Starboys

products on his vanity, just as he always did when he came into work.
“I… I think I just met a witch.”

Chapter Two
That evening, I did exactly what Hazel said: I wrote down what I wanted.
It was a warm and peaceful night in L.A., so I opened the window so the desert breeze could wisp through the screen.
Throughout the rest of the day at the salon, I had normal client after normal client. But I couldn’t devote my full attention to them; I was too busy thinking about what Hazel said.
The encounter with her stuck in my mind like rubber cement.
When I told my coworker Scott about my run-in with her, he didn’t seem that interested. “Oh, she must just be a crazy. We get them here all the time.”
I pressed him for details, and he simply shrugged and said, “This is L.A. People around here really like attention if you haven’t noticed. I’ve had a few people like that come and sit down in my chair.”
My shoulders sagged when he said that, infusing me with doubt.
“Look, I know you’re new to L.A.,” Scott said while he prepped his station, “but trust me, attention seekers come in all the time. If she told you some woo-woo crap, just ignore it.”
I frowned. Even though I knew Scott was speaking from a rational place, I felt like I had a bond with Hazel. I was slightly offended that he was taking the power out of her words.
Throughout the rest of the day, two voices warred in my head: The logical, rational voice that reasoned Hazel was just some crazy old woman, and this intuitive feeling that she was… more. 
By the time I got home, I had given into the voice of reason. She was just some crazy trying to mess with me, who’d given me some kind of entertainment for the day. The suspicion that was coming from the deep sense of curiosity within me was nearly extinguished.
I pulled my tip money out of my wallet and set each bill on my kitchen table. There was a wad of ones and change that a frazzled soccer mom had handed me, a twenty-dollar bill that I’d gotten from an average dude who wanted the sides of his hair taken down, another twenty from that guy who wanted to look like some new movie star he showed me a picture of, and…
My heart felt like it stopped.
The last two bills I pulled out of my wallet were two hundred-dollar bills.
I scanned my memory, trying to figure out how so much money ended up in my wallet. And without any sort of rhyme or reason, Hazel’s twinkling silvery eyes came to mind.
I knew it was her. Even though she’d only given me two one-dollar bills earlier, I knew that with her… with her whatever, she’d somehow bent reality around the money she gave me.
But that was impossible. The two hundreds must have already been in my wallet from earlier, and I’d just forgotten about them.
Maybe I’d misread the numbers on the bills — maybe they were two one-hundred-dollar bills all along, and she was just loaded.
She must have made a mistake — no one tipped that much. A strong sense of justice within me knew that I had to give the money back to her.
Her number was in the client's notes on my phone, I could give her a quick call and arrange to give her money back.
I glanced at the clock — it was already late. I imagined Hazel having dinner with her family, or watching T.V., or having some quiet alone time.
No, I’d give her a call tomorrow.
As I counted out the rest of the money, my phone vibrated on the table next to the pile of bills with a zzt. 
Peering down at the glowing screen, I saw a text from one of the guys I’d met on Grindr.
“Hey,” it said simply.
It seemed so mundane, such a lazy way to start a conversation. And this guy wasn’t even that interesting — just someone I was casually dating. I wasn’t excited or happy or ignited, and I wasn’t even a little bit scared.
Suddenly Hazel’s voice echoed in my mind:
“Don’t ever settle for average. You’re shiny.” 
With a new determination, I left the phone on the table, untouched. I wasn’t going to keep pouring energy into something that didn’t excite me.
And just as I had that thought, another message appeared from a different person I had been casually seeing. Like it was a clone of the first, it said “Hey.”
I bit my lip, and for the first time, it was like I was seeing how boring it all was. I could predict what would happen here: I’d say “Hey,” back, they’d start asking what I was into, pretending, and then I’d get a dick pic. Then they’d ask if we could meet up. It had happened over and over again.
If I responded to these guys — any of them, I’d be signing up for something average, welcoming it into my life.
I was done with average.
Leaving my phone on the table, I walked over to my bookshelf and plucked out a small notebook. Turning the pages until I found a blank one, I put the point of my pen to the lined paper.
“What do you want him to be like?” Echoed Hazel’s voice in my memory.
First I thought about all the things I liked about my ex — minus the boring parts.
Stable, Calm, Understanding, I wrote, then I paused.
Did I dare to be a little bit vain? It’s not like anyone except me would ever see this…
So I started scrawling the words hot, handsome, sexy, muscular, healthy. 
I felt a little bad as I wrote that. Was that all I really wanted? Some hot guy who was stable?
My phone buzzed again, and my eyes darted over to it to see yet another “Hey,” message from another one of my Grindr hookups.
Any one of those guys could be what I was writing down. I needed to get more specific. What was it that I was