Page 69 of Glass Wings
Allienna felt the heat in her cheeks again. There was something about Paisley that made her feel childlike, and she wasn’t sure if she liked it.
“Here goes nothing . . .” She took a deep breath and pressed the razor to the client's scalp before jumping back and gasping at the shaven head in front of her face.
“I am so sorry!” She looked back at Zade, horrified. “The baby kicked, and it startled me,” she lied again, trying to avoid any suspicion of her total inexperience.
“Baby?” Paisley asked, surprised from the counter. “I had no idea that you were pregnant.”
Allienna shrugged her shoulders and grimaced, the people pleaser in her now suddenly worried that, too, would be a problem that she hadn’t considered before.
“Ah, don’t worry about it. There’s very little you can fuck up that I can’t fix,” Zade said, spinning his chair in a circle. “Take a breath and keep going. You’re just shaving his head down.”
Allienna did as she was told and took a breath before bringing the razor back up to the client’s scalp, the slight hum of the tool purring in her ear as hair fell toward her feet, hitting the floor.
***
A few months had passed, the colors of the tree leaves turning brown, and Allienna’s feet crunched as she walked the sidewalk into the barbershop. She was more than comfortable with a razor in her hand now despite her now large belly getting in the way.
“How’s the new place?” Paisley asked Allienna as they entered the shop front on a late winter morning.
“I just cannot believe that we got here,” Allienna replied, swinging an apron over her body and getting ready for the day's work. “I have a shitty car and a tiny house in a shitty neighborhood, but it’s all mine. I created that for this baby by myself.”
Paisley looked at Allienna’s pregnant belly with apparent discomfort.
“Well, not all by myself, of course. I couldn’t be here if you hadn’t taken a chance on me,” she said, walking up to Paisley, taking her handsin hers. Allienna felt the tension, the ache pulled out of Paisley's body. Paisley’s want for her, need for her, struck all of Allienna’s sensitive spots. The constant rush of hormones in the last trimester wasn’t helping, but Allienna often thought about Paisley's lips. The piercing on that bottom lip they had . . . what would it be like if she pulled it with her teeth?
Allienna blushed at the thought and dropped Paisley’s hands immediately, turning around to busy herself with setting up the shop.
“I can’t believe you are going through this alone. That you’ll be raising a baby alone,” Paisley said, eyes at their feet.
“She’s got us, honey,” Zade said, walking in through the door as loudly as possible with a gorgeous smile spreading on his face. “I expect to see a little toddler running through here stirring up as much trouble as possible.”
The day progressed as Allienna had grown used to. She worked through four clients before taking a lunch break, treating herself at a deli she’d found wandering the block during her first week working at the barbershop. She returned from lunch and helped Zade bleach the tips of a man’s hair, which took the rest of the day.
She packed up before saying goodbye to Zade and Paisley and walked to the car she’d bought with cash saved up from tips, a black Toyota sedan that may have looked old ten years ago. It drove, that was the important thing, and it had the proper safety measures needed to install a car seat she already proudly had sitting in the back middle seat.
Allienna hadn’t thought about the life that she left much, especially since she had been so focused on figuring out how to provide for her unborn child. Now that the countdown was on and human doctors had given her scans and blood tests, poking her in every place that she did not want to be touched by strangers, she knew she was ready. Allienna was feeling good. She was ecstatic. This had been all she ever had wanted.
The drive from downtown Sacramento to her new rental house was about thirty-five minutes. Allienna had the windows down, even in March, and preferred to drive silently. The radio in her car oftendidn’t cooperate, often getting stuck on a tape that didn’t want to turn off.
She felt the baby kick often now, small hands and feet sliding along the inside lining of her stomach as if they were trying to reach out to her. She tried to touch them back, often not fast enough for the proper hello, but Allienna felt so much love inside her that was all hers and no one else's.
Pulling into a suburban street and then the driveway, Allienna exited the car to approach her front door. She’d signed a lease for the next two years, and her landlord gave her a lower deposit for an extended term. She was settled; this was home.
She walked into the living room, still full of boxes and a secondhand couch that Paisley helped her find off of something called the internet.
It had been two glorious days since the keys were put in her hands. Two glorious nights since she could afford not to sleep in her car while showering at the mission. Seeing the sympathy of the volunteers as her pregnancy progressed had been unbearable for her. Having to hide all of this from her co-workers and her friends had been logistically difficult.
Still figuring out what free time now looked like with all her basic needs met, Allienna rubbed her achy lower back and dug for a novel in one of the boxes filled with gently used items that Paisley had insisted she needed at home. Allienna didn’t quite understand why she needed a foot-high statue of a frog holding an umbrella, but she supposed that humans appreciated their knickknacks more than they appreciated their minimalism.
The kicking in her belly seemed to intensify, and after Allienna found her hardcover fantasy book and sat on the couch, she was surprised to feel the balloon underneath her shirt harden, rock-hard to the touch. She felt so uncomfortable, sweating and feeling a small amount of vomit creep up the back of her throat before swallowing it back down.
She pushed her hair out of her face, rolling back and forth untilher bottom reached the edge of the couch cushion and she could manage to stand, hands on her knees and panting.
She gagged again, suppressing it, and then took a step forward before feeling a river flow in between her legs, gushing wetness with every small movement. A contraction took over her body, beads of sweat trickling down her brow as she moved with the measured breaths of labor.
21
Reign | Sacramento, CA | Early 2000s
