“So everything’s cool, than?” Shane nonchalantly asked as she brushed through Alice’s wet hair.

Alice had been promising Shane for about 3 weeks now that she’d let her cut her hair at the new place she was working at. Although Alice’s face contorted into one of utter confusion when her friend tried to explain that she’d be cutting and styling hair in a glorified skateboarding store, she finally relented after seeing how legit Wax appeared to be. From the moment Alice agreed to accompany Shane there after they had lunch, she knew that somehow the hairstylist would convince her to get in the chair and shed an inch or two from her mane. As she followed Shane’s pickup truck around the back of the building, Alice surmised that it looked like a skating park for indigent LA County teens. She was never one to question the fashion sense of anybody, and she totally understood the whole “skater” look, but to her, most of the young boys loitering around Wax looked like they hadn’t brushed their straggly hair in weeks. Alice wondered to herself how any hairstylist would do well at a place like this.

But then again, it was Shane—who somehow managed to look beautiful and unkempt at the same time. And it perplexed Alice how her friend could be so damn wise and intuitive, and at the same time really just be a big kid at heart. She figured that those characteristics, both internal and external, would help make Shane successful anywhere she set up shop. Well, that and the fact that she was completely kick-ass at what she did. After all, she managed to make Dana look totally hot the first time she cut her hair. So hot, in fact, that Alice found the task of hiding her major crush on the tennis player (a task that she had almost perfected over the years), become increasingly difficult when Shane made Dana look so damn good.

“Earth to Alice,” Shane teased as she noticed her friend staring into the mirror blankly.

“Wha, huh?”

“Are you on something right now?” the stylist asked, trying to conceal the frustration in her voice.

“Jesus Christ, why the fuck does everyone just assume that Alice is always on something?” Alice clearly had no problem allowing her frustration to shine through.