The crowd laughs, yells, throws things at him while he’s in the box. That’s the thing I keep missing. The arena is laughing, not gasping, not going silent the way crowds do when something’s actually wrong. The referee looks exasperated, not alarmed. And Bennett—Bennett just stands there, and his shoulders do this thing, this small drop.
He’s not falling apart.
He’s embarrassed.
Those are different things. I know they’re different things. I’ve spent weeks learning exactly what Bennett Foster looks like when he’s actually coming apart, and this isn’t it—but the fear got there before the logic did, and now my heart is beating at a frequency that is not compatible with eating a sensible breakfast and delivering a professional showcase.
I text Boone again.Please just tell me he’s fine. One word is enough.
I put the phone face down on the nightstand and go shower, because I am Gisele LaRue, and I do not sit in hotel rooms catastrophizing when I have places to be.
I catastrophize in the shower instead, which is more efficient. He did text me ‘we won’ last night. The fallout can’t be too bad, can it?
The showcase venue is a training facility attached to a salon supply distributor, the kind of place that smells like developer. There are twenty of us in the room—working stylists, salonowners, people who applied for this six months ago because continuing education at this level matters and spots are limited and getting one holds meaning.
I got one. I’ve been looking forward to this for months.
At least I was until the illegal equipment video.
I check my phone in the parking lot. Nothing from Boone. Nothing from Bennett. The video has forty-seven thousand views now, which is either reassuring or alarming, and I can’t decide which.
I put my phone in my bag and go inside. The showcase goes well right up to the moment it doesn’t. I section the hair. Pick up my scissors. I’m already thinking about Bennett.
The model is telling me about her sister’s wedding. How soon it is. How important it is. I’m nodding. Responding. Making the cuts.
My phone buzzes. I ignore it.
The third cut is where it goes wrong. I don’t realize it immediately. I’m not rushing. I’m making deliberate cuts with years of experience.
The model makes a small, wounded sound.
I look up. I look at the mirror. I look at what I’ve done.
She has a pixie cut. A very good pixie cut. It is also absolutely not what she asked for.
“That’s,” she starts, and her voice breaks on the word. “That’s very short.”
“It is,” I agree, because there’s nothing else to say.
“I wanted,” she tries again, and the tears arrive before she finishes the sentence—not delicate, polite tears but the full overwhelm of a woman who came in with beautiful hair and is now looking at a stranger in the mirror. “I said bixie. I said I wanted to keep some length. I have my sister’s wedding in—”
“I know,” I say. “I heard you.”
“Then why—”
The Master Stylist, Clarice, appears at my elbow. She looks at the model. She looks at the floor. She looks at me with the measured expression of a professional who has seen things in decades of editorial work but perhaps not quite this specific thing.
“She asked for a bixie,” Clarice says.
The model wails.
Not a small sound this time. A full, genuine, from-the-diaphragm wail that turns every head in the room, twenty stylists and their models all swiveling toward my station with the collective attention of people witnessing something they will be talking about for years. The model grips the armrests of the chair until her knuckles whiten. Tears run down her face in earnest now. She looks at her reflection with the expression of someone attending a funeral, which I suppose in a way she is.
Most of her hair is deceased.
“I know,” I say again, because I’m a professional and professionals don’t panic. “I made a mistake. I am so sorry.”
“My hair,” she says, mournfully, to the mirror.
