Page 2 of Unhurried Hearts

I’m pretty sure she calls me a pussy under her breath.

Spending more nights with this woman might be lower on my list of no’s than jumping out of this plane.

“I’m…I’m gonna go home.” I make the plan up on the spot.

A few people glance in our direction now that the injured man has been loaded into the ambulance.

“Whatever,” she says. “You don’t have to run it by me. It’s not that serious, Chris.”

I mean, she’s not wrong. Clare was another hookup in a long list of misguided meaningless relationships. Where do I find a woman who strokes her worried partner's neck? The person who will happily get me what I need when I’m ill? I want that.

I’m numb as I walk back to the hangar, the adrenaline wearing off and leaving me sick to my stomach. I keep finding myself with women I barely know based on, what? Physical attraction? A mutual hobby? I’ve alwaysjumped into bed with women I’m attracted to. Maybe that needs to change. Similar questions churn through my mind in the taxi through the crowded streets of Puerto Vallarta. On the flights back to Canada. And when I’m finally back in my bed after a day of last-minute travel, tossing and turning despite my exhaustion.

Answers to questions like these don’t come easy, but nothing worth having does. I’m ready to get more and give more out of my relationships. There, in the darkness of my bedroom, I make a plan. No more jumping into bed before getting to really know someone, and I have to let them know me, too. Six months, I decide. A six-month sex ban where I’ll stop acting on my every impulse and make myself worthy of something more. I’ll find out if I’m capable of offering someone else more, too. Simple.

Chapter one

Anna

Ibreeze into Shine Salon, my pride and joy, ten minutes before opening and lock the heavy glass door behind me. Warm vanilla scents drift through the well-lit space and chill acoustic music plays softly over the speakers.

“Good morning, all!” I say to my team, taking a moment to admire the tall bouquet of creamy white roses on our reception desk.

“Did Ashlyn deliver these today?” I ask.

Jenny, my cheery receptionist and beginner nail tech, pops up from behind the desk, glass cleaner and a cloth in hand. “Yep. You just missed her. She couldn’t hang around,but she said hi.”

I straighten the pile of my cousin’s business cards for Cedar and Stem Flower Farm. Ashlyn nailed her first season selling cut flowers from her beautiful garden. She’s been delivering fresh arrangements to display each week. Amrita, an experienced senior stylist who worked here long before I purchased the salon, holds the back door open for our delivery man. Stacked haphazardly, the brown boxes sway on the dolly and she grimaces at the tower.

“That’s excellent right there, Danny!” I call from my hairdressing station as I tuck my coat and purse away in a cupboard.

Amrita shoots me a relieved look when Delivery Man Dan halts, the boxes now safe, and holds out the machine for her signature. The boxes are filled with hair colour, shampoo, and toner. That’s my bread and butter right there. I’ve been a hair stylist for six years already. When I tagged along with my cousin, following her from Ontario to British Columbia at the age of eighteen, she had everything planned out. I, on the other hand, didn’t have a clue what I was going to do four thousand kilometres from home. After working the phones and front counter of this very salon, sweeping and washing towels, it didn’t take long for me to want to learn the trade. I convinced the owner to let me reduce my hours topart-time so I could earn my hairdressing ticket. Almost five years later, I took over the salon. I employ two full-time stylists and a couple of estheticians who do manicures, pedicures, and some waxing in the treatment rooms. Amrita’s thick blue-black hair is losing a battle against static electricity from handling the cardboard and paper and is standing up like a halo around her head.

“Look!” She holds up a box of nail polish, “The holiday collection!”

“Holiday?” Jenny looks aghast. “It’s September.”

It’s Jenny’s first fall and winter season working in a salon, and she has no idea how early in the fall season people start calling for services to get them ready for Christmas parties.

When my apron, a little black number with our rose gold scissor logo, is secured around my waist and I’ve tied my hair up in a high pony, I glance at the clock and then to Jenny.

“Shall we?” I jerk my head towards the front door.

She tucks away the cleaning supplies, walks to the door, and flips the closed sign to open. Before I can join in on unboxing the inventory, a mother and daughter enter as soon as Jenny turns the lock.

“Oh my god, Moooom. It’s fine.”

A teenage girl, about fourteen or fifteen, hangs back by the entrance, looking like she wants to be anywhere but here. Half her hair is a weak orangey-yellow colour.

“Shhh. How is this fine? You can’t go around looking like that. It’s utterlyridiculous. What were you even trying to do?”

The scorn in the middle-aged mother’s voice, that look of disdain, takes me right back to middle school. My mom married Thad when I was twelve, a man whose entire personality was his megachurch. Within a matter of months, my relationship with her was wavering. When she quit the job she’d always loved at Thad’s request I knew that the mom I grew up with was all but gone.

Hair dye and makeup?

No.

Boys?

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