Within minutes, my kitchen smelled like a mix of chemicals and regret. The toner was doing its thing—whatever that meant—and I was sitting there in an old towel with my hair twisted up like a cotton-candy experiment gone wrong.
“Ugh, thisstinks,” I groaned, scrunching my nose. “It’s like burned plastic and sadness had a baby.”
Rachel laughed, standing behind me with the kind of focus usually reserved for bomb diffusing. “I love the smell of making new decisions.”
“That’s not a real quote.”
“It is now.” She grinned, hands moving confidently through my hair. “Just remember—this isn’t about the smell, or the note, or even the guys. This is aboutyou.Right?”
Something in the way she said it, all simple and steady, landed deep. I nodded, throat tight. “Right.”
The minutes stretched, soft music playing from my phone on the counter, the cats weaving around our feet like tiny supervisors. By the time I’d rinsed out the toner, my hair felt lighter, cleaner, like it had shed something invisible. Then came the purple.
Rachel sectioned strands with a professional sort of calm that didn’t match her age or the fact that she was still wearing a “Girl Gang or Go Home” shirt. Halfway through, when my head was covered in streaks of violet goo and I looked like I’d lost a paintball fight, she said casually,
“So… what’s the deal with Mathieu?”
I sighed. “I honestly don’t know.”
She paused, brush midair.
“He said he wasn’t taking me or anyone else to homecoming,” I said slowly, “but the way he said it… it kind of felt like he was breaking up with me without saying it out loud, you know? Like a preemptive ghosting.”
Rachel nodded in that quiet, understanding way. “That’s rough.”
“Yeah. I mean, I think we’re still… something? But my emotions are just—” I gestured vaguely at the wall. “Everywhere. Like spaghetti on the ceiling.”
My first boyfriend and breakup all at once. Go me.
Rachel chuckled softly and switched topics, maybe sensing the wobble in my voice. “Okay, so what about the secret admirer? The roses?”
I looked at her reflection in the microwave door. “I don’t know who it is.”
“No guesses? Not even a hunch?”
“None. Whoever it is, they’re either really shy or really creepy.”
Rachel dipped the brush back into the bowl and smirked. “Is there someone youwantit to be?”
“Why are we even talking about this?” I said, half whining, half laughing. My scalp was starting to tingle, and the cool paste made the back of my head feel like a snow globe. “Feels like I’m getting brain freeze.”
“Because,” Rachel said, painting on another streak of purple, “I want you to see that not everything has been bad these last few weeks.”
I didn’t have a comeback for that. She was right. Therehadbeen glimmers—tiny, flickering moments like this one. The smell of fried chicken still hung in the air. My cats purred in the corner. Rachel hummed under her breath while she helped me rebuild something I’d accidentally torn down.
Maybe not everything was bad. Maybe this was what new beginnings actually smelled like, along with hints of chemicals and regrets.
“I don’t know who I’d want it to be,” I said finally, my voice quieter than I meant it to be. “At first, I thought it was the guys, you know—trying to make up for…”
I waved my hand vaguely, the universal gesture foreverything I don’t want to name right now.
“But they were all so irritated about it that I know it wasn’t them.”
Rachel snorted, biting into a fry and talking around it. “Yeah, it does seem a bit subtle for Archie. Even if I could see him going for roses—he’s dramatic enough.”
I couldn’t help laughing. “True.”
“I could see Coop doing it,” she went on, wiping honey mustard from her thumb. “But I don’t think his love language is roses. Now Bubba or Jake? Meh. Maybe.”
