After stepping back inside of the salon, the transformation commenced. Over the next several hours Hannah was subject to a whole host of hair, cosmetic, nail, and brow treatments. Her skin was moisturized, then painted, her hair was cut, her acrylic nails were attached, all while Sienna stepped outside to have a cigarette every 20-30 minutes. Amber joined her on several occasions, as did Kayla, but Melanie remained inside working her magic on the awestruck redheaded teenager who barely uttered a single word the entire time.
Melanie did her duty as a bubbly customer service employee to ask her questions about herself and try to start conversation, but that mostly resulted in one-word answers from the bewildered young lady. It was clear that Hannah was overstimulated and overwhelmed with a mix of emotions and was watching her own transformation through the reflection in the mirror like she was having an out-of-body experience.
After her face was prepped with sprays and foundations and her hair was cut, conditioned, and then volumized, but before either were styled and completed Melanie finally let out a huff and placed her hands on the hips of her hourglass figure.
"Okay, next is the really fun part where all the prep work ends and the final results start to get revealed," she said.
Hannah's face was unreadable as she listened to the stylist, and with all the creams and potions on her face and hair clipped and bunched in a pre-styled limbo state she looked like a 'work in progress' in the truest sense.
"You should take a break before we hit the final stretch," Sienna encouraged from the salon chair next to Hannah.
Melanie nodded to her reflection in the mirror with a tight-lipped expression.
"Yeah, that's probably a good idea," she agreed.
I caught the sly grin on Sienna's face as her attempt to influence Melanie was successful. They trailed to the back, and while I hadn't been present for most of Sienna's recent smoke breaks as of late in order to avoid looking like a weirdo dad-sized puppy--I knew that Sienna was going to concoct a reason for me to follow her outside this time.
"Daddy, you wanna join us for a chat outside?" she bubbled playfully.
Her tone and word choice teetered on the edge of inappropriate for a father and daughter, but if Melanie noticed it, she didn't give anything away based on her facial expression.
"Sure," I said as I followed her to the back of the salon.
Sienna and I went directly outside but Melanie went back to the employee area first, likely to go to the bathroom. A few minutes later, after Sienna had already lit herself up Melanie stepped outside to join us with a sugar-free Red Bull in her hands.
"Lunch," she said with a smirk, motioning to the can in her hands.
Melanie and I hadn't had much interaction during the day and sharing a smile with her for a moment was electric. The woman was beautiful on a level my brain could barely understand. But it only lasted a moment and then she was leaning against the wall, sipping her 'lunch' and scrolling her phone. I did notice her eye Sienna a few times, who was languidly enjoying her cigarette only a few feet away from where she stood.
"So, what do you think of Hannah's make-over so far?" Sienna asked me.
"I think the decisions you guys made are going to turn out really well, I'm excited for her to see herself at the end," I answered.
This seemed to satisfy Sienna, who was probably just trying to justify my having come outside with her in front of Melanie.
"Where's mom and Kayla?" She followed up.
"I think they said they were going to check out a few stores and maybe the food court, Kayla was whining about going to some pretzel place," I replied.
I saw Melanie roll her eyes and nod.
"I hate that place, makes it so hard to stick to low-carb while I'm at work," she said.
For a few more moments there was silence, before Sienna began to work on Melanie again in exactly the way I had anticipated.
"You're doing pretty good so far on not vaping, you haven't even hit it once since this morning huh?" she commented.
I noticed a grim expression spread across Melanie's beautiful features before she replied.
"Yeah, and I'm so close to caving. My vape is almost empty and I want to make it last at least until the end of the day. I want to hit it, but if I do, then I'll probably buy another one on the way home and this shit will never end," she replied.
Her tone had lost most of the bubbly nature for the first time I'd noticed that day and accompanied by the first curse word I'd heard from her this was obviously a frustrating topic for her. She took a long sip of her energy drink and then followed it up with a deep breath.
"You wanna drag? Might keep the cravings down so you can make it home without a new vape," Sienna offered.
