Liem picked up the clippers and paused, seeming to mull over his response. “No. You’ll be just as charming without your hair.”
I flushed, not expecting the outright compliment. “I’m not worried about being charming.”
He nodded. “Good. You shouldn’t be.”
He tapped the back of my neck in a silent cue to scoot back, and I followed his direction, mentally shrugging off another flurry of goose bumps.
Once I did, he tapped again and murmured, “Lean back.”
And again, I complied, somehow managing to relax into the seat. He wasted no time in getting to work, using a combination of scissors and clippers. When he started to hum softly, I let my eyes fall shut for several long minutes, utterly soothed by the sound.
I sank deeper into the small sensations of it all, imagining his tattooed fingers when I felt a graze to the shell of my ear, or a brush on my temple. The snip of scissors. The buzz of clippers. The later-winter birdsong and the faint smell of charcoal.
“All done.”
I blinked slowly back into the morning, sure I’d misheard him. Awareness came back to me in pieces as my vision focused on an upside-down Liem watching me from above, framed by puffy white clouds.
I reached toward my head and ran my hand over my scalp experimentally, my body partially collapsed in the chair. “Wow.”
Liem graced me with a soft smile. “I agree.”
Bracing my hands on the chair, I heaved myself upright and surveyed the piles of hair scattered by our feet. “Uh, should we clean this up?”
“Hmm,” he said thoughtfully, toeing a fallen piece of my blond hair—lightened from its usually dirty blond after months aboard the ship. “Did you have any product in your hair?”
I ran my hand across my scalp again, marveling at the lighter feeling but surprised to feel longer strands on top. “No.”
“In that case, we can sweep it into the yard and let the birds use it for nesting. Just in time for spring.”
His simple enthusiasm was contagious, and paired with my fresh hair cut…
It felt like a new beginning.
I caught the new best friend of my best friend’s gaze and held it, hoping that sincerity would be a good place to start.
“Thank you, LL.”
A faint breeze ghosted my skin as his pupils expanded, making his gaze even darker. He brushed his hair behind his pierced ear. The corner of his mouth lifted almost shyly, and he took a deep breath before responding, “You’re so very welcome, Dezi.”
4
Liem
“My Liem.What are you doing calling me at this hour?”
I smiled at Aunt Ari’s voice as I made the short trek from cottage to gazebo with nothing but my sketch pad and a pouch full of freshly sharpened charcoal pencils.
“Good morning,” I replied softly. “Has retirement changed your early-rising habits? You know you’re the one who taught me the dire misfortune of a missed sunrise.”
“You charmer,” she chuckled, then sighed into the phone. “You are right, though. Your Uncle Gil has embraced the morning lie-ins, but I am too in love with this balcony to miss a morning on it.”
When Aunt Ari and Uncle Gil decided to retire from the restaurant business and my parents moved to the Mississippi Gulf Coast to take it over from them, a series of equally delightful and dreadful things followed. The net outcome of it all was my ability to bask in the warm, loving light of my brother being both happy andhere. The darker side of it all for our family—Dad’s unexpected surgery and struggles, everything that happenedwith Bree, her grandmother, and Fortuna—was very much like what I was seeing now.
A quiet predawn that indicated a beautiful, clear spring day was coming, viewed with the visceral understanding that it wasn’t guaranteed.
But still, you hoped.
I hoped.
