“Kidding,” she says, looking from me to him. “I’m exaggerating.”
The waiter nods and leaves. “I think you scarred him,” I say.
“I’ll leave a big tip. He can put it toward the therapy.”
I exhale a little, feeling the extra room in my lungs, my heart, and my mind that telling Savannah about what happened with Sebastian has created. I mean, okay, it isn’t the whole story, but it’s more of it than I’d been willing to share yet, and it feels good to have chiseled away even a little at the boulder I’ve been carrying around inside. I run my hand over my ponytail. “I’m sorry I didn’t call you,” I say. “That I just let us drift apart.”
“Me, too,” Savannah says. “These last couple of years, I’ve just let work take over.”“And I let Sebastian take over,” I say, shaking my head.
“But I could have checked on you,” she says. “My best friend runs off to another continent with a guy she’s known six months. The least I could have done was asked how happily ever after was working out.”
“Not so happily,” I say with a smirk.
“Time to start a new story, then. Chapter one of the single girl handbook,” Savannah says. “And I think I know just how it begins.”
***
Three hours after my last bite of Sunrise omelette, I’m a brunette. Savannah, her lawyering skills on full display, somehow talked the receptionist at Willow, her hair salon, into squeezing me in for a color and cut while she got her ends trimmed.
“Oh my God, Cassie. It’s like you’re a fucking model,” Savannah says now, her jaw literally dropped as she takes in my new look, standing behind where I sit in the stylist’s chair. “Case fucking closed.”
I grin at her reflection in the mirror, combing my fingers through my new hair—what’s left of it anyway. No more ponytails. It’s a choppy bob now, cut on a slant so that it brushes my cheekbones—highlights your facial structure, the stylist promised—with thick, straight bangs that swoop to one side. I kind of can’t quit staring at myself, but it’s not entirely out of vanity. It’s because, for the first time in twenty-six years, I feel like a grown up.
For the last couple of years, I’ve kept my hair long, because I’ve just always had it long, and even blonder than my natural dark blond, because Sebastian liked it that way. Like an angel, he’d say. My angel.
But somehow this chocolatey brown is me. The real me. I never was an angel, and I’m not his anymore. No more being someone I’m not just because it’s the path of least resistance, and definitely not just because it’s the path someone else prefers.
It’s like, sitting in this hair salon in the middle of a summer Saturday afternoon, I’m seeing myself for the first time.
And I look good. Damn good.
Savannah runs her hands up the back of my head, gives my hair a tug. “What are you doing?” I say, laughing.
“Just checking,” she says. She leans over my shoulder, and in the mirror, her curly blond hair makes my dark, straight style even more dramatic. “Good. It’s short and sexy, but still long enough to be pulled from behind.”
“Is that in the single girl handbook?” I say.
“If it’s not,” she says, “it really should be.”
***
Even though I slept til noon today, by the time the sun goes down around eight, I’m totally knackered. Though I guess in America, I’d just say I’m exhausted. Obviously they speak English in England, but one thing I did really enjoy about living there was the little twists on language that we don’t have here—bollocks instead of B.S., fancy instead of like, cheers for bye or thanks. Maybe I’ll keep some in my vocabulary, like souvenirs that remind me of the good part of my journey.
I’m cleaning up the kitchen, locking the new side door, and considering a nine o’clock bedtime on a Saturday night (is this in the single girl handbook?) when my mom calls.
“Hi, honey,” she says. “I can’t believe I’m finally talking to you in the same time zone.”
“I know, me neither. It’s been a while.”
“Usually I’m calling before I’ve even had dinner and you’re headed to bed,” she says.
I chuckle as I walk up the stairs. “Well, I imagine you’ve already had dinner, but actually, I am headed to bed.”
“Really?” she says. “I thought for sure Jamie would be showing you off to his friends on a Saturday night. His world-traveler sister.”
Jamie. My mom saying his name stops me cold in the doorway of my bedroom.
She doesn’t know he’s gone. But then again, why would she? When you get into some money trouble with an underground fighting ring, I guess you don’t usually run to tell your mommy.
“Are y’all getting to spend some time together and catch up?” she says.