HATE ME PROPERLY THIS TIME

Bloom

The email came at 8:03 the next morning.

Aria was sitting on Tasha's bed when her phone buzzed.

[From: Lumière Cosmetics HR]

[Subject: Termination of Employment]

She read it twice.

Due to recent public events, the company could not be associated with her. Her contract was ended, effective immediately. Her final salary would be paid at the end of the month. Thank you for your service.

Three years.

Three years of mixing creams and testing lotions in that small lab. Gone in four sentences.

'It's fine,' she told herself. 'You're fine.'

She wasn't fine.

* * *

By noon, it got worse.

She went to the corner shop to buy bread and eggs. Tasha had left for work, and Aria didn't want to eat her friend's food for free.

At the counter, she tapped her card without thinking. The same black card she had used for five years.

Declined.

She tried again. Declined.

She called the bank. A bored voice told her the joint account had been frozen by the account holder. Thorne Holdings.

Of course.

She checked her personal account, the small one she had opened with her first salary from the lab. The only money that had ever been only hers.

Four hundred and twelve dollars.

That was everything she had in the world.

Behind her in the line, a teenage girl lifted her phone.

"Oh my God," the girl whispered to her friend. "It's her."

The camera was pointed straight at Aria's face.

Aria left the bread on the counter and walked out without a word.

Back at Tasha's apartment, she shut the door. Then her knees gave out, and she slid to the floor.

'It's okay,' she told herself. 'You're okay. You'll find another job. You'll start again. People start again every day. You're strong. You can do this. You—'

The tears came before she could stop them.

Hot, ugly tears burst out of her like water through a broken pipe. She pressed her hands to her face and cried out loud.

Yesterday, she had lived in the biggest house in Valemont. Drivers. Maids. A closet bigger than this whole apartment.

Today, she had four hundred and twelve dollars and a friend's floor to sleep on.

'How could you be so stupid?' she thought. 'Five years, and you never built anything of your own.'

But how could she have known?

In the Thorne world, nobody worried about money. It was just there, like air. She had kept her job because she loved it, not because she needed it. And when you love someone, you don't check whose name is on the house. You don't plan for the day he walks away.

An innocent heart always believes the best.

She cried until her eyes were swollen and her throat was raw.

She cried until there was nothing left to cry.

* * *

When she finally got up, she went to the bathroom to wash her face.

On the sink was a jar of Tasha's hair cream. Almost empty. Next to it was a comb full of broken hair.

Aria picked up the jar and smelled it.

Cheap with too much perfume.

She read the label. Mostly water. Mineral oil. A fake "coconut scent." Price: eighteen dollars.

Eighteen dollars. For this.

She stood very still.

And then, without warning, her mind woke up.

At Lumière, she had never been part of the sales team. But she was the one who read the numbers. She was the one who noticed which products the customers kept coming back for, and why. Twice, the sales manager had begged her to sit in on their meetings, and twice their sales had jumped the next month.

She knew what women bought. She knew what they paid. She knew what was inside the jars.

And she knew something better.

Suddenly she was twelve years old again, sitting between her grandmother's knees on a wooden stool, while Grandma rubbed something warm into her hair. Shea butter, melted slowly. A little coconut oil. A few drops of rosemary.

In university, girls had knocked on her door at midnight, begging for one more jar.

Aria grabbed a pen from the sink and started writing on the back of her hand.

Shea butter, about a dollar a jar if she bought it at the market. Oils, a little more. Glass jar, one dollar. Under three dollars a jar. Sell it for fifteen. Cheaper than this rubbish, and ten times better.

Her heart was racing now, but not from fear.

'They took everything else,' she thought. 'They didn't take what's in my head.'

It sounded brave. She wasn't sure she believed it. But she said it again anyway, because the only other choice was to fall apart on Tasha's floor again.

And she had no time for that. If she sat still for even one week, food, transport, and everything else would eat her four hundred dollars alive.

So she moved fast.

* * *

She grabbed the old woven shopping bag Tasha kept behind the door and took a bus to the local market.

No driver. No black card. No Mrs. Thorne. Just Aria in flat sandals, pushing through the crowd, bargaining over shea butter with a woman who called her "my sister."

She didn't feel small. She felt free.

She spent a hundred dollars. Shea butter. Coconut oil. Castor oil, for growth. Rosemary and peppermint, for the scalp. Aloe vera, for moisture. A few drops of vitamin E, for shine. And small glass jars.

By the time Tasha came home, the whole apartment smelled like rosemary and warm butter. Every pot in the kitchen was full.

Tasha froze in the doorway.

"Aria, you're scaring me o," she said slowly. "What is happening? What are you cooking?"

Aria jumped up from the floor, smiling like a child with a secret.

"Sit down. I need your hair."

"My what?"

Aria worked the butter into Tasha's dry ends, brushed it through, and styled it the way her grandmother used to style hers.

When Tasha stood in front of the mirror, she gasped.

Her hair was shining. Soft. Full. Like it had finally been fed.

She turned left. She turned right. She swirled, flipped her hair, and posed like a model on a magazine cover.

"Babe. Babe." She touched it again. "Feel it! It's so soft! I look like the girl in a hair advert!" She spun around. "I don't even know what to say right now. Aria, you're a genius."

Aria grinned. "I knew it. I made a decision, and it's cooking."

She explained everything. The market. The prices. The math on the back of her hand.

Then her smile faded.

"There's just one problem. I can't build a brand with my name on it. I'm the most hated woman in Valemont."

"No, you're not!" Tasha said. "There are two sides to every story. The only people who hate you are the ones who can't think for themselves. Rich people can cook any story they want. But the people who know you believe you."

"Maybe. But I'm not starting with my name on it." Aria's voice was firm. "I'll call it something else."

Tasha opened her mouth to argue. Then she saw Aria's face and closed it.

They packed until midnight, filling jar after jar, laughing and wiping butter off their fingers. There was no time left for labels.

Aria decided she would sort that out tomorrow.

Before bed, Tasha took one last selfie in the mirror, flipped her shiny hair, and smiled.

"Babe," she said, "tomorrow, my office is going to lose its mind.”