Free The Sweetest Revenge by Jennifer Ransom Page A

make a ton of
money.”
    “ No,” I said. “I want to
know why this is happening. I want to meet with Steve.”
    “ Okay. I’ll meet you tomorrow
at his office at two.”
    As soon as I hung up from Janice,
I got in the car and drove to an area close to the university that
had bars and restaurants and a hair salon that I had passed many
times. Hair Art had a big sign outside that said Walk-ins Welcome. I
walked in.
    I sat in the chair facing myself
in the big mirror. I looked at myself for the first time in a long
time. Gone was my double chin. Gone were my puffy cheeks. I was
looking at the me that I had been, years before.
    Bridget removed the comb from my
hair and brushed it out. She led me to a sink and washed my hair. The
warm water felt so soothing. It had been so long since anyone but
Midnight had touched me. She wrapped a towel around my hair and led
me back to the chair.
    “ I don’t know what you’re
looking for today,” Bridget said, “but you’ve got some
fantastic natural wave that I’d like to take advantage of with some
point cutting.”
    “ What’s that?” I asked.
    “ It’s where we make little
snips into your hair to bring out your curls. Believe me, you’ll be
happy with it. Unless you want to go straight and don’t want the
waves, of course.”
    “ No, let’s go with the
waves,” I said. I’d never had a hairdresser that wanted to cut my
hair paying attention to how my hair really was. They always wanted
to cut more blunt styles that required me to use a lot of products to
keep it straight.
    Bridget snipped away, cutting my
long hair. Then she turned me away from the mirror, thankfully
because I was sick of looking at myself, and dried it very carefully
with a low-heat setting. She sprayed my hair with a sweet-smelling
hairspray.
    When she swiveled the chair back
to face the mirror, I was shocked. Pleased, but shocked. My hair
shimmered in waves to just below my shoulders. It framed my face in a
way that was very flattering. I teared up to see myself looking so
good, but I tried to hide it.
    “ Thank you, Bridget,” I said.
I almost choked. Bridget looked very pleased with herself.
    “ Thank you,” she said. “For
giving me a good head of hair to work with.” That girl was going to
get a huge tip from me.
    Bridget led me to the manicure
and pedicure room, and I got both. The manicurist gel-coated my
fingernails in a subtle shade of coral and matched it on my toenails.
When I left, the bill was a hundred dollars. I gave Bridget a tip of
thirty dollars and the manicurist one of ten dollars. Bridget watched
me walk out and mouthed “Thank you” to me. I smiled at her and
waved goodbye.
    Then came the hardest part. I
needed to have something to wear. I had no idea what I could squeeze
myself into, but I knew it wouldn’t be my size 1X black suit. I
went into the spare bedroom, a place I avoided but the place where I
had a lot of my old clothes. I pulled several suits from the closet
and carried them into my bedroom where I threw them on the bed.
    One thing I knew was that red was
a power color. I picked up the deep red suit I had worn ten years
ago, before I got so fat. I pulled the pants on and they zipped
easily. I put the jacket on without a top and buttoned it. Only then
did I look at myself in the full-length mirror behind the bedroom
door. I couldn’t believe the person that looked back at me. It was
the person I used to be. I was wearing a size ten again. I had lost
the fat that I truly believed was the weight of my cheating,
inattentive, unloving husband.
    I sat on the bed and giggled for
a moment in sheer joy. Then I found a white tank top to wear
underneath the jacket. The pants were dragging, so I foraged in the
spare room closet for the black heels I used to wear all the time. I
went through several shoeboxes of shoes I was going to revisit in the
near future before I found the pair I was looking for. Silky black
heels. I put them on and my pants were no longer