“God, don’t encourage her.” Grace rolled her eyes, but Alix couldn’t help noticing the tiny quirk of a grin at the edge of her mouth.
They stood by the sliding doors in a little pocket of refuge while taxis coughed and the heat rolled in waves off the pavement. She could hear the beginning notes of “Snowed In With You” from inside, a popular Christmas song that feltparticularly funny to hear in Miami. Alix could feel sweat gathering under her collar and the familiar thrum of what she refused to call nerves. Grace’s hair still smelled faintly like Sylvia’s shampoo and the pool. Baby’s fur clung to the hem of Grace’s dress in ghostly little wisps. Alix wanted to capture the feel of the moment in a matchbox like a tiny traveler’s shrine. Truly unhinged behavior.
“Well,” Alix said.
“Yeah,” Grace answered.
Neither moved, not for a moment. Alix laughed. She did not beg Grace to let her stay, to buy a ticket to LA and never leave her side. She could be a normal human being, or at least pretend for a few more moments.
The hug they fell into was brief and devastating, warm and careful, more than friendly and less than anything they were ready to name.
The terminal doors hissed open. Cold air conditioning brushed along her arms. “See you later, Gator,” she said.
“Have you just been dying to make that joke?” Grace said, grinning as she gave a small wave.
Because Alix could not bring herself to say goodbye, she shrugged and turned, adjusting the duffel on her shoulder while she walked toward the security line like she was not leaving a limb behind.
She held herself together through removing her boots, through the indignity of the body scanner, through the recital of the overhead announcements.
It was easy enough to hold herself together when there were tasks. Boarding pass. Gate. Snack. It got harder when there was nothing but waiting. She watched the departures board glitch and flicker, watched a toddler lick an armrest, watched a guy in a suit take a work call that was absolutely about fraud but in a non-actionable way. She typed a text to Grace and erased it.Then did it again. And again. She stuffed her phone in her pocket like it was the problem.
By the time her plane rose above the humidity and leveled out in air that looked like the inside of a pearl, her memory had turned the last three days into an edited montage. The pool. The moon carving Grace’s cheekbone into a blade. The way Grace had looked when Alix asked about slow dancing, and that tiny inch of space between them that had felt like a cliff edge. Alix put in her earbuds and let a playlist about nothing in particular fill her skull. When the flight attendant asked if she wanted anything, she asked for a Coke and tried to smile like someone who was fine.
Los Angeles slapped her the second the plane door opened. Dry air. Had California always been so dry? A breeze that smelled like sun on asphalt. The light here was harder, whiter, like someone had swapped the Miami filter for one called Cinematic Smog. She shuffled with her fellow travelers through the tunnel, past the framed photos of places in LA that always looked better in framed photos. Her phone vibrated with a new email from a client who wanted “a money piece, baby lights, and balayage” and a text from Phyllis.
Phyllis
Did TSA confiscate your emotional baggage or just wave it through?
Alix snorted.
Alix
They let it ride in the overhead compartment.
Phyllis
Of course they did. I made lentils. They taste like penance but in a friendly way.
Alix
Be home in 30. Leave some penance for me.
She stared down at her phone, aching to text Grace. The fear of being too much made her pause, slipping her phone back in her pocket. Grace was probably busy, and Alix was just reading into her kindness. They both needed friendship, especially as Grace continued to work through her breakup. Right?
She was thankful to have her earbuds to drown out the airport’s particular brand of stimulation as she walked to the parking lot adjacent to the terminal to hail a rideshare in the LAXit lot. Her music continued even as she stared through the Uber windshield while palm trees flicked by like tally marks. Her stomach had returned from its chicharrón vacation to grumble about the terms of its employment, but the worst of the rebellion had passed. She was just tired now, the kind of tired that starts in your bones and highlights every hollow space.
Phyllis had left the front door unlocked, as always, with herWelcome, thievesdoormat angled crooked on purpose. Inside, the apartment was a different climate zone: cool air, lavender cleaner, the faintest leftover whisper of incense. Plants leaned toward the window and pretended not to be dying. Phyllis’s ceramic cat glared from the bookshelf like it suspected Alix of crimes. Alix dropped her bag and toed off her boots and waited, just for a second, for the sound of Baby’s nails on tile. Silence spread out like a sheet.
“Back from the land of humidity and questionable moral choices?” Phyllis called from the kitchen.
“Barely,” Alix answered, shuffling in.
Phyllis stood in her robe with a wooden spoon. “I see you returned with both eyebrows,” Phyllis said. She squinted. “And new freckles. And the expression of someone who has beenkissed by the sun or a woman, and only one of those is a mood I approve of in November.”
“I was only kissed by the sun and also a dog named Baby,” Alix said, then reached for the spoon. “Feed me penance.”
Phyllis swatted her away. “Wash your hands. Airport hands do not go in my soup.”
