The Best Laid Plans by Amy Vastine

have a day off. That has to be a sign of something special, right?”
    The creamy ice cream Charlie had in his mouth suddenly tasted like sand and he had the overwhelming desire to spit it out. The happy little bubble he’d imagined they were sitting in popped. Emma had already cast her hero and it wasn’t Charlie.
    He took a deep breath. Better she bruised his heart now rather than breaking it later. There was no way he could pull off being a bad boy, anyway. Nice guys got to be the best friend, the confidant. Here he was listening to her talk about the butterflies she got for another man. The role of friend fit him like a glove.

CHAPTER SEVEN
    E VERY YEAR IN F EBRUARY , on the anniversary of the day their mother found out she was in remission, the Everhart family got together and celebrated her win in the battle against cancer. It wasn’t about her brush with death but her love of life.
    Emma and her mother had a special tradition all their own, which marked the anniversary of a different day in her mother’s fight—the day she’d shaved her head. Maureen Everhart used to have hair that reached the small of her back when she wore it down. As a child, Emma loved to play beauty shop and put it in braids and funny-looking buns like Princess Leia’s.
    Maureen had been told she would have to undergo three months of chemotherapy to shrink her tumor before she would be a good candidate for a double mastectomy. She couldn’t bear watching her hair come out in clumps and had decided that it was best to say goodbye to it all at once. Emma had been home from college for summer vacation and the only daughter still at home, so she had helped her mom shave it all off. They’d both cried as she ran the clippers across her scalp. It was a day Emma would never forget.
    Instead of letting that day be nothing but a bad memory, Emma had decided to do something good on the anniversary instead. They would do typical mother-daughter things like shopping and going out to lunch. Then, they would go to the salon so Emma could cut off enough of her hair to donate it to organizations that made wigs for cancer patients. It was their way of showing cancer they could give back whatever it tried to take away.
    “Ten inches takes you all the way to here.” Holly, her stylist, held Emma’s hair in a ponytail that began at the nape of her neck. This was going to be the shortest her hair had ever been.
    “It’s for a great cause,” Emma said more to herself than Holly. The first year Emma donated, the ten inches seemed like nothing, but it didn’t grow as fast as she cut it. Slowly but surely, she was left with less and less hair. She always knew the day would come when she’d have to wait two years to keep the tradition alive. Six years was the magic number.
    “It’s going to be like mine. Good thing you were blessed with thick, fast-growing hair,” her mom said, smiling at her through the mirror. Maureen had kept her hair short once it started to grow back after the chemo treatments ended. It looked good on her; maybe it would work on Emma, too.
    Holly checked one more time to make sure this was what Emma wanted. Emma nodded, then shut her eyes. She didn’t want to see anything until it was all over. Holly began to cut and cut and cut. It didn’t take too long before the ponytail was set free to create a beautiful wig for a woman in need.
    Emma trusted that Holly would make everything all right. She had been styling Emma’s hair for years and had never given her a bad cut. This haircut was also the plan, and the plan never led her astray. Without being able to see, she focused on the myriad of sounds around her. The swish of the scissors, the chatter of other stylists and clients, the roar of a blow-dryer. It was all strangely relaxing. It took a while for Holly to work her magic. Emma couldn’t imagine what it was going to look like when she was finished.
    “Okay. All done. Ready to see the new and gorgeous you?” Holly’s