leaned in closer, removing the lollipop from her mouth. “So there was kissing, then?”
Lorraine could feel her pulse quickening as she stared into his bottomless blue eyes. “I—I—I—”
He stopped her stammer by planting the lollipop back in her mouth. “I’d better go check up on Gloria.”
Lorraine’s heart plummeted. One second she could have sworn he was flirting with her, and then he couldn’t get away from her fast enough! She couldn’t figure it out: She’d spritzed herself with the Fragonard perfume her father had brought her from Paris, and she was wearing her little black Patou day dress. Everything was perfect. Or was it?
Perhaps it was the setting. A barbershop wasn’t particularly sexy. Certainly not the right place to reveal herself. When she told Marcus that she loved him, everything had to be Just Right. Mood lighting. Good music. It Girl dress.
Lorraine got up to join Marcus. “Better make sure the princess is still alive,” she said.
François was busy snipping the finishing touches into Gloria’s hair when Lorraine approached. He swiveled Gloria around so that they had a full view of her.
“Voilà! C’est magnifique, non?”
Gloria’s hair swept across her forehead like a crinkled autumn leaf, billowing over one sea-green eye before delicately ending in a soft edge along the line of her jaw. She blinked at them with wide, apprehensive eyes. “Oh no, do I look like a boy?”
“More like a movie star!” Marcus whistled.
Lorraine glimpsed her own bob in the mirror and nearly cried. How was it that she suddenly looked like a dowdy Joan of Arc and Gloria looked like a doe-eyed starlet?
She pushed her jealousy away. It wasn’t Gloria’s fault that her hair turned out so smashing, right? Lorraine kissed her best friend’s cheek. “You look like the bee’s knees, darling!”
“You’d better not be lying,” Gloria said, standing up from the chair.
François brushed the stray hairs off her shoulders. “Even if they were, is too late now.”
“C’est vrai,”
Gloria said. “All we need now, François, is a little bathtub gin to celebrate your masterpiece.”
“Since when do you drink gin?” Lorraine laughed. “Wait, since when do you drink,
period
?”
“I mean … hypothetically speaking.”
Lorraine caught Gloria shooting Marcus a furtive glance. It was the look she gave to her confidants, a look that said,
Only you know my secret
. There was nothing Lorraine hated more than being kept on the outside of a secret. Well, nothing she hated more than being kept on the outside of a secret that included
Marcus
.
“Wow. My head feels so much lighter. Is that normal?” Gloria asked nervously, smoothing her hair down with her hand.
Her
bare
left hand.
Lorraine gasped. “Why aren’t you wearing your engagement ring?”
The color drained from Gloria’s cheeks. “I must have forgotten to put it back on after—”
“After we went swimming yesterday!” Marcus was all too quick to fill in.
Lorraine frowned. “Gloria, you went to the library with me after school yesterday, remember? Unless the Oak Lane Country Club pool was suddenly open after five for the first time since Roosevelt was president.” A thought that haunted Lorraine’s nightmares came to her: “Are—are you two having an affair?”
“No!” Gloria and Marcus exclaimed simultaneously.
“That’d be like dating my
brother
,” Gloria said, horrified.
François clucked like a French chicken. “I think I’ll give this
ménage à trois
some space,
non?
” He ambled away.
Lorraine sat in the empty swivel chair next to Gloria. “Spill,” she commanded. “I need to know everything.”
“All right,” Gloria said, extending her pinkie finger. “But first you have to swear you won’t tell.”
Lorraine groaned. “Are we still going to be pinkie-swearing after you’re married?” She hooked her finger with Gloria’s and kissed the end. “Fine, I swear.”
“Okay, so you know how