“To Ren Asa Bell, the following property is left,” Rian read the priority letter that had come in the mail today alongside a massive manila envelope with two sets of keys, “My home in Sandy Springs, worth 765 thousand dollars. My barber shop on 7th street, the loan and building are entirely paid off, and no need to pay a mortgage as I am gifting it to him. Finally, the contents of my account, which should have been transferred to his account before this letter arrived. Did it?” he looked at me, and I took out my phone, going to my banking app to find that my balance of ten thousand dollars was now sitting at 1.65 million.

“Huh!” I screeched, “No. There’s no fucking way Kipling had this much.”

“Let me see,” Dara wrenched my phone from my hand and nearly fell on his rear, “Holy… shit. You’re rich.”

“How much?” Rian called.

“1.55 million was deposited since I had ten thousand already.”

“Which means he didn’t spend any of the money we gave him to open the shop or buy his house. He kept it all. It looks like he owned the house and the barber shop outright. I won’t even question how he afforded that; I don’t want to know. As of this and the envelope with the deeds, you own all of it. It’s your choice to decide what to do.”

“Okay,” I chewed my lip, and Dara ran his fingers through my hair as he was standing behind me, Fern playing with my hands in my lap, “I think we should sell the house. I don’t want to live there. I mean, I would, but it was meant to be the home I shared with Kipling. That’s tainted now. I’ll use the sale of that home to buy a new one here in Sandy Springs. Somewhere good for Fern. As far as the shop… Kipling said I don’t need a license to manage the place. I own it now. I can keep the staff, figure out how to manage the books, pay the bills and fees, all that stuff. I’m sure it won’t be easy, but I can figure it out. Dara, I want you to come back. You’ve kept to all your promises, and we fixed things. We’ll tell people it’s under new management. All of the regular clients know me, so it shouldn’t be too bad. Josh is already gone, so you don’t need to worry about him. You can be like head barber and I’ll handle all the manager crap and appointment making. If you want, of course. I don’t mind adding you as a co-owner. Plus, Fern can be the shop baby. Since I won’t be actually working on clients, but I have extensive knowledge of how a barbershop is run, I can have her with us when we’re open.”

“I’d love nothing more, but we should change the name,” Dara smiled, kissing the top of my head, “It’s called O’Connor’s.”

“I’ll think of something. So, we have a game plan, but we have to figure out the order to do all of this.”

“Shop should be the priority. You shouldn’t leave the barbers Kipling hired out of money for too long. We can help sell the house,” Rian smiled, gesturing to Clara, who nodded, “and then look for a new one since you live here for now.”

“Right. Okay. Let’s get started then.”

Life kicked into high gear over the next three months. I changed the shop's name from O’Connor’s Cuts to Lock Lounge, brought Dara on as head barber, and found a replacement for Josh, a trained barber from Atlanta named Halley. She was lovely and brought a lot of her own clients in, helping us to grow a bit. I worked with local shop owners to understand all of the bills, certifications, and vendors I needed to keep the shop going, finding that my brain worked better to manage a business rather than cut hair. Our regulars were disappointed when they found out what happened to Kipling, whose sentence was officially set at life in prison with a possibility of parole in 25 years. However, I felt welcomed by them as we all knew each other, and our grand reopening had gone off successfully, bringing in new and returning customers in droves.

With the help of Rian and Clara, I was able to sell Kipling’s house. A massive surprise came to me when I found out Gem and Jett had bought it, wanting to stay close to me and get out of Atlanta. They ran their own little bar now not far from the barber shop, and I came over to the house with Dara regularly to let Fern play with their four little ones: Jenni who was 6, Jerry who was 4, Harry who has 2, and finally Quinn who was 1 the same as Fern. I had thrown Fern a massive first birthday party at a nearby park, and not only did my adoptive family come along with Gem and Jett, but regulars who knew us from the shop brought their families to celebrate my little girl. Many of them had known Edward and wanted to support us now that he was gone and not here to see Fern grow up.

Once Gem and Jett bought the old house, I started looking for a new one in Sandy Springs that was in my budget. Dara came with me to tour every house, pointing out things that needed to be fixed or should be included to be fixed by the seller if I put an offer in on it. I finally found the perfect house after touring six, and immediately sent an offer over with proof of funds, wanting to buy it outright. The home was a single-story new build, making me the first owner of this four-bedroom home. It was a beautiful white brick exterior with gray trim and windows. A three-car garage sat right next to the enclosed front porch made of stone. When you walked inside, you followed the entryway to a massive living room with a sliding door view to an enclosed backyard. The kitchen and dining room were separated from the living room by a rib-height island that now held barstools, the sink, and the dishwasher on the opposite side. The first two bedrooms came off the living room. The master bedroom was located at the very back of the house with a large bathroom in it, and the next bedroom was at the opposite end, located between the garage and another bathroom. You could enter the house through the garage into the laundry room, which then let you into the living room, a feature I liked as I could also use the laundry room a bit like a mudroom for shoes and jackets. The last two bedrooms were off the entryway, a bathroom was situated between them, and the very front bedroom that looked out at the front yard would be my new home office, as I didn’t want Fern there, but rather in the room next to mine.

