“Is it bad?” she asks.
“It’s correctable,” I say, which is not the same thing but lands better. “Everything is correctable. That’s literally what I do. Who Iam.”
What follows is thirty-eight minutes of the most focused color correction work I’ve done in three years. Derek hovering. The photographer checking his watch. Carrie running interference on two walk-in clients who showed up without appointments because small towns do not understand the concept of a closed sign. I work through all of it with the particular tunnel vision that takes over when I have a problem in front of me and the tools to fix it.
When I turn the chair around, the model’s hair is a perfect, glossy auburn. Cool-toned. Rich. Exactly what the mood board promised and frankly better, because now it has depth from the correction process that the original formula was missing.
Derek stares at it for a long moment.
“How did you—”
“It’s one of my superpowers,” I say again, and hand the model a mirror so she can see the back.
She exhales like she’s been holding her breath since eight AM. “Oh. Oh, that’s gorgeous.”
“I know.” I start cleaning up my station because the photographer is already moving lights, and I have approximately four minutes before this shoot kicks back into gear. “Derek, we’re ready when you are.”
He looks at me with the expression of a man who has been humbled by competence. “You’re remarkable.”
“Write that in the partnership review,” I say and go wash the toner off my hands.
By the time the shoot wraps at one-thirty, I’ve also handled a scheduling conflict with the Luxe marketing team in Minneapolis, approved three rounds of caption copy for the campaign social posts, talked Carrie down from a minorbreakdown involving a client who wanted to go platinum in one session, and eaten approximately half a protein bar over the course of six hours.
I am, objectively, crushing it.
I am also running on fumes and caffeine and the specific determination that lives in a woman who has something to prove and a deadline to prove it by.
My phone buzzes on the counter.
Bennett:Still on for tonight?
I look at the message. Look at the clock. Look at the mountain of post-shoot cleanup, product inventory, and email responses that are waiting for me the moment this studio equipment walks out my door.
Me:Yes. Seven.
His response is immediate:I’ll bring dinner.
I start to type back that I can cook, then stop. Delete it. He offered. Let him.
Me:Okay. Thank you.
I pocket the phone and go help break down the lighting rigs, because the afternoon isn’t going to survive itself.
By six forty-five, I’ve showered, changed into an outfit that isn’t covered in toner, and done approximately nothing else to prepare for Bennett’s arrival because I ran out of time the moment I finished the last email response at six-thirty. The salon is clean—Carrie handled that before she left, bless her—and my apartment above it is presentable in the way that means I shoved three days of Luxe paperwork into a drawer and called it done.
I look good. I think. The mirror suggests I look like someone who handled a significant professional crisis with grace and has been awake since five-fifteen, which is accurate on both counts.
Bennett arrives at seven on the dot, which I should expect by now but still lands as charming every time, because the mantreats punctuality like a love language. He’s carrying two bags from the Italian place on Fourth Street and wearing the henley that does things to his shoulders, and he smiles when I open the door—the real smile, the one that took weeks of Post-it notes and bingo squares and one very consequential breathing exercise to fully unlock.
“Hey,” he says.
“Hey.” I step back to let him in. “You didn’t have to bring actual food. I have—” I open my refrigerator door and survey its contents, which consist of half a block of cheese, some leftover takeout of uncertain age, and approximately nine bottles of various Luxe Beauty products that I keep forgetting to move to the salon. “I have cheese.”
“Good thing I brought actual food.” He sets the bags on my kitchen counter and starts unpacking with the efficient movements of a man who is very comfortable in his own kitchen and slightly less comfortable in someone else’s but unwilling to show it. He opens the wrong cabinet twice before finding the plates. He doesn’t comment on it. I don’t either.
“Tell me about the shoot,” he says.
So I do. I tell him about the copper situation and Derek’s face and the thirty-eight minutes of color correction, and somewhere in the middle of explaining the toner formula, I watch him actually listen—not nod along waiting for his turn to talk but actually follow the technical details with the focused attention he usually reserves for game tape.
