New Rules, No Escape
Bennett
I’ve seen routines like his. Built brick by brick. Timed to the minute. Strong enough to hold a man together when everything else wants to fall apart. The trouble with routines is, they don’t bend. And when life finally pushes back? They don’t flex. They crack.
Playlist: “Fix You” by Coldplay
This is how I function. Structure creates control. Control creates results. It’s the only thing that’s ever worked.
Except two days ago I sat in the middle of Main Street like a broken toy while the whole town watched. No routine is going to erase that.
I push the thought away. Focus on the tape. Second period, power play sequence—we had the positioning right but the timing was off by half a beat. Heath needs to trust his instincts instead of waiting for the play to develop. Holden is still overcommitting on the—
My doorbell rings.
I freeze, fork halfway to my mouth. Nobody comes to my door. Nobody except my family, and they know better than to show up before seven without texting first.
The doorbell rings again.
I set down the fork. Check the time: 6:23 AM. Cross to the door with the controlled stride I use when I’m approaching a situation I can’t read.
Gisele LaRue is standing on my porch. And in one moment, my entire morning goes off script.
She’s holding two coffee cups, wearing jeans and a soft sweater that probably costs more than my truck payment, and her hair is already perfect because apparently that’s just how she wakes up.
She smiles when she sees me—not the sharp smile from yesterday, something softer—and holds out one of the cups.
“Morning.”
I’m in sweatpants and a ratty Slammers t-shirt from 2019. My hair is doing something spastic on one side. The asymmetry bothers me more than it should.
I don’t take it. “What are you doing here?”
“Delivering caffeine.” She pushes the cup toward me. “Take it. It’s your order.”
“How do you know my order?”
“Bennett.” She tilts her head, an amused flickering in her eyes. “I’ve known you since you had braces and that unfortunate haircut in eighth grade. I know your coffee order.”
I take the cup because I don’t know what else to do. It’s still hot. Perfect temperature. She timed this down to the minute. She uses the moment to step past me into my house like she was invited, like this is completely normal, like 6:23 AM home invasions are just part of our friendship now.
“Looks good in here.” She looks around my living room—clean lines, minimal furniture, everything in its designated spot. “Very... controlled.”
“Gisele.”
“Hmm?”
“Why are you in my house?”
She settles onto my couch, tucking her legs underneath her in a way that pulls her sweater tight across her shoulders. Cradling her coffee in both hands, she’s perfectly at ease. “Because you were going to skip our nine o’clock appointment.”
“I wasn’t—”
“You were absolutely going to come up with some excuse about practice or team obligations or the existential weight of captaincy, and I decided to cut that off at the pass.” She takes a sip of her coffee. “You’re welcome.”
The confidence of it—the sheer, unflappable certainty—throws me more than anything else. Gisele has always been warm, understanding, willing to meet me where I am. This version of her doesn’t wait. Doesn’t ask permission. Just shows up and reorganizes my entire day.
It should piss me off. It doesn’t. That’s new. I don’t like new.
“I have a routine.”
“I noticed. Four-minute steep time, very precise.” She nods toward my abandoned breakfast. “Finish eating. I’ll wait.”
“You’ll—” I stop. Take a breath. Try again. “This isn’t how it works. You can’t just show up at my house before sunrise and—”
“And what? Disrupt your careful structure?” Her smile sharpens slightly. “That’s kind of the whole point.”
I open my mouth to argue, but nothing comes out.
Because she’s right. My structure is exactly what she’s here to disrupt, and fighting her on this feels like proving her point.
So I do the only thing I can do. I sit. I pick up my fork.
I take a bite of cold, unseasoned eggs while Gisele LaRue watches me from my own couch like she’s conducting an experiment.
This is my life now, apparently. And I have no idea how to stop it.
“Yes, Bennett,” she says, more gently now. “Eat your sad eggs. Drink your precisely timed coffee. We’ll leave when you’re ready.”
“Leave for where?”
“The salon. I have everything set up.”
“Everything being what, exactly?”
She just smiles and takes another sip of her coffee.
I add salt to my icy food. I never add salt. Gisele doesn’t comment, but I see her notice. Somehow her presence in my space has made everything feel slightly off-kilter, like the furniture shifted three inches to the left while I wasn’t looking.
By the time we’re in her car—because she insisted on driving, probably to keep me captive—I’ve cycled through irritation, resignation, and something uncomfortably close to anticipation.