Most of the home was white, the floors were deep wood, and I didn’t mind it much. The kitchen had white cabinets and stainless steel appliances, but this starkness was broken up by black marble counters and golden hardware. I catered to this by finding leather high-backed barstools for the island, deep blue stoneware dishes and pots, and plants everywhere it made sense to have them. The dining room was right next to the kitchen, and two windows in this room showed the backyard that I covered with long, flowy white curtains. Dara had helped me find a rustic, wooden dining table at a thrift store that fit well in the room, and I bought chairs that matched my barstools to go with it, fitting six people at a time. There was a huge ficus in the back right corner and on the opposite wall was a black short hutch I had been given by Clara. I hung a painting of a sunrise above it, put a vase full of fake blue roses on top, and a basket for my keys and mail. The room was finished out with a white rug covered in black triangles to match the chairs.

The living room slowly became my favorite in the house as I found pieces of furniture that matched the wallpaper on which the television sat. The wallpaper was cream but covered in navy blue diamonds, small orange flowers creating lines through each diamond. This discovery led me to buy two royal blue sofas I kept at a ninety-degree angle, the back of the second to the sliding door. I bought a black, six-drawer, single cabinet entertainment center that matched the hutch in my dining room. The coffee table was the statement piece of the room, made of a light wood with a glass top, and running through the center was a fake koi pond made of resin. Jett had made it for me, a gift for putting my life back together for the second time, and I adored it, finding coasters that looked like lily pads to match. I had found driftwood shelves to hang on either side of my television and filled them with fake plants, never one to keep any vegetation alive.

My bedroom was the most open in the house, a refuge that I was proud of. I kept the room simple, finding a white fabric platform bed to put in the middle of the two windows on the back wall. The wall was black, which had originally surprised me, but fit well after Dara had helped me add flat panels behind my bed that matched the flooring. On either side of the bed, rather than traditional nightstands, I found matching short bookshelves, six arched openings letting me fill them with books, pottery, and more fake plants. Rian had found me a golden fabric bench for the end of my bed that somehow matched the room and a dresser to go with my bookshelves that held another television on the wall opposite my bed. My private bathroom was navy blue, with a white double vanity, soaker tub, and a large walk-in shower. The double walk-in closet was also located off of the bathroom, half empty right now, but I loved the space I had.

Instead of buying all new nursery furniture, we simply copied the nursery I had at Clara and Rian’s house down to the smallest detail and let Gem and Jett keep the furniture in my old house to make things simpler.

My office was ostentatious; the wall my back was to was painted royal blue and covered in massive white and yellow flowers. My desk sat a bit in the middle of the room, my computer was finally fully set up with its dual monitors, and Dara had built four bookshelves to fill up the space across from the desk to keep all of my records, books on running a business, and anything else important within reach. I opted for a black table with thin legs over a true desk and added my old computer chair, grateful to pull it out of storage as it was incredibly comfortable and good for my back.

The last room was a surprise for Dara, as I had planned to ask him to move in. If he didn’t, it would simply serve as a guest room. The bed was the same king size as my own, with a black leather headboard and white blankets and sheets. There were two industrial-style nightstands with four drawers made of silver metal and black lamps set on top of them. Above the bed was a large Volkswagen logo I had found at an estate sale, which I thought looked good above the bed and matched the black curtains I had hung up. There was a small black dresser at the end of the bed; the room was rather empty of any decor. I didn’t bother with the bathrooms, all of them matching with glass doors for the shower, and Fern’s own little bathroom had small fairies and mushroom stickers everywhere to match her bedroom, all of her supplies in the closet in there.

“You did so well,” Clara squealed when I finally had a housewarming party, wanting everyone I cared for to see the work I had put into the place, “Oh my God, Ren, it’s beautiful.”

“Thanks,” I giggled, “I still need outdoor furniture, a grill, and play equipment for Fern, but that can wait.”

“I really can’t believe this house was only six hundred thousand. It’s huge,” Gem smiled, picking up Fern as my daughter was learning to walk, using furniture to get around, “It’s perfectly you, Ren.”

“Any thoughts on the last bedroom? We didn’t do anything in there,” Dara sighed, taking a sip of the rum punch I had made.

“Ah. Actually, come here,” I gestured, and Dara followed me, watching as I threw the door open, “I did set it up when you weren’t around.”

“Holy shit, it’s amazing!” He laughed, poking around.

“It’s yours. If you want it,” I whispered, and Dara stared at me, surprised, “I know you want to move out of your parents and I pay you well at the shop, so I know you can get an apartment, but… I thought I’d offer it to you. We used to talk about being roommates before I got with Eddie. It’s a few years later, a lot of bad shit happened, but it’s a good time to make that happen if you want it.”

“Really?”

“Really, really,” I held my hand out, palm up, and Dara covered it with his own, our old friendship agreement coming true when we slid our palms together and locked our fingers, “It’s yours, Day. Come home.”

“Okay,” he whispered, hooking our pinkies to finish the handshake, “I’d love nothing more than to be here with you and Fern.”

“Swear it this time. You said that before, then tried to destroy my life because of jealousy.”

“I swear on Eddie.”

“Then I believe you. Welcome home,” I reached into my pocket and handed him a set of keys I had already made, “These are for you. House rules. You can’t bring people here because of Fern. No hookups or anything for her safety. I’ll clean the bathrooms, you take care of the kitchen, we share cooking duty, and the living room. Your room is yours to manage; please don’t destroy it. We can split food costs; no need to label everything as what belongs to whom. If you’re out later than I am, try and come in quietly. That’s all I can think of for now.”

“I accept. It’s essentially how we live with my parents, after all. I promise to be the best roommate.”

“I know you will be,” I smiled, giving Dara a tight hug, the sound of his racing heart filling my brain when I pressed my head to his chest, but I ignored this, grateful to have my best friend still with me in my new home.