CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
KYE
The first Saturday I reopened for a full day, every appointment showed up. I checked the booking app three times before believing it.
My eight o’clock came in wearing a bonnet and carrying coffee. My ten o’clock brought her sister. My noon appointment said she had canceled after the gossip post and felt bad about it.
“I was scared your ex was going to come up here,” she admitted.
“So was I.”
The honesty made both of us quiet.
Then, I fastened the cape around her neck and started her hair.
The rear-door alarm sounded once when a delivery man held it too long. My whole body reacted before security called to confirm the delivery.
I did not pretend it was nothing.
I took five minutes in the bathroom, breathed until my hands stopped shaking, and returned to my client.
Healing was inconvenient for business.
So was fear.
I was learning to schedule around both without letting either one own the chair.
By six, the last client left with her curls pinned and her next appointment booked. My mother packed her crossword puzzle. The building security guard made his final pass.
“You leaving with me?” my mother asked.
“In a little while.”
Her expression changed.
“Ari, Nae, and Jori coming,” I added.
“That was information you should have led with.”
“I knew you would start.”
“I am leaving because I know where you are, who is coming, and security is here until nine. Not because I suddenly enjoy you being alone.”
“Understood.”
She kissed my cheek and left.
The girls arrived in order of how they lived.
Jori was early with notebooks.
Nae was twenty minutes late with Amir and food.
Ari came exactly when she said she would, carrying the old birthday gift bags and a disposable camera.
“What is this?” I asked.
“The camera from the Airbnb. It still has pictures left.”
“You trying to document the meeting?”
“No. I’m trying to use what I paid for.”
Nae laughed. “There go the Ari answer.”
We ate Chinese food around my manicure table because the styling chairs did not face one another evenly, and Ari said she was tired of conversations where somebody had a mirror behind them.
Amir watched cartoons under the dryer with child-safe headphones Jori had bought him.
For a while, we discussed nothing important.
A professor who wore too much perfume.
A client who tried to pay me in exposure.
Malik sending Amir back with three left shoes and no right ones.
Jori’s mother planning a celebration dinner like passing pharmacology made her a registered nurse overnight.
Then, the food ran low and the safe subjects did too.
Ari wiped her hands. “I don’t want us to go back to normal.”
Nae leaned back. “Damn. No warm-up?”
“We been warming up for months.”
She was right.
Jori closed her notebook. “What does not normal look like?”
Ari looked irritated. “I don’t know. That’s why we talking.”
“Okay.” Jori caught herself before turning the word into a plan. “Keep going.”
Ari looked at each of us. “I don’t want sister to mean we can do anything to each other and expect everybody to stay because we grew up together.”
Nobody argued.
“I want staying to be a choice,” she said. “And I want leaving a situation to be allowed without somebody acting like it means you never loved them.”
That part was bigger than us.
I felt Trell’s name in the room, even though nobody said it.
“I agree,” I said.
Nae picked at the edge of her plate. “I need to ask for help before I decide everybody can afford my emergency.”
Jori said, “I need to stop helping past my limit and then blaming people for not noticing a limit I never said.”
They looked at me.
“I need to stop joking when I’m scared as hell.”
Nae frowned. “Like all jokes?”
“Hell no. Then, I would have no personality.”
Ari smiled despite herself.
I continued. “If I tell a joke and change the subject every time y’all ask the same question, ask again later. But I also got to answer eventually.”
“And no secrets for somebody’s own good,” Ari said.
“No secrets because telling the truth might make them leave,” I corrected. “That was what I did.”
Ari’s face did not soften, but she nodded.
Jori looked toward Amir. “What happens when somebody needs space?”
“We give it,” Nae said. “Without sending ten paragraphs explaining why they should be done being mad.”
“That was for me,” I said.
“And me.”
“And me,” Ari admitted.
Jori raised one hand. “I prefer bullet points.”
We threw napkins at her.
For a second, it felt like the old group. Then, I remembered the old group had been good at laughing before saying the thing underneath.
I picked up the napkin and said it, “Ari, I am sorry I let you build a relationship around a truth I kept from you. I was scared losing you would prove I was always second. So, I made sure you were the one living without information.”
Ari looked at me for a long time.
“I don’t know when I’m going to forgive it,” she said.
“I’m not asking when.”
“I still love you.”
My eyes burned.
“That makes me mad too,” she added.
“Same.”
Ari laughed once through her nose.
“I can love you and not trust you all the way,” she said. “You have to be able to live with that while it changes or doesn’t.”
“I can.”
Both would have been pretty lies.
“I’m going to try,” I said instead.
“That’s honest.”
Nae cleared her throat. “Since we doing truth, I still don’t like that y’all had a whole intervention over the trip money while I was one rent notice from being homeless.”
Ari’s expression tightened.
Nae held up a hand. “I know I was wrong. I’m saying both things. I needed help and I lied. Y’all was hurt and some of the stuff said to me was ugly.”
“You right,” Ari said.
Nae blinked. “Oh.”
“What?”
“I had another argument prepared.”
“Save it for court.”
They smiled at each other.
Jori went next without being asked. “I still get angry when everybody calls me for answers and nobody asks whether I have room. But I trained y’all to think I always had room.”
“We can ask,” I said.
“And I can say no without writing a discharge summary.”
“Please,” Nae said.
No one apologized perfectly.
No one promised the friendship would never break again.
We talked until the security guard knocked at eight forty-five and reminded me the building closed at nine.
Ari picked up the disposable camera.
“One picture.”
“I worked twelve hours,” I said. “My face shiny.”
“My wig lifting,” Nae added.
Jori looked down at her scrubs. “I have applesauce on my pocket.”
Ari held the camera toward a product shelf and set the timer. “That sounds personal.”
We squeezed together behind the styling chairs. Amir climbed onto Nae’s lap at the last second and covered half her face with his dinosaur.
The flash went off.
“Let me see,” Nae said automatically.
Ari held up the disposable camera.
“We can’t.”
All four of us stared at it.
Six-months-ago me would have made a joke and demanded another picture.
I did not. “Guess we got to trust it,” I said.
Ari looked at me.
“Start small,” she answered.
Outside, we checked the lot before walking to our cars. Jori waited until my engine started. Nae buckled Amir into his seat. Ari stood beside her car in a long coat, hair pulled back, not checking the reflection in her window.
The group chat lit before anybody drove away.
KYE: Everybody home text when you get there
JORI: You are currently looking at us.
KYE: I’m practicing healthy communication shut up
NAE: Amir said y’all talk too much
ARI: He is correct.
The messages kept coming while I pulled out of the lot.
Thank God.
Normal had almost cost us everything.