Alix could feel her cheeks turning beet red. “I’m ending this call.”
“You will do no such thing,” Phyllis said sweetly. “Now, Grace, if she tries to feed you her tofu scramble, run. It’s less food and more… the idea of food.”
“I make a great tofu scramble,” Alix protested.
“She makes something,” Phyllis replied. “Jury’s still out on what.”
Grace grinned. “I’ll take my chances. Did she tell you about the chicharrones?”
“Oh yeah, though it’s not surprising. She’ll do anything for a pretty face,” Phyllis said, pushing her glasses up, and Alix could hear Grace choke-snorting in amusement. “I like you already.” She gave a finger waggle wave to the screen. “All right, that’s all I have to report right now. Good night, ladies.”
When she was gone, Alix shook her head and let out a long-suffering exhale. Grace was laughing so hard she nearly spilled her tea.
“Well, Phyllis is incredible,” Grace said between laughs.
“She’s something,” Alix said, smiling despite herself. “I’m a bit convinced she’s some trickster God sent to mess with my life.”
“Sounds like you are just living with your future self,” Grace teased.
Alix leaned back into the couch, heart still hammering from both embarrassment and joy. And for a moment, the distance between Miami and LA felt like nothing more than the width of a phone screen.
They talked for a few more minutes, their voices growing softer and shyer as they said good night.
If she was being honest, after Miami, her desire for Grace felt slightly different every time they spoke. Less like a fight and more like a hand on her back, steadying, urging.
For the first time in a long while, she did not feel alone. She felt excited, anticipatory.
She went to bed with her phone under her pillow like a teenager and woke once in the middle of the night sure she could feel Miami in the room, a humidity that had nothing to do with weather. She rolled over, reached out, and checked the screen.
Grace had sent one last message, time-stamped an hour past midnight in Miami.
Grace
For what it’s worth, I believe you really can rock a tofu scramble.
Alix smiled in the glow of her phone and typed back.
Alix
Your faith in me means everything.
There was no answer. Grace was probably sleeping. Alix tucked the phone under her pillow. Colorado rose in her mindlike a map. The turnoffs and gas stations and the view from the ridge where she’d kissed a girl at thirteen and realized thatoh, shewas.
Grace wanted to come into that landscape. Into the mess and the weirdness and the parts of Alix that had taken so long to get out alive. She fell asleep smiling like an idiot.
In the morning, she woke to a text with a screenshot of a purchased flight.
Alix stared at the screen and felt the warm, ridiculous rise of possibility.
Alix
Afternoon arrival flight. Good choice. Should be warmer around that time of day, if only by a few degrees.
Grace
It was the only one with a first-class seat left.
Alix
