Chapter 5
Chapter Five
GRACE
“Why did you take out the candy corns?” Grace’s mother shouted from the kitchen.
Sitting on her mom’s love seat and sporting the same black cat ears she’d worn the last seven Halloweens in a row, Grace tucked her bare feet under herself.
“Because you can’t have unwrapped candy in a bowl where kids are sticking their hands,” she shouted back.
She’d come over to her mom’s house to have a little birthday dinner before handing out candy together.
It was a tradition they’d shared as long as Grace could remember.
Small, quiet, unfussy. Just like she appreciated.
“What?” Her mother appeared in the living room, a massive bowl overflowing with candy resting on her hip.
Built like carbon copies, Grace’s mother was five and a half feet of naturally tanned curves and was regularly mistaken for Grace’s sister.
At sixty-five, her mother wore her hair in a bob now, but she’d had it down to her waist for most of Grace’s life.
Although in her over-the-top Mary Poppins wig and hat, she didn’t look like her older sister tonight.
“Mami, you can’t give out unwrapped candy,” Grace repeated when she was standing close enough to hear her over “The Monster Mash” blaring from the speakers outside.
She furrowed her painted-on eyebrows. “Says who?”
“Anyone who doesn’t want to consume meningitis pebbles?” Grace adjusted her glasses. ”And they’re gross,” she muttered to herself.
She scoffed. “They’re fun!”
“So is Russian Roulette until you lose and get sued.” Grace stood at the sound of excited kids ringing the doorbell.
“Ay, Grace, not everyone is thinking about lawsuits all the time.” Her mom rolled her eyes, but she couldn’t hide her amusement.
“Guess I’m blessed with seeing liability and disease vectors everywhere.” Grace swung open the door.
“Trick or treat!” a chorus of adorable Disney princesses chimed in unison.
Groups came and went every few minutes because Grace’s mother’s house was the candy-giving epicenter of a busy neighborhood. Tagging her mom in for her turn, Grace padded to the kitchen for a glass of wine.
She pulled her phone out of the pocket sewn into the side of her black leggings. Alix had been silent for the last few hours, but Grace found herself opening her text app anyway.
Bottle of Malbec on the counter, Grace slid onto the stool and scrolled through their messages. Chuckling at things that had already made her laugh once, Grace kind of missed her. And that was weird, because she shouldn’t miss someone she didn’t really know.
But Alix hadn’t responded since Grace said she was stopping at the pharmacy to overpay for candy that would go on sale in the morning. Of course Alix wasn’t staring at her phone on Halloween. She was probably at a party making out with some delightfully slutty nurse.
And why shouldn’t she? Alix was funny and cool and so sweet. She deserved a little cheap vinyl pressed against her thigh.
With a groan, Grace dropped her phone on the counter and poured a very generous glass of wine. She was a little tipsy when she padded back into the living room to catch her mom dumping a new bag of candy corn into the bowl.
“I’m not defending you if you get sued, lady,” Grace joked as she lay down on the love seat.
Head on a throw pillow and feet kicked up on the armrest, Grace found herself staring at her screen again.
Curiosity lured her back to the Breakup Buddies app, but Alix hadn’t been on in weeks.
The knowledge triggered a little satisfied tingle in her belly, but she didn’t stop to analyze it.
Didn’t stop herself from opening her texts again.
Grace
Candy Corn: yay or nay?
The answer didn’t appear as quickly as usual, but that only made Grace’s thrill more acute when it did.
Alix
You think there’s a wrong answer here, don’t you?
Grace
There’s an objectively incorrect response.
Alix
I have a feeling you were a target of the Candy Corn smear campaign.
The front door opened again, letting in children’s screeching over the Ghostbusters theme song. Grace blamed the sudden noise for the jump in her pulse.
Alix
Why are you thinking about Candy Corn? Those delicious, chewy little nuggets of happiness. Alas, I’m vegan and no longer indulge.
Biting the inside of her cheek, Grace suppressed a grin. Candy corn was revoltingly sweet, but she couldn’t help finding Alix’s enthusiasm about them endearing.
Grace
Because my mom is dressed up as Typhoid Mary this year.
