Page 29 of Crushes to WHAT

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So cozy. So cute. So wow-how-does-a-single-person-eat-this-much.

Almond

Emerson eats nearly all of the food at our table, including about half of what he’d allocated for me. I like my food, but there was never any chance I was going to be able to eat everything he’d pushed my way.

“I got it,” he said. “Don’t worry.”

And so, I didn’t. I don’t like food waste on principle, especially seeing how much of it there is in the restaurant industry growing up—and the bar isn’t even a full restaurant. My parents donated as much as they could, but in the end, some waste is inevitable and unavoidable, especially when the kitchen closes in the middle of the night. Generally speaking, homeless people don’t want to line up in the dark to receive back-alley bar scraps, no matter how free or delicious they are.

Not that my parents ever actually made anyone line up in the alley in the dark—or in broad daylight, for that matter—but the unhoused have pride just like anybody else, and they don’t often like to use the front door, beyond which lies the most well-lit parking lot in all of October. Plus, if they’re quick enough to get a bed at the shelter in town, they’re not allowed to leave after 10:00 PM, and the shelter doesn’t accept food deliveries at 1:00 AM, either. Then the bar isn’t set up to save food safely until the morning, and so… food waste. It’s as inevitable as it is frustrating.

Watching Emerson happily put away half the menu and still manage to look a little peckish, I think my days of worrying about personal food waste, at least, are gone. I can’t imagine the term “food waste” is even in his lexicon.

Freak, but do I find that attractive.

“I’ve got another hour of work I’d like to get done in your studio tonight,” Emerson says after wiping his mouth and beard clean of wing sauce. “I’m finishing up demo, then Monday I can get on to actually fixing things.”

I nod absentmindedly, mesmerized as he starts to stack up all our empty plates. “We love the fixing things phase,” I mutter.

He hums in agreement. “I love all the phases, honestly. First look. Imagining the potential. Making a plan. Tearing up the old and putting down the new. Finishing touches.” He places one stack of plates at the end of the booth table, then starts making a second stack. “I don’t mind the administrative work too much, but I’m in this job for the doing. I like working with my hands, and I like making things better.”

“I get that,” I say, surprised that I think I actually do. Get it, that is. “It’s like with hair. What they start with isn’t always the worst, but it’s not often the best it could be. I get the first look, and I get to imagine the potential. Then we make a plan, just like you. I don’t tear down the old, but we do have the messy, scary part when I’m mixing up colors or bleach and sometimes it doesn’t look right in the bowl even though I know it’ll look right on their head in the end. Then we rinse, and cut, and style, and in the end it feels so…”

“Fresh,” he finishes. “And right. And it settles in your chest, right here, that you did that, and it made someone else happy.” He rests his hand over his heart.

“Yeah,” I agree, smiling softly. “It feels exactly like that.”

The air charges with the sort of electricity that only comes from the knowledge that you and another living being are feeling the exact same thing in the exact same way at the exact same time. This frisson is understanding, and it is contentment, and it is joy. The spark along my nerves is the knowledge that Emerson gets it.

Has anyone ever really got it before?

I’m passionate about my job, to the point where I wouldn’t call it a career so much as a calling. I love doing hair with my entire heart. I don’t think I could breathe in the morning if I weren’t getting up to do my work. I believe in it. I believe in the ability a good hairstyle has to completely change a person’s view of not only themselves, but the world. I live for the moment when I finish up, and they look in the mirror, and I see that twinkle in their eyes that tells me I’ve done it—I’ve made them feel like them. I’ve used my creative juices to get their outsides to look how they feel on the inside, and I’ve done it in a way that flatters them completely.

Hair is intrinsic to the human experience. Our hair holds our memories and our emotions, if not physically, then metaphorically. We connect different versions of ourselves to the length, or the cut, or the color we had at the time. We connect our sense of self to the way it lays on our head, and if it behaves or not can make or break our day sometimes. It’s valuable, our hair, and deserving of the utmost respect and care.

So I give it that. Because it isn’t just the hair on someone’s head I’m caring for—it’s them, and every iteration of themselves they’ve been as it’s grown, and every iteration they will be with what I do to it.

I suppose, if I really think about it, our spaces are the same. Our homes, or our studios, or our workplaces, or all of the other sorts of areas that Emerson renovates. The places that we put ourselves in impact our lives just as much as the way that we present ourselves. A fixer-upper is never going to feel as good to live in as a fixed-up.

We are the same, Emerson and I.

We get it.

And that feels really freaking nice.

Emerson’s arm stretches out over the table to push aside a pale pink lock of my hair. “Let’s get back home,” he murmurs. “I’ll help you clean up in the kitchen, then finish my work.”

I wince. “I’ll handle the kitchen. You do not need to worry about that.”

He pulls his hand back and shrugs. “Maybe not, but I’m going to anyway.”

He quickly stacks the rest of the plates at the edge of the table before pulling out his wallet and tossing a hundred-dollar bill down on the worn wood.

My eyes bulge. “That’s some tip.”

He shrugs. “Not really. I ordered a lot of food.”