She sees me coming. Her face does the thing it does—the real smile, the one she saved for twelve years—and I close thedistance between us and I hold on, right there in the emptying arena with the confetti still on the ice and Shep’s road flare smoke still hanging in the air.
“You did it,” she says against my shoulder.
“We did it.”
She pulls back. Looks at me. Her eyes are bright.
“How do you feel?”
The question she’s been asking since the beginning. The question that started all of it.
I don’t have to think about it.
“Happy,” I say.
Simple. True. Purple.
She laughs—surprised and real—and I kiss her, right there in section 112 with four thousand witnesses and Shep somewhere in the building still WOOOOOing and the whole long road from Main Street to this moment finally, completely behind us.
Playoffs, here come the Slammers.
Forward
Gisele
I’ve watched a lot of people try to outrun what they’re afraid of. Build walls. Build routines. Build whole lives designed around never needing anyone too much. Sometimes it works. For a while. But the ones who stay—the ones who really find something worth keeping—they’re the ones who stop running. Who turn around, openthe door, and let someone walk in anyway. And if you’re lucky… They don’t leave.
Playlist: “You and Me” by Lifehouse
I’m standing inside Glamboozled for the big launch, and the salon looks transformed.
That’s the point, obviously—Luxe Beauty sent three people ahead of schedule to transform my business into something camera-ready, and they’ve done exactly that. Product displays where the magazine rack used to be. Soft lighting rigs angled toward the styling stations. A step-and-repeat banner near the front window that has my name on it, which I keep glancing at like it in awe.
My name. On a banner. In my salon.
I should be used to it by now. We’ve had three planning calls, two pre-shoots, and approximately forty-seven emails from Derek about lighting angles. This has been coming for months.
I’m not used to it.
I’m restocking the color station—purely out of habit, everything’s already been arranged twice by people who get paid specifically to arrange things—when I find it.
The Post-it board.
I’d moved it to the back room when the Luxe team needed the wall space, and then I’d forgotten about it. Or told myself I’d forgotten about it. It’s propped against the storage shelves now, slightly dusty, exactly as chaotic as the day I made it.
I stand there holding a box of foils I don’t need and look at it.
Red for anger. Blue for sadness. Green for fear and anxiety. Yellow for connection, vulnerability, all the relationship stuffthat took me weeks to coax out of a man who communicated primarily through jaw clenches and controlled silences.
The man I’ve always loved.
And purple, off to the side. Smaller than the other sections. The feelings I was saving for later, for when we got somewhere worth naming.
I’m still looking at it when I hear the back door open.
Bennett. Early, because he is always early now, which should be annoying and isn’t.
He takes in the scene—me, the board, whatever’s on my face—in about two seconds.
