And I learned something else.

In my second year at the chain, a man came in for a cut and a beard trim. Forty-two dollars. When I finished, he said he’d left his wallet in his car. He said he’d be right back.

He never came back.

My manager, a woman named Debbie with very long fingernails and a very short temper, took the forty-two dollars out of my paycheck.

“Your client,” she said. “Your responsibility.”

I was twenty-five. I made eleven dollars an hour plus tips. That forty-two dollars was my groceries for a week.

I ate a lot of peanut butter that week.

I never forgot it.

For ten years after that, I saved.

Every month. Whatever I could. I worked extra shifts. I did hair out of my kitchen on Sundays for neighbors and friends. I drove a car with a hole in the floor on the passenger side. I didn’t go on vacation. I didn’t buy new clothes unless the old ones were literally falling apart.

When I was thirty-five, I had enough.

I signed a lease on a little space on Elm Street. Between a bakery and a bookstore. It used to be a florist. It still smelled faintly like roses for the first month.

I painted the walls myself. A soft sage green. I bought three styling chairs secondhand from a salon that was closing in the next town. I found a vintage mirror at an estate sale and spent two weekends refinishing the frame. My dad built the reception desk out of reclaimed barn wood in his garage.

I named it Golden Hour.

Because that’s the light I always loved best. That warm, soft light right before sunset, when everybody looks beautiful.

The first year was terrifying.

Some weeks, I didn’t pay myself at all. Just rent and products and electricity. I lay awake at night doing math on the ceiling.

The second year was better.

By the third year, I had a real business. Three chairs, always full. A waiting list on Saturdays. A stylist named Jess who’d followed me from the chain, because she said she’d rather work for somebody who knew her name. And an assistant named Maya.