Alix grinned, turning onto her back. “So direct.”
Grace hummed. “Take off your shirt.”
Alix froze. “What, right now? You mean, like, over the phone? You know I’m on speaker, right?”
“I assumed that was part of the appeal.”
“Wow. Okay. I see you, Gator.” Alix laughed, nerves buzzing. “Let me just… Hold on. I don’t want to alert Phyllis to what’s going on in here.”
She tried to shift the phone onto the pillow beside her, but Siri suddenly blurted, “Calling Phyllis.”
“Jesus fucking Christ,” Alix hissed, fumbling for the screen. “Abort, abort.”
Grace was laughing so hard she could barely get words out. “You almost called Phyllis?”
“She would never recover,” Alix said, her pulse still spiked from the adrenaline of frantically hitting the red button.
“I would never recover.”
“Okay, fine, we can pretend that didn’t happen.” Alix cleared her throat and tried to compose herself, but the more Grace laughed, the harder it was to take any of it seriously.
“All right. Focus,” Grace said, still giggling. “Where were we?”
“I think I was about to seduce you, but technology cockblocked me.”
“How quickly technology has turned against us,” Grace said with mock-solemnity.
They tried again. Grace’s voice went molten, deliberate and sweet, describing where she wanted Alix’s hands, what she missed most. Alix closed her eyes, tried to follow along, sliding her hand beneath her boxer briefs.
But halfway through, Grace snorted — actually snorted — because Phyllis’s crime podcast ad break had started playing faintly through the wall. “Today’s episode of ‘Deadly Women of the Midwest’ is brought to you by?—”
“Oh my God,” Alix groaned. She lost it. “I can’t.I’m sorry. She listens at full volume.”
They were both laughing now, gasping between words, their faces flushed for entirely different reasons.
“Okay,” Grace said after a long pause, voice quieter again. “Maybe just not our night.”
“Yeah,” Alix admitted, still smiling but feeling her chest twist. “Turns out I’m more of an in-person learner.”
Grace’s sigh came through faintly, and then, “God, I just want to touch you.”
The laughter drained into quiet.
Alix closed her eyes, swallowing the ache in her throat. “Yeah,” she whispered. “Me too.”
For a while, neither of them said anything. They just listened to each other breathe. An imperfect, half-digital version of closeness.
“Soon,” Grace said eventually. “Tomorrow.”
“Well, technically two days, since it’s a red-eye and then I’ll be there in the morning, so?—”
“Don’t ruin it.”
“Right. Tomorrow,” Alix echoed, trying to sound confident. “Tomorrow-ish.”
But when they hung up, Alix lay in the dark with the silence rushing back in, the phone warm against her chest. The space between them suddenly felt endless, and the thought slipped through again before she could stop it.
What if we fade?