Gisele doesn’t try to fill the silence. Just drives with one hand loose on the wheel, her other hand wrapped around her coffee, looking completely at ease with the tension crackling between us.
“You’re doing that thing,” she says finally.
“What thing?”
“The thing where you run scenarios in your head. I can practically hear you calculating exit strategies.”
“I don’t—” I stop, because my hand is in my hair again, the nervous habit I thought I’d trained out of myself years ago. “Okay. Maybe.”
“There’s no exit strategy, Bennett.” She glances at me, her expression softening. “This isn’t a trap you can think your way out of. It’s just... me. Trying to help.” The word “just” is doing a lot of work in that sentence. Because nothing about Gisele LaRue has ever been “just” anything.
“By ambushing me at dawn.”
“By showing you that I’m serious.” She pulls into the small lot behind Glamboozled, cuts the engine. “You know how you operate. You wait things out. You let the heat die down and then you go back to normal like nothing happened. I’m not letting that happen this time.”
“Fine.” I unbuckle my seatbelt. “Let’s get this over with.”
She leads me through the back door of the salon into a room I’ve never seen before. It’s small, clearly a break room or office space, with a worn couch against one wall and a mini fridge humming in the corner. But the thing that stops me cold is the wall.
The entire surface is covered in Post-it notes. My first thought is: this is chaos. My second thought is: she organized the chaos. Color-coded. Categorized. She built this for me.
Different colors, different handwriting, arranged in some kind of system I can’t immediately decode. Some of them have single words: ANGRY. SAD. ANXIOUS. OVERWHELMED. Others have phrases: “I feel frustrated because...” or “Right now I need...” or simply “I DON’T KNOW.”
“What is this?”
“Your emotional vocabulary starter kit.” Gisele moves to stand beside the wall, gesturing toward it. “Welcome to the board.”
“The board.”
“The Emotion Post-it board. Patent pending.” She pulls a yellow Post-it from the center and holds it up. “The idea is simple. When you can’t find the words for what you’re feeling, you pick a note that comes close. It takes the pressure off having to articulate something from scratch.”
I stare at the wall. There have to be a hundred notes up there, maybe more.
A hundred different ways to feel, organized into what I now realize are rough categories: the red section heavy on anger variations, the blue section full of sadness and loss, a green section that seems to cover fear and anxiety.
There’s a purple section too, smaller, off to the side.
I can’t read the notes from here, but the placement feels deliberate. Like she’s saving those for later.
“This is insane.”
“Maybe.” She doesn’t seem offended. “But it works. I’ve been using it with clients for years—not officially, just when someone’s having a hard time. Turns out a lot of people struggle to name what they’re feeling. You’re not special.”
That lands harder than it should. I’ve always thought I was special. Thought my control made me different. Better. Turns out I’m just another emotionally constipated man who can’t name what he’s feeling.
“There’s also this.” She picks up a laminated card from the coffee table and hands it to me. “Your Peopling Bingo card.”
I look down at it. It’s exactly as described—a bingo card, but instead of numbers, each square contains a social or emotional task.
“Compliment someone without sarcasm.” “Ask how someone’s day is going and actually listen to the answer.
” “Admit you were wrong about something.” “Make eye contact for a full conversation.” “Hug someone.”
I stare at that square longer than the others. When was the last time I hugged someone? Mom, maybe. At Christmas. Because Boone made me.
“You’re joking.”
“I never joke about emotional growth.” She’s fighting a smile, though, which means she knows exactly how insane this is. “Think of it as a game. A challenge. Something your competitive brain can latch onto while your feelings catch up.”
“I’m not playing feelings bingo.”
“Then call it accountability training. Call it interpersonal skill development. Call it whatever you need to call it to make it feel less threatening.” She takes the card back, sets it on the table. “But you’re going to do it, because you agreed to participate, and I’m holding you to that.”
I run my hand through my hair again. Stop. Shove both hands in my pockets. “Where do we start?”
“Here.” She gestures to the wall. “Right now. First exercise.”
“Which is?”
“Pick one.”
I blink. “Pick one what?”
“Pick a Post-it. Any one that feels even remotely close to what you’re feeling right now.” She crosses her arms, settles back against the wall. “Say it out loud.”
The silence stretches. I look at the wall—at the chaos of colors and words, the overwhelming array of options—and feel my chest tighten.
“I don’t know what I’m feeling.”