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“Why good?”
“Because breakup haircuts are usually about somebody else.” She tips her head, studying the developing shape. “This looks more like you got tired of your own rules.”
Elena laughs softly. “I like her.”
“Please don’t encourage her.”
“It’s much too late for that,” Blair says.
I turn my head when Elena directs me. She’s already clipped one side down close above my ear.
“Number three,” she tells me, “so remember that for next time.”
It’s short enough that I can feel cool air against skin that has been covered by hair all of my adult life. The top is staying longer, cut into textured layers that sweep up and back instead of falling neatly around my face.
It isn’t a cautious haircut, and that may be the part I like most. For all of my adult life, my hair has had a job. It needed to flatter me, look professional, stay current without becoming conspicuous, and require no explanation from a woman who spends her days telling department heads they can’t resolve staffing shortages by violating employment law. None of those are unreasonable considerations. I’m simply not sure when I started treating them as rules.
Today, for once, I didn’t ask Elena what would be safest. I pulled out my phone and showed her what I wanted.
Blair goes unusually quiet as Elena works around my temple. I catch her in the mirror. “What?”
“Nothing.”
“That is never true when you say it.”
“I’m practicing restraint.”
“Should I be concerned?”
“Probably.” She takes another sip of coffee. “I was only thinking that you seem to know exactly what you want today.”
The comment is light enough that she could leave it there, so I let her.
“About my hair.”
“Hair is a perfectly respectable place to begin.”
She leaves it there. No questions about Kell, no attempt to make a haircut mean more than I’m ready for it to mean. That’s one of the reasons I wanted Blair here.
Elena finishes the last section, works a little product through the longer top, and turns my chair a few degrees toward the mirror. I have to adjust to how different I look. Not because the woman in the mirror looks younger. She doesn’t. I’m still forty-eight, and nothing about the haircut is trying to pretend otherwise. My face hasn’t changed, and neither has the softly curvy body under the cape.
But the clipped side exposes more of my cheek and neck, while the longer top sweeps up and over in textured pieces, the caramel streaks standing out sharply against the darker hair beneath them. The whole shape changes the balance of my face. It’s sophisticated and a little bold and unlike anything I’ve ever chosen before. I touch the longer section near my temple.
“I love it.”
Elena smiles. “I thought you might.”
Blair gets up and comes closer. “Oh, that is very good.”
“That sounded ominous.”
“It was approval. I apologize if the unbridled praise confused you.”
I laugh and reach for my purse. On the drive home, I keep catching pieces of the haircut in the rearview mirror. At a stoplight, I run my fingers over the short side again and smile before I can stop myself.
Kell may never see it. The thought hurts. I don’t try to make it hurt less by pretending otherwise. But I’d still have cut it. That is the part I hold on to.
When I get home, the repaired dining chair is tucked neatly under the table. The cabinets are closed. The house is quiet enough that I can hear my boots crossing the floor.
