Spark Romance
At 3:06 a.m., I texted my assistant. “Working from home tomorrow. Family emergency. Clear my calendar until noon.” Then I set my phone down beside the clippers still resting on the counter and looked down the dark hallway toward the room where Ethan and his mother slept peacefully, certain they had already won. They believed shaving my head had stripped away my dignity. By sunrise, they’d understand that the only thing I had actually removed was the money keeping their comfortable little world upright.
I must have slept an hour, maybe two, because I woke to soft daylight through the curtains and a strange, unfamiliar calm. The cool air against my bare scalp still felt foreign, but the feeling underneath it wasn’t shame. It was something closer to relief — the specific, quiet relief of finally setting down something heavy I hadn’t realized I’d been carrying for years.I thought about the three years I had spent disappearing a little more each month into the job of keeping everyone else comfortable, and how little of myself I had left standing when I finally looked. I made coffee. I sat at the table and waited.
