Page 74 of Omar

I pulled out my phone from under the covers. The screen lit up my face in the dark.

I texted Omar: When are we doing this?

His reply came in under a minute: I'm already working on it. Sit tight.

How long?

Days. Maybe less. We're putting something together.

Omar.

Yeah?

Thank you.

He didn't reply to that. He didn't need to. I deleted the thread, put my phone back under the pillow, and closed my eyes.

Supreme rolled toward me in his sleep, his body curving against mine, his weight settling along my back. I let him and lay there in the dark counting the things I was grateful for. Omar was working on something. Nene was ready. Whatever was coming, I wouldn't be doing it alone.

For the first time since I'd stood in this bedroom watching Supreme unpack my bag, the door inside me opened a crack.

Just a crack. But it was enough.

Chapter 29

Asha

The text came through at nine in the morning while I was setting up my station at the salon. Unknown number, no name.

Hair consultation booked for 2pm. I'll come to you.

I stared at it for a second, my heart hammering. Then the contact Crown Heights Color Correction lit up separately: Today. Someone's coming. Let her in.

My hands were shaking when I put the phone down on the counter. I picked up my flat iron, set it back down, picked it up again. Cee was in his chair by the door scrolling through his phone like every other day. My nine-thirty was due in fifteen minutes. Everything was normal. Everything was exactly the same as it had been yesterday and the day before that.

Except today was the day I was leaving.

I did my nine-thirty. A silk press for a woman who talked the entire time about her sister's wedding. I nodded, asked questions, laughed when she made a joke about the bridesmaids' dresses. My hands were steady on the iron. My voice was steady in the conversation. Underneath all of it my brain was running logistics.

The bag was in the bathroom behind the dryer. I'd packed it two days ago, the night after Omar's text about putting something together. Smaller than the last one. One change of clothes, my phone charger, my wallet with the cash card. No toiletries this time, no extra shoes. I could buy that stuff later. The bag needed to be small enough that I could grab it and go without Cee noticing a bulge under my jacket.

My eleven o'clock came in looking apologetic. A color correction, a woman named Tricia who'd box-dyed her hair three times in two months and the underneath was practically orange. She sat in my chair and started explaining what she'd done while I sectioned her hair and assessed the damage.

"I know, I know," Tricia said, watching my face in the mirror. "My sister told me not to do it at home but the salon prices..."

"It's okay, we can fix it." My voice was calm, professional. My hands were steady on the clips. Underneath the counter my knee was bouncing so hard the station was vibrating. "It's gonna take a while though. The layers of color need to come off one at a time."

"However long it takes."

However long it takes. I mixed the corrector, applied it to the first section, set the timer. Twenty minutes per section, four sections minimum. The math put me finishing around one-fifteen, which gave me forty-five minutes before Shanay arrived.

Forty-five minutes. My chest tightened.

The salon door opened. My head snapped toward it before I could stop myself. A woman I didn't recognize walked in, looked around, said she had the wrong address, and left.

My heart was slamming against my ribs. Cee was ten feet away in his chair. He hadn't looked up from his phone. The door had opened and closed. It was nothing, it was nobody. I was standing here with color corrector on my gloves, my pulse going so fast I was dizzy.

I breathed. In through the nose, out through the mouth. Tricia was talking about her sister's wedding colors and I nodded along while my hands worked on autopilot, painting the corrector through each section with strokes I could do in my sleep.