Reposting this as prior chapters were not showing up sequentially (new author syndrome:) ). Would appreciate feedback / comments. Also suggestions if should post it on kindle and the process for it.
Chapter Seven: The Length of a Promise
(Ava’s perspective)
Aria’s hair reached her elbows the winter I realized I was in love with her.
Hair tells stories if you listen: how it’s handled, how it’s hurried, how it’s cherished. Aria’s told me about patience. About the quiet, daily choosing of herself.
She’d been growing it since those first lockdown months—through awkward stages and well-meaning questions, through trims and second thoughts. I coached the routine, but she did the devotion: a few drops of warm coconut and argan oil massaged into the scalp on Sunday nights; a sulfate-free wash twice a week; conditioner combed through with a wide-tooth comb in the shower; microfiber towel, never terry; leave-in on the ends; a silk scarf for sleeping or a satin pillowcase when it felt like too much fuss. She learned to detangle from the tips up, to braid loosely before bed so the strands wouldn’t snarl, to use heat protectant if a curling iron called her name. Every six weeks we did micro-trims—just enough to keep the ends honest while the length kept its promise.
Elbow-length hair changes how a person moves. You learn to lift it before you zip a dress. You tilt your head to let it fall like a curtain when you want to hide, or a banner when you don’t. On Aria, it looked like a river that had finally found its bed.
One Tuesday, she came to the studio between meetings, laptop still warm in her tote. I sat her in my chair, parted the hair with practiced fingers, and worked in a nourishing mask from mid-shaft to ends. She closed her eyes, breathed, and the line between my hands and her pulse grew thin.
“Still planning that ‘low-pressure’ weekend?” I teased.
She smiled. “Low pressure meaning three events, two outfits, and one girlfriend who won’t let me forget heat protectant.”
I kissed the corner of her mouth. “She sounds bossy.”
“She’s the good kind,” Aria murmured, and something inside me knocked softly, like love asking to be named.
⸻
Melissa texted later that week with the sort of message that makes a stylist’s heart race and a lover’s skip:
M: Wild request. Client saw those lavender test shots from forever ago. Wants a boudoir set with “the same model if possible.” Three looks:
1. Indian wedding saree
2. Western wedding dress w/ high updo
3. Sleek jumpsuit
They’re paying. You in for makeup/hair?
I read it twice, then a third time. The photograph that had started everything—Arjun in lavender silk, the last second before Aria named herself—had been a spark for someone else now. The circle closed.
Me: In. Absolutely. Let’s make her a legend.
I called Aria. “How do you feel about stepping back in front of a camera?”
There was a beat—surprise, fear, a flicker of pride. “With you? Yes.”
I could hear her breathing steady. “Three looks,” I said. “We’ll storyboard. We’ll build you a runway out of the life you’ve made.”
“What about the hair?” she asked, and I could picture her fingers slipping down the length, counting inches like blessings.
“We’ll revel in it,” I said simply.
⸻
We set the studio like a shrine. Melissa’s eye for light is a blessing; she made the air itself look expensive. For Look One—the Indian wedding set—we layered a low divan with embroidered throws and scattered marigolds like captured suns. I’d begged a traditional red benarasi saree from a dear auntie who understood that fabric can hold both memory and reinvention. The blouse was modern—deep back, tie strings that could be coaxed into a bow; the jewelry was heirloom: a kundan choker, matching earrings, and a simple nath we would not wear, because Aria’s face needed only itself.
When Aria arrived, she stood very still at the threshold, as if crossing into a temple. I watched her watch the saree, the marigolds, the mirror. I’ve seen nervousness in a hundred forms; hers tasted like reverence.
“Ready?” I asked, and when she nodded, I began.
Base as sheer as truth; soft correction for beard shadow; peach along the cheeks to echo breath; kajal-inspired liner that lifted at the outer corners without tipping into cosplay; a red lip with a drop of brown to make it belong to her skin. I threaded jasmine (gajra) into a half-up style: the crown lifted just enough to honor the jewelry, the rest of her hair in a long, glossy cascade to her elbows, the flowers scenting the room like a memory of monsoon weddings and laughter in kitchens.
