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“Go grab a chair,” she tells me. “Where’s your hair dye?”

I know why she changes the subject and I let her. I point her to what she needs and leave to get one of the chairs from my kitchen.

Kara is still in the exact same position when I get back, looking at the basket full of bottles.

“Which one?” she asks as her eyes widen.

Yeah, I lost count of how many different ones I’d collected. I use it so often that any time I see pink dye in a store, it’s mine. If I see a video of someone dyeing their hair pink at home, I find out the shade and order it. It’s happened a lot.

Instagram keeps showing me those videos because I keep interacting with them.

“I don’t care, you can just pick one.”

“But it might not match what you already have.” To emphasize her point, she holds up two of them. One is a pastel, and the other is as neon as they come.

“It won’t matter if you just find one with enough left in the bottle to cover my whole head.”

That used to be so much easier before I let my hair start to grow out. I go through the stuff so much faster now.

“That’s not how it works. You could end up with bright roots doing it that way.”

“I don’t think that’s how it works either.” At least… that’s never happened to me before. “It’s all pink. I don’t really care if there are some varying shades on my head. It doesn’t have to be perfect.”

I hear the plastic bottles being moved around as she digs through them.

“I want it to be perfect,” she says quietly. I wonder if she even meant for me to hear it at all, but I don’t comment. Just in case. “Where’s your brush?”

“Uh, it’s right in front of you.” I point to my hair brush, sitting on the bathroom counter. I notice things in this moment that I usually don’t. Like how it’s full of my bright pink hair, and stained with my dye. I should just get a new one at this point, it’s been through a lot.

“No, like an applicator brush.”

“Oh, pfft.” I wave a hand, dismissing that. “I don’t have one. I don’t need it.”

Kara stands abruptly, shaking her head.

“I’ll be right back.”

“What–where are you–” She’s gone before I can ask.

What the hell?

I guess she’ll be right back apparently.

I pick up my phone, scrolling through Instagram. I like most of the pictures I see, just killing time.

A cute edit of Autumn’s newest book shows up on my screen. A flat lay photo taken on some sand, surrounded by flowers and seashells. The wordsAVAILABLE NOW!are sprawled across the top in a scripted font. Her social media girl isgood, her posts never miss.

It has a whopping couple thousand likes, and hundreds of excited comments. I love to see how far she’s come in the lastyear. Autumn used to think no one would ever read her books, and they wouldn’t enjoy them if they did. I guess I wasn’t worth believing when I raved about the first one, but at least she gets it now.

Kara appears with a bag in her hand, and I stare at it curiously.

“Look, I know I can be annoying, but if that’s full of cleaning supplies to cover up my murder, I think we can talk this out.”

She tries and fails to hide her amusement.

Throwing the bag onto my counter, she reaches in and pulls out a handful of hair clips. Then a box of gloves. A box of foils. An applicator brush.

Okay, so maybe she knows what she’s doing. That’s all very professional looking.