Alix
Wait. Are you handing out candy with your mom? This does not fit the cool lawyer vibe I imagined for you, but it’s very cute.
The “ha!” that escaped Grace’s mouth was mercifully muffled by the wall of sound that invaded the house when her mom opened the door again. No one had ever accused her of being cool. A type-A, overachieving, overthinking, control freak? Definitely.
She was dizzy from the wine and mildly disoriented when the pathetic truth seeped through her thumbs.
Grace
My mom always pretends she needs help, but really she can’t stand me being alone on my birthday. Plus she gets in over her head with the candy thing.
Chat bubbles appeared and disappeared so many times that Grace was on the verge of a panic attack.
She’d made it weird, there was no doubt about that, and now Alix—kind, compassionate Alix—was trying to make it un-weird.
If only Alix hadn’t already seen the pitiful confession, or Grace would have unsent the message and pretended it had been a mistake.
She was about to text again, to say that she’d been kidding, when her screen lit up. Not with a text. A FaceTime call.
Grace’s heart dropped at the same time her stomach lurched, so they met in some nausea-inducing point in the middle.
Jumping to her feet like she was holding a grenade with a faulty pin instead of a phone, Grace wasn’t sure what to do.
She couldn’t answer the phone in front of her mother.
That was weird. But not answering felt even weirder.
Clearly, she’d just been texting and hadn’t given any reason she couldn’t pick up.
“I have to take this,” Grace said over her shoulder while she ran.
In the kitchen, the Halloween soundtrack her mother had gotten at Party City thirty years earlier could still be heard loud and clear.
Afraid that the call would go unanswered if she waited any longer, Grace dove into the pantry.
She pulled the little cord for the light and tore off her glasses just as she hit the green button at the bottom of her screen.
The call took three lifetimes to connect, but as a grainy image appeared, Grace smiled.
She hadn’t imagined Alix as anything other than a lifeguard stand on a California beach.
She’d never let herself paint a picture that had no chance of being accurate.
Appearances didn’t matter for a purely platonic friendship that existed only in her phone.
And yet, at the sight of her, the roaring orchestra of anxieties in Grace’s mind didn’t just quiet. It vanished.
The first words she’d ever hear Alix speak were: “Are you in a pantry?”
Glancing at a jar of olives big enough to hold a human head, Grace laughed. She was going to explain about the noise, but then she registered Alix’s appearance after the shock of the unexpected call faded.
Short, wavy brown hair tousled back and coiffed with enviable volume, Alix was attractive by any and every metric.
It wasn’t weird that she found her attractive.
They were friends. Buddies. Homegirls. Bros.
This was absolutely fine. And a little friendly teasing would release carbon monoxide into her body and put any errant butterflies to sleep very humanely.
“Are you dressed as Benedict Cumberbatch’s Sherlock Holmes?” Grace managed after dodging Alix’s question.
A smile that could sell liver-flavored toothpaste ignited on Alix’s face. Surprisingly realistic vampire fangs were in place of her canine teeth. “You really don’t get it?”
Grace replied with a sheepish little shrug.
Holding the phone farther away from herself, Alix revealed a gray coat, but Grace was more curious about where she was standing. With a brick wall at her back and the dampened thud of bass, Grace guessed she was at a bar.
“Nothing?” Alix tried a different angle. When Grace didn’t guess correctly, Alix shook her head. “You’re breaking my heart,” she said with her hand to her chest. A tattoo on her finger was too hard to see in the low light, but Grace strained to make it out.
”Oscar, come here,” Alix called to someone far enough away that she had to yell. A moment later she added, “Shine your phone’s light on me.”
Under a makeshift spotlight, Alix turned and her face and neck glittered. Glittered? That was more confusing and proved her Columbo guess incorrect before she lodged it.
“Sherlock goes to the disco and turns into a vampire?”
Alix flashed an Elvis-inspired lip twitch before delivering a highly dramatic and gruff, “This is the skin of a killer, Bella.”
Hand cupped over her mouth, Grace wasn’t sure whether she wanted to laugh or squeal with delight.
“No, you’re not Edward,” Grace said through her laughter.