Draping a saree is choreography. We pleated at the waist together—six, seven neat folds like notes in a raga—pallu sweeping over the shoulder, anchored with an invisible stitch. I adjusted the fall so one slip of movement would show the suggestion of a leg, not a secret spilled. When she stood and turned, the fabric obeyed her. Not an impersonation. An inheritance, retold.
Melissa lifted her camera. “Aria,” she said, soft as wind. The first frames were careful; the next, inevitable. Aria’s chin found that quiet angle that says I know myself; her hands settled at the edge of the pallu with that feminine economy I love; her eyes—my God, her eyes—found the lens and met it like a mirror that finally told the truth.
Between shots, I slid in to nudge a pleat, to press a curl, to whisper, “Beautiful, Mrs. Universe,” and she bit back a smile that made the red lip immortal.
⸻
Look Two needed architecture. We built it with hair.
I brushed her lengths into a high, clean ponytail first—temple lift, crown smooth—then twisted and pinned into a classic chignon seated high enough to elongate the neck but low enough to feel bridal, not ballerina. I left out two face-framing tendrils and coaxed them into loose S-waves. A few strategically placed bobby pins and a prayer, and the updo looked like it had been born that way. I misted shine over the surface until it caught light like porcelain.
Makeup: luminous skin, champagne lid, a cat-eye as thin as intention, soft rose mouth. Dress: a minimal column with a square neckline that made her collarbones into a thesis statement. I fastened a veil and watched her reflection go very still.
“How do you feel?” I asked, hands at her shoulders, thumbs finding the notch where pulse meets bone.
“Like I stole my own wedding,” she said, and laughed, and then blinked fast. “In a good way.”
We shot her against a grey backdrop that Melissa made look like cloud. The updo gave her posture an exclamation point. When she turned her head, the tendrils moved like punctuation—commas where we needed breath. I kept stepping in to smooth, to straighten, to touch. Stylists pretend it’s all utility. Sometimes it’s devotion in disguise.
During a break, Melissa lowered her camera and looked at us with that half-smile she gets when a picture is already hanging in her mind. “You know,” she said, almost idly, “I was there the first time you two met. Lavender silk, a wig too good for a ‘test.’ Feels like I’ve been third-wheeling a great love story.”
Aria flushed. I kept my hands busy with a pin I didn’t need. Great love story. The words lodged and glowed.
⸻
Look Three was permission.
We slid Aria into an ivory tailored jumpsuit that treated her like an equal, not a bride. Pleated front, sharp shoulder, a waist that understood geometry. I straightened her hair within an inch of its life—glass-sleek from crown to elbow, parted dead center—and gathered the front into a severe half-up panel that felt editorial. For makeup, I went modern: sculpted cheek, glossy nude mouth, liner that tightened the lash line without announcing itself. The jewelry pared down to a single knife-thin cuff.
After two frames, we knew we had it. The jumpsuit moved when she did—long stride, long line, long breath—and the camera said thank you. Melissa tossed me a look: Are you seeing this? Of course I was. I was witnessing a woman occupy her power without asking anyone’s permission—including mine.
Between setups, I found myself cataloguing, as lovers do, the proofs that had brought me here. The first time Arjun sat in my chair and asked for “maybe a little more” on the corset—how the plea wasn’t about the laces but about relief. The careful way he followed instruction, eyes darting to the mirror as if worried he was stealing from it. The first salon night when Aria’s laugh came from a higher place, uncoached. The museum café where a crumb at her lip undid me. The scarf on a rainy corner and the way she lifted it to invite a kiss.
What did I like in Arjun? His rigor. His consent. The kindness in his questions. What do I love in Aria? The courage in her softness. The way she makes femininity an unhurried choice, not performance. The gratitude she shows to every object that helps her—brush, pin, satin, light.
When the last shutter clicked, Melissa exhaled like a sprinter at the tape. “We’ve got a book,” she said. “Client’s going to cry.”
