners any way I could. So when I found a directory for volunteers offering legal services, I was thrilled.
After I posted my concern in one of the forums, a man named Nathan agreed to meet me after work at a nearby coffee shop.
I was only a few blocks away, power walking my ass off, when my phone rang.
“Hey you,” I said, slowing down so I wouldn’t breathe too hard into the phone.
“Hey yourself,” Aiden said.
I felt a smile stretch across my face. “What’s up?”
“I have good news.”
“Oh?” I almost wished I’d let him leave a message so I could hear him give me good news over and over.
“I told Claire that after some sufficient begging, you agreed to be my date for the wedding.”
I rolled my eyes. “I didn’t exactly make you beg.”
“Oh right. My bad. Begging is what I’m going to have you doing tonight.”
I was so glad he couldn’t see how flushed my cheeks were. If they were as pink as they felt, he would’ve laughed at me for sure. “What makes you think I want to see you tonight?”
“I asked my crystal ball.”
“Oh really?”
