Excerpted from COSMIC LOVE AT THE MULTIVERSE HAIR SALON:
After a quick round of hugs, Tressa Fay briefly finger-styled Mary’s new cut, kissed Linds’s glossy brown pixie, and her friends left.
She put her back to the door, smiling to herself. The evening was hers.
She strode across her tiny living room, dropping her cardigan, then ladled herself an enormous bowl of soup with lots of parmesan, flipped over the album on her turntable, and curled up on the sofa, nearly purring over each tortellini.
It had taken her such a long time to figure out that the best way to give other people what they wanted was to make sure she had everything she needed.
When she started working toward her cosmetology license her senior year, it was mostly because she’d taken every art class that her Green Bay, Wisconsin, high school had to offer, and she knew she wanted to keep doing something creative, but she didn’t want to go to college. Plus, she had to earn money, because her dad had made it clear she’d be on her own once she walked across the school’s stage with a diploma in her hand.
To her great luck, she was a natural, at least at cutting hair. Maybe it was because of her name, which her mother had given her to honor a particularly transcendent house party frontwoman’s band named Tressa and the Over It Alreadies, with the addition of Fay to appease her dad, whose mother’s name was Fay and who also, as an observant Catholic, fervently believed in the power of two-name names.
Tressa Fay didn’t love talking to people, at least beyond the first conversation when they told her about their hair, and she especially didn’t love anyone telling her what to do. None of that was a deterrent, though. Lots of people preferred a stylist who wasn’t chatty. What almost ruined her career before it even started was that it turned out almost everything in the salon that she touched, smelled, rubbed, brushed, sprayed, or scrunched into someone’s hair made her sick.
So, while it wasn’t long before she surpassed her classmates with a pair of scissors, a clipper, or a blade, she did the bare minimum she needed to do when it came to everything else, wearing gloves to protect her peeling hands and a mask against the onslaught of airborne chemicals. Her teachers acted like she was exaggerating. Most of her classmates simply didn’t get it. After four years working at three different salons—each one promising a “natural” and “organic”environment—two different allergy specialists she couldn’t afford, and prescriptions for steroids, inhalers, and immunomodulating topical creams, she ended up in the emergency room hooked up to a nebulizer after a coworker tripped and dumped a texturizing solution on the floor.
Tressa Fay had been fired via text while she was talking to the hospital’s billing department. She then failed to make rent, and her next bed was her dad’s sofa, with a very firm thirty-day deadline.
She did the only thing she could do. She cut hair. Illicitly.
From her dad’s kitchen and deck while he was at work, she cut and barbered for cash. Ten bucks for short, twenty for long, no other services. Just her, her client, blades, and the birds that fluttered onto the deck, stealing bits of hair for their nests.
Tressa Fay loved it.
She loved figuring out what the natural texture of a person’s hair could do, sometimes showing the client the possibilities for the first time in their lives. She loved the different colors hair came in and the color clients had done somewhere else, or at home, themselves. She loved making shapes, making statements, figuring out what was sharp, what was throwback, what was French, what was rock, what was queer.
She made enough money to nab a sketchy one-bedroom on the west side of Green Bay’s downtown, and she kept cutting. Other than the moment she had to convince her landlord that the steady stream of foot traffic to her place didn’t mean she was selling drugs, she was happy. Even better, she was healthy. Her skin cleared and stopped hurting. She could breathe. She didn’t wake up worried she was coming down with the flu because she was congested, fatigued, and foggy.
When a commercial space across the street from her apartment became available, she had a stack of cash, but she was twenty-six years old with no credit, no references, and very creative tax returns. She met with the real estate agent anyway, and while they were in no way willing to give her the space, they did connect her to a business incubator that changed her life.
Now she owned her own salon.
All it had was white walls, plants, a shampoo station with the blandest hypoallergenic product ever made, her chair, and her blades. Mary washed hair, booked appointments, and worked viral marketing. Tressa Fay made shapes and helped people feel how they wanted to feel.