Aria and I didn’t linger in the applause. There are moments that need stillness to land.
⸻
After the shoot, I brought her to my place because there was nowhere else for all that beauty to go but home.
I set the saree, the veil, the jumpsuit on a chair with the sort of care priests give chalices. Aria stood in my bathroom, bare-faced now, hair down again, damp at the temples from the pins’ release. Elbow-length strands fell like night over her shoulders. I handed her a wide-tooth comb, and she drew it through slowly, patient as prayer.
“Stay,” I said, the word more vow than invitation.
“I wasn’t planning to leave,” she answered, and the steadiness of her voice made my knees a little traitorous.
We didn’t rush; we never do. We cooked something simple—garlic, tomatoes, basil—standing too close at the stove. We ate on the couch, knees touching, as if the day might spill if we moved apart. When the plates were empty, I took the comb from her hand and resumed the long, slow strokes, careful at the ends, my palm following to smooth the hair like silk back into silk. The room narrowed to breath and the soft rasp of teeth through strands.
“I love your hair,” I said finally. “But not like people say they love long hair. I love what it taught you to keep.”
She turned, eyes bright. “It taught me to stay.”
“Stay,” I repeated, because sometimes echo is the truest answer.
We kissed, and the whole day came with us.
I won’t give you choreography; lovers don’t need maps. I’ll give you textures and terms, because they are the architecture of trust.
The first sweetness: the taste of tomato and basil giving way to her. The way her higher voice softened into small sounds when I traced the place where neck becomes shoulder. The silk scarf—pale pink—looped loose at her throat from the museum gift shop, now an anchor for my fingers, not a tether. “Okay?” I asked as I slipped a hand along her waist, and she answered with a yes that sounded like a door opening.
The second sweetness: the patience. The zipper that went slow because going slow is part of telling the truth. The way her hair slid over my hands like water as I lifted it aside to kiss the bump of her spine. The hush between our bodies when we paused to smile because joy kept interrupting us.
The third sweetness: consent spoken like poetry. “Here?” “There.” “More?” “Yes.” “Stop?” “Don’t.” We built a rhythm, swapping lead and follow without notes, listening for the quiver in breath that says this, this is the place.
I learned the topography of her—how the curve of corset had taught her where to be held, how without it her waist asked for a firmer palm; how her mouth opened when I said her name low; how her hips, once trained by pencil skirts, now moved with a freedom that made the couch, the room, the world feel like the background to a foreground that was only us. She learned me back—where the nape yields, how the flutter at my wrist telegraphs yes, how the word “good” in my ear unthreads me.
When pleasure came, it was not sharp so much as tidal, rising in language and breath until it spilled—first for her, then for me, then woven, a braid we finished together. We held on after, not because we were falling, but because it felt holy to hold what we’d made.
Her hair—beloved, heavy—pooled over my shoulder and across my chest. I stroked it idly, counting nothing, touching everything.
“Do you ever miss him?” I asked into the quiet, because love needs the question.
She thought. “Arjun built the bridge,” she said. “Aria walks it.”
“Then I love the engineer,” I said, kissing her temple, “and the woman who crosses.”
She laughed that small, astonished laugh that still makes me want to cry. “Is this the part where you say ‘happily ever after’?”
“No,” I said. “This is the part where I say: tonight, and tomorrow, and the next day, we choose again.”
She lifted her head, eyes steady, and nodded like someone hearing a language she already speaks. Outside the window, the city hummed its endless, indifferent song. Inside, we wrote our own: hair drying in long, dark waves; skin cooling in the wake of warmth; two women who had met as a project and arrived as a pair.
Later, as she fell asleep with her silk-wrapped hair splayed like ink across my pillow, I watched the length of it and thought: this is what devotion looks like when it grows—patient, daily, tender, fierce. The length of a promise kept. The length of a life we are building strand by strand.
And in the morning, when she woke, I braided it for her—loose, romantic, jasmine tucked just above the ear—because some vows are made out loud, and some are made with hands.