Chapter Thirty-Six
ALIX
By mid-February,Alix had turned missing Grace into a full-time hobby.
She was still showing up — technically. She still cut face-framing layers, mixed dye, nodded at clients like she was following along. But her head was a fogged mirror, like everything she did, she did slightly blurred.
One of her regulars mentioned Florida, and Alix snipped her scissors mid-air instead of along her fingers. Her stomach did an immediate twirl. She stifled the urge to interrupt, to shout,My girlfriend lives in Miami. She’d learned early on that some clients used hairstylists as therapists, and truth be told, Alix usually lived for drama that didn’t involve her in any way. It was always easiest to let the client chat about their life without giving them too many details of her own. Now, though, she made eye contact with her client in the mirror, and they both chuckled in anI saw thatkind of way.
“I’m sorry, it’s just one of those days, you know?” Alix admitted.
“Mercury is in retrograde,” the woman in her chair said with the kind of confidence that made Alix question her certainty that Mercury Retrograde was, in fact, not currently happening.
“That must be it.” Alix caught her reflection. Caught the dark circles and the way her own mouth didn’t quite believe her.
It wasn’t like she and Grace weren’t talking. They texted constantly. They FaceTimed. They’d gotten good at the long-distance routine. Good enough that everyone else would’ve thought they were thriving. But every time Grace’s face blinked off the screen, something inside Alix wrenched in pain.
The house felt emptier, the bed colder, the hours longer. Even Phyllis’s nightly murder podcasts didn’t drown it out anymore.
She’d gone from sleeping on Grace’s shoulder to sleeping beside Grace’s contact photo. Some nights she’d scroll through old texts, rereading things that didn’t need rereading — jokes about bad hotel shampoo, half-drunk selfies, little pieces of intimacy meant to fill the gap. They didn’t.
The ache wasn’t cinematic. It was dull, constant, exhausting. It sat behind her ribs like a bruise she kept pressing just to feel something.
At lunch, she sat outside with her usual lukewarm burrito, scrolling through Grace’s Instagram. Grace had posted a photo of the cats tangled in sunlight. Alix saved it to her phone, even though she already had a dozen just like it.
She tried not to be the kind of person who counted hours between texts, but she knew exactly how long it had been since they’d last talked. A miserable five hours and forty-two minutes.
When Lola sat down next to her and offered her half a cookie, Alix realized she’d been staring into space for several minutes.
“You okay?” Lola asked.
“Sure,” Alix said automatically. “Why?”
“You just sighed like someone in a black-and-white movie about war.”
Alix cracked a smile. “That’s just my new thing. Melancholy chic.”
“That’s so 2005. Joy is in now.”
“I’ll consider it.”
“You know, I have a good friend who is a stylist in Miami at a super cool shop. Like so cool Vince would call it ‘overwrought.’” Lola nudged Alix’s shoulder.
Alix side-eyed her. “Oh?”
Lola shrugged, leaning over to take a bite of Alix’s burrito. “Just something to keep in mind, like if you ever want an introduction,” she said around a mouthful.
Alix snorted, but she was grateful, deep down. “Sure. I’ll let you know.”
By the time she finished her final set of beachy highlights for the night, Alix was wrecked — the good kind of tired layered with the bad kind of lonely. She packed up, walked home under a dusky sky, and told herself she was fine. In two days, she’d see Grace. They had a plan. A flight. Valentine’s Day. Everything was fine.
Except that she didn’t believe it. Not really.
The thought followed her through the door, through the quiet, through the faint smell of incense Phyllis had burned earlier.
What if we fade?
It came uninvited and merciless.
