He'd said "an occasion" on the phone and nothing else — not what kind, not why it needed cutting a particular way, only that he trusted no one else's hands with tomorrow's version of himself. Three years together, one apart, and this was still the first thing he called about.
She kept the good scissors in the drawer she'd never quite emptied out. She told herself that was for the scissors, not for him.
He came in without knocking twice, the way he used to, and went straight for the kitchen stool without being told which one — the wobbly-legged one that had always been his, because it faced away from the window and he'd never liked being watched deciding to sit still.
She snapped the towel once over his shoulders herself instead of handing it to him, and felt him go quiet under her hands the exact way he used to go quiet, like the stool came with a rule he still remembered.
"You always did the back too slow," he said, to the room more than to her.
"Somebody has to get it right." She lifted the comb, found the place at his nape where the hair still grew the same stubborn direction it had three years ago, and something in her hand remembered before the rest of her caught up.
He didn't ask what tomorrow was. She didn't ask why he'd waited until the light was almost gone to need it fixed. Some questions were easier left folded on the counter with the rest of the mail.
She worked the last quarter inch slow, slower than the job required, tipping his head with two fingers under his jaw the way a hairdresser never would and an old flame always did, until she had no professional reason left to keep going and no reason at all to stop.
The comb went still against his neck. Neither of them moved to end it.