Grace stilled. Lifted her head, eyes wide open now, warm and startled. “In Miami?”
“Yeah, I’ll come to you,” Alix said too fast, relief and panic in the same breath. “Or you come to me — no pressure — actually,forget I said anything if it’s crazy, or if work’s too much after taking so many days away. It’s just that the idea of not kissing you at midnight — I know it’s so cheesy, but?—”
“Alix.” Grace’s hand pressed gently over her mouth, eyes bright with amused affection. “Breathe.”
Alix did, albeit grudgingly. Grace’s palm slid away, fingers lingering against Alix’s jaw like she couldn’t help touching her.
“I want to come to LA,” Grace said simply.
“You do?”
“Yes. I want to see your everyday. Your salon. Your favorite coffee that you complain about.’” Her mouth curved. “Phyllis. Your longboard and The Hollow and all of it.”
Alix blinked, because tears were rude and did not ask permission. “So that’s a yes?”
“That’s a very hard yes.”
The relief that flooded Alix was almost comical. “Okay. We’ll… Okay.” She was already listing itineraries in her head she had no intention of keeping: Echo Park walks and flea markets, the pier at sunset, watching Grace’s face the first time she saw the skyline at night.
Grace kissed her, just a little, a punctuation mark tucked against Alix’s smile. “It’s a date.”
They stayed like that, a tangle of limbs and plans, until the world barged in. The groan of a plow somewhere, the faint ping of one of their phones on the nightstand. Grace reached for hers, sighed at the screen.
“Flights,” she said. “Looks like I can get out midday. You’re on a late afternoon now.”
“Rude,” Alix muttered to the ceiling. “I was hoping fate would trap us here indefinitely and we’d have to learn to live on the land.”
“On the land,” Grace repeated, deadpan. “You mean room service and vending machines.”
They peeled themselves out of bed by degrees, laughter and little touches cushioning each indignity of reentering the day. Alix found her sweater on the armchair under a tangle of scarves. Grace unearthed her pants from beneath the bedspread like buried treasure. They bumped hips performing the graceless ballet of shared bathroom sink space, trading the mirror without asking, smiling every time their eyes met.
Alix stood behind her while Grace brushed her teeth, hands at her waist like she could memorize the exact geometry of her there. Grace spit, rinsed, set the toothbrush down. They looked at themselves together in the mirror, sex hair, sleep-puffy and content and wholly undone in a way makeup couldn’t fix or fake.
“We look…” Alix started, then didn’t have a tidy end for the sentence.
“Rough,” Grace supplied.
“I was going to say happy.”
“Yeah,” Grace said, her smile growing. “That.”
They brewed the coffee packets like a ritual, both unwilling to leave the protective bubble of their hotel room until the last possible second. Alix handed Grace a mug and clinked her own against it.
“To canceled flights,” she said solemnly.
“To extremely good decisions,” Grace replied, equally solemn, then ruined it with a smile that hit Alix square in the sternum.
Packing took ten minutes and a lot of kissing disguised as item retrieval. Alix zipped her carry-on and immediately unzipped it because she’d forgotten to shove in her underwear from yesterday, a move Grace mirrored with a fold of socks and a sigh of self-mockery. The mundane domesticity of it — the zippers, the check of outlets for chargers, Grace’s last-minute scramble to unearth a hair tie from the abyss — felt like a glimpse into a life Alix wanted enough that it scared her. Shedidn’t say that part out loud. She tucked it in her pocket with the key card and carried it carefully.
They lingered at the door like it might take mercy on them and grow vines and hold them hostage. Alix stole one more kiss, because restraint was overrated.
“We should go while the snow is letting up so we don’t have to cross over to the airport in the worst of it,” Grace said, practical again, though her fingers were still looped in the pocket of Alix’s coat like she’d forgotten to let go.
“Right.” Alix kissed her once more, a smaller thing that still managed to knock out a few of her bones. “Let’s go brave the tundra.”
They moved through the lobby with that shared bubble around them, a little hush inside the bigger noise. The revolving doors shoved them back into the terminal’s bright tent-topped chaos. Travelers were bundled and cranky and heroic. Somewhere a family spoke cheerfully in Spanish. The announcements had returned to their eternal litany.
They checked Grace’s bags, went through security together, then held hands on the train to Concourse A. Alix walked Grace to her gate, unwilling to spend a single possible moment not by her side.
