“Hot,” Ivy agreed. “Where did you meet her?”
Grace wasn’t sure where to start. “It’s a long story.”
Ivy kicked her feet up on the chair across from her and took a pointed sip of coffee with her eyes fixed on Grace. “Good thing Rick is watching football at his brother’s house and I have nowhere to be.” She blinked at her while proudly displaying a little shit-eating grin. “I’ve never been so thrilled at having left my favorite heels in the office.”
And so, Grace told her. Not the whole story. Not the Breakup Buddies part. She just said they’d met online. She told her about the texting, the phone calls, the easy, constant way they talked. She told her about the chaotically incredible Thanksgiving visit.
“So you like her,” Ivy stated when Grace finished, a slow, triumphant smile spreading across her face. “Youlikelike her.”
Grace’s instinct was to deny it, but there was no point. It’s not like her feelings would be any less true if she kept them a secret. “Ugh, I do. I really fucking do, and it’s the worst.”
“Why?” Ivy leaned forward, her teasing gone, replaced by earnest curiosity. “Because she might not be interested? Grace,look at the way she’s looking at you in this picture. Like, I’m not sure Baby Girl can even see you with those hearts in her eyes.”
“It’s more than that,” Grace admitted, the words she’d been holding back finally spilling out, raw and honest. “What if she is? What if we try, and I ruin a really, really good friendship. Or, I mean. Think about it. Most things don’t work out, you know?” The ghost of Julie’s dismissal in the kitchen flickered in her mind. After something so intense, Grace had been so easy to discard. “Relationships just don’t work out for me.”
She was so tempted to tell Ivy about Julie. To excavate the real, festering wound she was still nursing. To give her all the evidence and wait for a verdict. But the promise to keep quiet made it impossible to paint the whole picture.
“Babe,” Ivy said softly. “I know the last one was bad. But this Alix… she sounds different. You said it yourself, she flew across the country to spend a holiday with your family, got accidentally drugged, exposed herself to being possessed, and still managed to make you laugh.”
“That’s the other thing,” she muttered. “The more I let her see… me. The messy, complicated, overthinking parts… the more she seems to like it. It doesn’t make any sense. People don’t?—”
“Maybe…” Ivy reached across the desk and took her hand. “It makes perfect sense. Maybe you’ve just been showing the wrong people who you are.” She smiled. “Because I see you, and I think you’re pretty fucking fantastic.” She tipped her head toward Grace’s phone. “And judging by that pic, Alix is no dummy. She sees you too.”
When Ivy was gone, Grace couldn’t muster the energy to pretend anymore. She went back to her phone. Back to her texts.
There was nothing wrong with friends missing each other. It wasn’t weird to say, even if they’d only seen each other the daybefore. Grace forced herself to type in the same breezy way she texted Ivy that time she went to Norway for two weeks.
Thumbs floating over the screen, she couldn’t bring herself to hammer out the three syllables. She went back to the photo of Alix and her. The Sunday Blues were normally a dull, manageable ache, but they were feeling like an incredibly specific kind of withdrawal.
Yearning bloomed in her chest. A sharp, physical ache in her ribs. A fragile, flickering hope that Ivy had been right. That even her family had managed to see that there was something between them.
She went back to her texts and tried so hard to just sayHi, I’m thinking of you and I miss you and I can’t wait to see you again.But it was too much. Too soon. Too vulnerable.
Like she’d heard her from three thousand miles away, Alix’s chat bubbles sprang to life on her screen. Before Grace could drop the phone like she’d been caught again, the text appeared.
Alix
Is it weird that I can’t sleep without a two hundred pound dog’s snores providing the best white noise ever?
Grace’s building anxiety deflated in an instant. She grinned at her screen before chewing the inside of her cheek. She tried not to read too much into it, but all she saw was Alix thinking of her too.
Chapter Sixteen
ALIX
A few daysafter she’d arrived home from Miami, Alix let Lola bully her out of the house with the promise of The Hollow’s vegan cheese fries and a jukebox that still took quarters. The bar was the usual mood board of stale beer and regret. Pool cues clicked. The bathroom door had a hinge that shrieked like a haunted swing set. Typically Alix loved her local, but tonight she felt a half step off, like the song in her head was a beat slower than the one blasting from the speakers.
Oscar was already in their booth, arms spread along the cracked vinyl like a benevolent raccoon king. “Our Floridian apologist returns,” he announced. “Did you bring me contraband cigars, or just a newly affirmed stance on freedom from religion?”
“Both,” Alix said, sliding in, crossing her legs loosely with a Doc over her knee. “The cigars are metaphorical. The stance remains steadfast.”
Lola arrived with a tray like a tiny, very glam waitress. “Two High Lifes and a Shirley Temple for our sweet, hungover angel,” she told Oscar, who took the cherry with dignity.
They did the usual catch-up. Work was work. They gossiped about how Vince had said “bangs are over” and then immediately cut five sets of baby bangs on five girls who looked like their favorite book was a mirror. Outside of work, Oscar had DJ’d a bar mitzvah that went off the rails in a wholesome way. Lola had decided to build a capsule wardrobe and then bought a silver cowboy shirt with mother-of-pearl snaps. The groove of it soothed Alix. Habit was a warm coat.
“You keep checking your phone,” Oscar said, which was rude, because he was correct.
“I am expecting a very important notification,” Alix said.
