By lunch, she was perched on the back steps, biting into a burrito and thumbing out replies between messy bites.
Scissorsaurus
Okay, tell me about Julie.
GoGatorsESQ
Julie. A work colleague.
Scissorsaurus
Ah. The worst. You can’t escape them.
GoGatorsESQ
It’s like being haunted by a sexy ghost.
She snorted so hard she almost choked on rice. Oscar popped his head out the back door, gave her a look. “Who’s got you giggling like a teenager?”
“None of your business,” she said, shoving her phone into her pocket like it burned.
By late afternoon, bleach fumes clung to her skin, her fingertips cramped from holding scissors too long. Still, she checked her phone in the break room, three times. Nothing from Gator.
By closing time, the salon’s buzz had died down to a low hum. Alix slumped into a chair, scrolling back through the day’s thread of banter. Her body ached, but her chest hummed.
Then the final message lit her screen:
GoGatorsESQ
God, I hate texting on this stupid app. Here —
A phone number.
Alix’s lips curved slow and sharp, the kind of grin she usually reserved for a perfect haircut or a fresh tattoo needle. She copied the number, switched apps, and tapped out her first message.
Alix
Look at us, Gator. We’re like officially friends now.
She hit send, slid the phone into her pocket, and stood. She wasn’t naive enough to call it fate, but damn if it didn’t feel like the beginning of something exciting.
Chapter Three
GRACE
Whoever designedBreakup Buddies underestimated how many characters were needed to excavate a broken heart. Sitting in her office long after the partners and support staff had gone home, Grace slammed into the character limit face-first. She’d sent Alix her number without thinking about it.
Now, she was staring at a message from an unknown number with a 970 area code and debating whether she’d been hasty. She didn’t even know this person’s real name, and she’d given them personal information. What if she was a stalker? If she found her using one of those reverse number lookups?
Grace looked at the glass door to her windowless interior office like an axe-wielding maniac might materialize. Seconds passed without anyone in Jack Nicholson cosplay showing up, and Grace relaxed her shoulders.
Grappling with her level of desperation, Grace accepted that she had, in fact, sunk low enough to confide in a stranger. The run-in with Julie had destabilized her and she needed to fast-track her healing.
She stared at the message and tried, for once, not to think about all the ways things could go wrong. About liabilities and risk. When that didn’t work, she told herself that she’d gotten Pablo Castellano’s grandson probation after his multi-million-dollar illegal betting ring had been busted. If someone who’d chosen Scissorsaurus as their screen name got crazy, she’d have muscle.
Muscle. She cringed at herself with her entire body and focused on her phone.
Alix
