About a month before it ended, the morning after a night spent making out in the corner of some ridiculous hipster bar and falling into her bed, Britta dragged him to a park in Denver.

He took one look at the scene before him, "Britta. No."

"Come on, it's Holi!"

He took another look at the crowd of people throwing handfuls of brightly colored power at each other, running, yelling, snapping pictures, "This is ridiculous."

"You're ridiculous, Winger," she grabs his arm and yanks him towards a table and buys two plates of the power, shoving one into his hand and dragging him into the park, "It's fun, come on."

He opens his mouth to protest and she throws a handful of orange powder at his face.

"You little," he grabs a handful of his own and tosses at her. She ducks and darts into the crowd and he finds himself running after her through the purpleish cloud that seems to have settled over the park. He finally catches her and dumps the entire plate on her head. She responds by tossing hers into his face and it's so stupid, but he's smiling in spite of himself as he's blinking and shaking his head, trying to get it out of his mouth.

She's laughing too, "That's not how you're supposed to do it." She keeps laughing, trying to catch her breath, "You're supposed to throw, like handfuls."

He wipes it out of his eyes, "You did it wrong too."

She shrugs, "I was provoked."

They go back over to the table and he buys two more plates and they spent the next half hour chasing each other around the park, finally collapsing under a tree.

Afterwards, he's exfoliating his skin, trying to get the pink tinge off. She comes out of the shower, wraps herself in his towel and sits on the counter.

"You own more skin products that I do."

He rolls his eyes because that doesn't even deserve a response and catches a glimpse of her in the mirror.

"It's still in your hair."

She shrugs and curls a strand around her finger - hunks of it are pink, purple, orange, yellow, "Yeah, look, it's still on my face too."

Sure enough, there's a small pattern of orange around her eye.

"Can you get it out?"

She raises an eyebrow, "It'll come out in a few days."

"They're going to ask about it."

"Oh, yeah, and what do you think I'm going to say? Jeff and I fucked and then I dragged him to a Hindu festival and he threw powder in my hair? Come on, they're not going to figure it out."

They don't. Britta babbles off some story about some anarchist Indian friend (he wonders if all her friends are actually anarchists or if it's just the pretend ones) and in a few days, her hair is normal again. He doesn't think of it again until she comes into the study room two years later with the same patches in her hair.

"Let me guess, you joined the Indigo Girls?"

"Wouldn't my hair have to be indigo for that?"

"You went to that festival thing again?"

"Yeah," she makes eye contact and keeps it, "Troy and I went."

It occurs to him that he misses her, but she's really become too much of an annoyingly permanent fixture in his life for that (God, they've been together on every major holiday for the past year).

"Bring me next year, I never did get you back for tossing all that stuff in my eyes."

Her lips curl up at the corners, "Whatever you say."