It was so nonchalant and nonjudgmental that she might as well have been offering any number of innocuous items. It seemed to catch Melanie off-guard who didn't know quite how to respond, tripping over her response with an open mouth. Sienna was holding the quarter of a cigarette out towards Melanie with an impassive face that indicated none of the dark thoughts hidden behind it.
"I'll probably regret it, but what the hell?" She responded finally.
She reached out her slender, feminine fingers with perfectly manicured nails outfitted with expensive acrylics in the elegant French tip design. As her fingers slid over Sienna's to accept the cigarette, I felt like my heart was having palpitations. I had seen a lot of incredible things in my life, so I was a little bit surprised by how much I was anticipating this very unexpected treat.
Besides being the type of gorgeous that one might only see on the covers of magazines, Melanie could not have looked less like a woman who would smoke a cigarette. She was immaculately dressed and styled and everything about her from her pore less skin, flawless make-up and hair, and gleaming white teeth said that this woman was a carefully crafted vision of health and beauty. The incongruous nature of seeing a woman like this smoke a cigarette was absolutely something that would be seared into my memory banks for as long as I had a functioning brain stem.
She brought the cigarette up to her thick, painted lips and took a somewhat ginger drag by placing the filter just on the edge of her mouth. It was the cigarette smoker's equivalent to a 'sip,' and it was a brief moment of suction and then a quick, no-nonsense inhale. Once her lungs had been filled with smoke though, her eyes fluttered and her posture relaxed to reveal a woman who had been on the ragged edge of nicotine withdrawal.
She seemed to hold on to the satisfaction of the moment and regret having to end it by exhaling the smoke, but she did so with a practiced grace and elegance through pursed lips and a tight stream.
"Just like you remember?" Sienna asked, already smoking a newly lit cigarette herself.
Melanie took a deep breath and seemed to center herself back in the present moment before answering.
"Better, I smoked Marlboro Lights, and I've never had these minty ones. If I had, I'm not sure I would have been able to quit," she said with a soft chuckle.
"They're menthol, you like them?" Sienna asked.
"I wish the answer was no, but yeah, I do like them," she admitted.
I saw Melanie look at Sienna then, noticing that she had already lit herself another cigarette so handing back the cigarette currently burning between her fingers was unnecessary. A very calculated move by the ever-devious Sienna that had created another opportunity for Melanie to get swept back up into the arms of addiction.
"Keep it, it's almost dead anyways," Sienna offered casually.
In truth, there was probably several drags left on the Newport that Melanie was still holding. I watched in silence as the options whirled around in her head and wondered what she would choose to do. In the end, she did nothing. She simply leaned back against the wall with the cigarette burning between her fingers while she smoked it and scrolled on her phone.
I tried not to stare every time she brought the cigarette up for another drag, but it was probably no use as I was practically salivating at the sight. It had already been hard for me to avoid looking suspicious while I ogled my smoking daughter in public, but with having both her and Melanie smoking mere feet away from me I was quite helpless.
For her part Melanie never seemed to notice, and ended up getting four drags out of the dwindling cigarette before she dropped it on the ground and stamped it out with expensive black pumps. Her last exhale in the middle of grounding out the butt was glorious, as her angle shifted to catch the scant sunlight behind her to create a natural backlight. Her lips pursed dramatically as a thick stream of smoke was released into the air and it trailed around her like a smokey aura.
I was now rock hard and tried to conceal it with my thigh, standing somewhat awkwardly and trying to avoid eye contact. Sienna smirked at my pained expressed and strange movements, but Melanie thankfully didn't seem to notice.
"See you guys inside," Melanie chirped as she stepped back through the door to the salon.
After the door was closed behind her Sienna stood up from the plastic chair she had been sitting in and sauntered up to me. Her hand immediately went to my crotch, rubbing my erection through the fabric of my jeans.
"You liked that, didn't you daddy?" she purred through a smokey exhale.
I nodded, caught wordless by the pleasure of her touch.