It was everything she needed, and she had to believe that giving herself what she needed in her private life—quality time with her cat, good food, an occasional gloriously dirty bit of lingerie to remind her sex existed—would lead to her someday getting what she wanted. Someone who loved her for exactly who she was. Someone who chose to stick by her through good times and bad. Someone she picked for herself who picked her back, over and over again, forever.
Just that.
She’d just finished her dishes and was considering making a half batch of cookies when her phone buzzed with an incoming text.
Hey! So I’m the worst, but I don’t see you, and I have done a complete turn upstairs and down. Help!
Tressa Fay didn’t recognize the number. sorry! she replied. I don’t think I can. wrong number?
Three dots floated up, then slammed back down.
Look, it’s okay if you changed your mind, it’s even okay if you ghost, but the wrong number bit is just, no.
Uh-oh. Tressa Fay smiled sympathetically. Dating was extremely and very awful.
hey, so . . . this is the wrong number, for sure. my name’s Tressa Fay, and I’m at home communing with my cat and soup, and I didn’t have a date tonight or anytime in the foreseeable future, actually, but good luck out there, it’s the level worst
!!! I have the wrong number.
yes
I just realized. I used the wrong first three digits.
oh, no. numbers are so tricky
I’m an ENGINEER.
Tressa Fay laughed out loud. remind me not to drive over any of your bridges.
One collapsed bridge and a girl’s got a reputation.
She laughed again. This stranger was funny. did you find your date?
Yes. Well, no. She just texted. She ‘remembered she was supposed to do something for her sister’ and she, in fact, has a lot of family stuff going on right now so . . . maybe she can circle back some other time?
oof, sorry. like I said, rough out there
at least I think it is?
Cat. Soup.
yep
You have the right idea. Sucks, too, because it’s such a gorgeous evening. I was looking forward to the Canyon Tacos patio to enjoy the last bit of light.
This engineer was very optimistic about her night, because it was cold and dark outside. Or she was being sarcastic.
Also.
Tressa Fay tapped her lip. Funny. Into girls. Hmm.
Hmm.
get a taco, and I’ll be your phone date
I just walked out!
don’t stand me up, get back in there and let’s do this thing
Pretty good game from the couch, there.
I do my best work from the couch
what are we having?
Got a seat at the bar. The special is their black bean and avocado tacos. I’m ordering three. And churros with the chocolate dipping stuff. And a Jarritos.
what flavor?
Watermelon.
thatta girl. come here often?
Yes. It’s why I picked the place. So I would feel comfortable. She . . . was really hot and, um. Came on strong? Not in a bad way? I needed the courage that only comes from someone hot having to eat a messy taco in front of you.
I thought that’s what happened after a date went really, really well
Three dots came up and went back down multiple times while Tressa Fay wondered if she had gone too far.
Everyone is looking at me like I’ve lost my mind because I’m laughing so hard all by myself.
Tressa Fay grinned. What’s your name, hot stuff?
Meryl. And you’re Tressa Fay. Wait.
what
You have that ultra-cool tiny salon on the west side.
I do
Wait.
what
Um. I am looking at your Insta. Oh no.
Tressa Fay glanced down at herself, still clad in just the bodysuit with the black mesh top. And only straps in the back. She had not put Post-Its on her butt for the pictures.
Well.
oh no, what?
You are very much so very hot. This picture of you in the roller skates should win a Nobel Peace Prize.
Well, well, well. Tressa Fay grinned and let out a tiny squeal. If you built the cozy, the babes, they would come. However, it was interesting that Meryl had gone months back into her feed. Mary had taken that picture of Tressa Fay in short shorts and roller skates way back in April, during a freak warm-almost-hot day.
Tressa Fay was not complaining. She posted thirst traps for a reason. This, right here, was the reason. Trapping.
thank you. engineering and a sense of humor are too much hotness for me already, she typed. but if I were to openly spy? is there a handle?