“What are you? Team Jacob?” Alix chuckled.
“Because I’ve got you covered.” She flipped the camera to reveal a small group standing in an alley leading to what looked like an outdoor bar, but it was too dark to see clearly.
She introduced her friends as Lola, dressed as Bella wearing a broken ankle boot and a prom dress, and Oscar, dressed as Jacob complete with a wolf ear headband.
“Who did Anna Kendrick play? I’ll be on her team,” Grace joked.
Still smiling, Alix nodded toward Grace like she was standing there with her. “Where’s your costume?”
Grace looked down at her black T-shirt and leggings. She pointed at the back ears on her head. “I’m a cat.”
“You’re killing me, Gator! That’s not a costume. That’s a headband.” She shook her head, but she couldn’t sell disappointment when she was beaming. “Come on, not even a set of whiskers drawn on with eyeliner?”
“I’m sorry I don’t have your level of… whimsy.”
Alix sighed like it was a lot of work to be so artistic, and then she turned serious. “Is it really your birthday?”
Grace grimaced and debated sticking her head in the olive jar.
It would either be death by embarrassment or brining.
“I don’t really love celebrating it. It’s just the kickoff to the season of constant social functions where everyone wonders if the family spinster will truly die alone.
” She shook her head. “One of my aunts looks at me like she just knows my cats will eat my dead body one day.”
Alix’s smile didn’t falter. “Which is, I suppose, better than them eating your living body?”
Grace chuckled, shifting her weight between her feet. “I’ll be sure to tell her that at Thanksgiving this year.”
“I can tell her for you,” Alix replied.
“What?”
“At Thanksgiving, I can come to Miami and tell your auntie that neither Sheila nor Icarus are getting their fancy little claws in you.”
Stunned, Grace couldn’t decide what to react to first. The fact that Alix remembered her cats’ names off the top of her head, or that she’d just offered to endure Thanksgiving with her and her family.
Grace focused her attention on eyes that were more glassy than glistening. On the flush over Alix’s cheeks. “Are you drunk?”
“Oh, absolutely.”
Forgetting about the unserious offer, Grace held the phone closer like she could will herself to see better. “How are you getting home?”
“I’m not driving, if that’s what you’re worried about. I’ll probably split an Uber with Lola and Oscar and whoever else crams in to bring down my passenger rating.” She shrugged, like getting around a city late on a night like this was no big deal.
“Do you have to go far?”
Alix’s brown eyes brightened. “Are you worried about me?”
“Obviously,” Grace replied. Before she could stop herself because anxiety had hijacked her mouth, she asked, “Will you share your location with me? Just until you get home. So I know you made it okay?”
“Maybe,” Alix replied noncommittally. “If you answer one question truthfully.”
Grace would’ve rolled her eyes playfully, but she was caught up in an unexpected feeling. Alix hadn’t acted like her concern was strange or like she was too much for worrying. That she was too much for anything.
Tiny little lump in her throat, Grace nodded.
“Has anyone sung ‘Happy Birthday’ to you today?”
“Nope,” she replied, although her mother would have been thrilled to celebrate. But after a thirtieth birthday surprise gone wrong, her mother had agreed to focus on Halloween and not her birth.
“Well, we’re correcting that post haste!” Alix stuck her pointer finger in the air, revealing the scissors tattooed on her middle finger. Grace refused to let herself react to it. Alix is a hairdresser, she chastised herself.
“You’re not selling me that you’re not in glittery Sherlock cosplay,” Grace teased.
“Lucky it’s your birthday, Gator,” she said with a sideways glance at the camera, but her smile hadn’t wavered. Not for a moment. “All right. Hang on.”
Suddenly on hold, Grace became aware that it was hot as hell in the pantry. She was still debating whether it would be more or less weird if she changed locations while she waited when Alix reappeared.
Standing up on something high, Alix angled her camera to show Grace a crowd packed shoulder to shoulder in the bar behind her. Over a loudspeaker, a woman’s voice boomed, “On the count of three, ready?”
Three seconds later, hundreds of people she’d never met were singing her “Happy Birthday,” and it was all Grace could do not to cry.