At one point I thought I’d have to grab her to prevent her from falling into the water. She’d sneezed a grand total of five times in a row and had to hold still afterward, convinced that she’d start again in seconds if not.

But she didn’t, thank God. I handed her a wad of tissues and she blew her nose a few times and then sat back with relief on her flushed features. “Wow…where the hell did that come from?”

But I could only stare, because I just realized that something was very, very wrong. She frowned at me but only one of her eyebrows lowered—because the other one had, it appeared, been completely blown off by all the sneezing.

I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry, to say something or allow her to keep the illusion for a short while longer—until her next glimpse in the mirror, anyway—that she still had her brows and lashes. Because it appeared that they were not long for the world. They’d finally succumbed, also, to the chemo.

She looked like she was permanently raising her eyebrow at me, like Mr. Spock’s freeze-face. I half expected her to turn to me and say, “That is illogical, Captain Kirk.”

And I knew, under any other circumstance, Emilia would be laughing at this situation. But she was so delicate now, especially about her looks. I just didn’t have the heart to laugh, or even break the news to her that she was now one eyebrow short of a good frown.

Without another word, I turned to the wheel of the boat and maneuvered us the short ride across to the slip beside my house, dodging the tiny ferry that went from the mainland to the Balboa peninsula and back multiple times every day.

When we got there, Katya was waiting for us, sunning her very pale Canadian skin on one of the lounges on our small beach. When she caught sight of us, she came running up, wearing big, white sunglasses and a huge smile.

When she saw Emilia, the smile dropped off her face. Before I could flag her and signal her to shut up with a finger slashed across my throat, she lifted her sunglasses and squinted at Emilia.

“Huh. What the hell happened to your eyebrow? It’s gone!”

Ah, goddamn. So much for preserving Emilia’s feelings. She ran straight into the house, demanding to look in the mirror. I gave Kat a long-suffering look.

“Yeah, you could have handled that better.”

Her eyes widened in surprise and she threw up her hands. “What? Like you could have hidden it from her that she looks like she’s permanently about to say something sarcastic. I mean, she’s her and she’s always saying something sarcastic, but damn. How long were you going to let her walk around with just one eyebrow?”

I sighed, giving up. When I saw Emilia about a half an hour later, she had no eyebrows and most of her eyelashes were gone, too. She’d either pulled them out or shaved them. I didn’t have the heart to ask which. In fact, I never mentioned her lack of facial hair at all.

I resolved to get my hair bleached blond and dyed pink if her looks became a big issue for her. At least I’d be drawing the freak looks to me instead of her.

Chapter Nineteen

Mia

I was sure that Adam thought I couldn’t handle a little more hair loss. The truth was, I’d been expecting it. So I got a few different shades of eyebrow pencil and even a hypoallergenic Sharpie pen and practiced drawing in new eyebrows with Kat while we watched still more make-up tutorials online about eyebrows and eyelashes. With the swish of a pencil, I could go from appearing fierce and angry to permanently shocked or even a purely logical Vulcan. I could draw in weird zigzags and symbols, like a rock star.

In short, I decided that I could either cry about it or laugh about it and since there had been so much to cry about lately, I chose the latter. This whole situation was starting to teach me something about the nature of happiness.

And having Kat around to help me laugh at myself sure helped too…

“Spock, Captain Kirk, Mr. Sulu,” Kat said to me a few days later when I was thumbing through my notes on the secret DE quest in order to prepare for another blog post. We were on the floor in my room and I was using the bed like a desk.

“Hmm,” I said, tapping my lip. “Original series or reboot movies?”

“The reboot. Duh.”

“Let’s see…Fuck Spock. Marry Sulu. Kill Kirk.”

Kat raised a brow at me and we both laughed. “Yeah, I kinda want to kill Kirk, too,” she said. “Okay, my turn.”

“I think the dudes from The Big Bang Theory,” I said. “Leonard, Howard and Raj.”

“Dude, no!” She started laughing. “I want to kill all those guys.”