@itwasmygrandmasname
Tressa Fay opened Insta, wiggling.
Oof.
Meryl hadn’t posted since a hashtag-tax-day-so-sad post forever ago, but hello big brown eyes, curvelicious, freckled-nose nerd trap. Tressa Fay scrolled through, sighing contentedly at her luck.
Meryl probably hadn’t thought about a haircut for her all-one-length wavy-frizzy elbow-length pale auburn mane in years. It was messy. Everywhere. It matched her amazing eyebrows over those Bambi eyes. She made math jokes. There was more than one fandom T-shirt barely containing her juicy. Sometimes she wore glasses, murdering Tressa Fay where she sat. Meryl had one of those mouths with a slightly bigger top lip than bottom, which fired Tressa Fay’s kissing imagination into a frenzy.
Yes, please. All of this.
She’d eaten a lot of soup, but maybe she could go for a churro?
Meryl
Yes.
I think we should take this somewhere IRL. what do you think?
I think I’m going to get this man next to me to give up his stool come hell or high water. Which I can do. I’m a stormwater engineer. High water is a real motivator.
Tressa Fay bit her lip and typed, don’t move. stay exactly, exactly, right there.
I’m a statue. A citizen protesting eminent domain. A stumped chess player.
Tressa Fay laughed out loud again. just be for real, and I will be there so fast, Meryl.
She jumped up from the sofa with enough urgent intention that Epinephrine complained at her.
“I know, baby boy, but this is an emergency. I have a funny engineer on the line, and you know how I feel about redheads, also. You, for example.” She scritched his head and then dashed into her bedroom, digging through her closet until she found her lucky jeans and a clean button-down. She put both over the bodysuit, pulled on her boots, and was on her way to Canyon in less than ten minutes.
Excerpted from COSMIC LOVE AT THE MULTIVERSE HAIR SALON by Annie Mare. Copyright © 2025 by Annie Mare. Excerpted by permission of Berkley. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
A multiverse novel about two women who fall in love despite living in worlds that are five months apart, as they try to find a timeline that doesn’t end in disaster, in this debut novel by Annie Mare.
Tressa Fay Robeson has never been shy, which is how she’s made a name for herself as an in-demand hairstylist and social media star. So she can admit that spending her days at her hair salon and her nights with her tight-knit group of friends (and one grumpy cat) is not the kind of exciting life she’d hoped for.
When a misdirected text from a stranger leads to a flirty exchange, she surprises herself by suggesting an impulsive meetup. But the woman, Meryl, never shows. Tressa Fay brushes it off—until Meryl’s sister and friend show up at the salon demanding to know what’s going on. Because, you see, there’s no way Meryl could have texted her. Meryl has been missing for a month.
Tressa Fay and her tight-knit group of friends soon discover they aren’t dealing with a catfish, but a temporal paradox. As they come to terms with the idea of parallel universes, they realize how many times their paths have crossed like this before. But even as they understand the multiverse more and more, nothing keeps Meryl from vanishing.
As it draws closer to the moment of Meryl’s disappearance, there’s only one question left: Have they done enough to change the outcome, or have they done so much that none of them will make it past that fateful day in September?
Science Fiction Alternate History | LGBTQ | Fantasy [Ace, On Sale: June 3, 2025, Trade Paperback / e-Book , ISBN: 9780593817483 / eISBN: 9780593817490]
Annie Mare (she/they) writes queer contemporary mystery and romance. Annie’s romances have been critically recognized and bestselling. If you enjoy their stories, check out the books they co-author with their wife, Ruthie Knox, including both queer romances (as Mae Marvel) and mysteries (as Ruthie Knox and Annie Mare). Annie lives with her wife, two teenagers, two dogs, multiple fish, one cat, four hermit crabs, and a bazillion plants in a very old house with a garden.
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