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“She’ll make it cute, don’t worry,” Michael’s cousin Cecilia assured me. “She’s always done my hair.”
“That’s because you’re too cheap to pay someone,” Farrah joked. “If you fuck it up again, Emmy, you’re gonna have to have Ceecee fix it. She’s a barber. Got it?”
“Got it,” I said faintly. It was stupid how nervous I was about cutting my hair even shorter. I’d done it to myself, looking for that rush that had always blocked out whatever punishment my parents had decided was good for me. I’d just never expected such bad results because I’d never done such a hack job before.
“You’re gonna need a nose ring after this,” Heather said, hopping up onto the counter. “It’ll go with your whole look.”
“Pass,” I murmured as I felt Farrah’s fingers sift through my hair.
“Oh, come on,” Michael’s aunt Rose whined. “Live it up a little.”
“You don’t have any piercings,” I pointed out.
“Not where you can see them,” Lily muttered, making the entire group howl with laughter.
“Most of us have had one piercing or another,” Charlie said with a smile. “I’m not saying you have to in order to fit in, but—”
“Don’t listen to her,” Michael’s aunt Molly ordered, rolling her eyes. “The only thing I’ve pierced is my ears.”
“I almost got you to pierce your eyebrow,” Heather pointed out.
“I was plastered,” Molly shot back. “You’re lucky Will stopped me, or I would’ve killed you.”
“Blah blah.” Heather waved her off. “I wanna know why the hell Emmy Lou’s so stressed. What’s going on, kid? You’ve got Michael back—and all of us who come with him—and Rhett. You’re good honey, finally.”
“I don’t know,” I replied evasively. “It’s just a lot happening all at once.”
“I can understand that,” Molly murmured. “Been there.”
“All of us have,” Callie said with a nod.
“Okay.” Heather watched me closely. “But what’s the real issue here?”
I sat there with nowhere to run, still as stone while Farrah cut at my hair, and all eyes in the kitchen on me.
“I didn’t come up here to mooch off of Michael,” I replied finally. “And it seems like that’s all I’ve been doing.”
“Notallyou’ve been doing,” Charlie said with a laugh.
“And I brought my problems with me,” I continued. “My old boss followed me up here—” I stopped to swallow at the lump in my throat. “And all of that happened. And now my car is dead, and Michael has to fix it, and I broke Charlie’s coffee shop, and Rhett cried when I left him for work, and I was already late so I couldn’t even calm him down.”
The kitchen was silent.
“And Michael wants to help with all of it and it’s so sweet but I don’t want to be a burden. I’m so tired of being a fucking burden I could scream.”
“Bullshit,” Callie said with a wave of her hand. Then everyone started talking at once.
“That’s what family is for.”
“Don’t you think he wants to help you? That’s what these idiots live for.”
“I told you that you didn’t break my fucking espresso machine.”
“That motherfucker should’ve stayed in Arizona. He got what was coming to him.”
“Leaving your babies to go to work is hard.”
“Man, you need a vacation. No joke.”
