Chapter 6
Chapter Six
ALIX
The glitter wouldn’t come off.
Alix stood over the bathroom sink, blinking at the mirror while fine silver flecks clung to her cheekbones, collarbones, even the curve of her ear.
Like she’d slept in a snow globe. She dragged a damp washcloth over her face, and more glitter surfaced, multiplying in the hard light.
Her short, shaggy hair — tousled just so with enormous effort last night — now slumped sideways in defeat.
The gray peacoat she’d worn lay collapsed on the tile like a glamorous corpse.
Too hungover to care.
Edward. That had been the idea. Not Scissorhands, though maybe next year.
The sparkle version. Gray coat, black tee, Wayfarers, fangs, and a reckless amount of body glitter.
She’d nailed it. Her camera roll said so: grinning with denture-store fangs glued to her canines, Lola dressed as Bella, Oscar as Jacob. A Halloween miracle.
She spat toothpaste, rinsed, and reached for the ibuprofen. Shook the bottle. One hollow click. Empty.
“Cool. Love that for me.”
Memory came back in pieces. The Hollow packed shoulder to shoulder. Witches. Devils. A superhero with his cape in the nachos. Her at the bar, glittering like a disco ball, slapping the counter and yelling, Everyone, we’re singing “Happy Birthday” to my friend or I’m turning you all into vampires!
Laughter, noise, a hundred off-key voices shouting Grace’s name. Oscar trying to harmonize. Lola crying from laughing too hard. Grace watching her through the mess of it, eyes bright, unguarded.
Alix remembered the thump of her own heartbeat, the bow she took with her sunglasses sliding crooked, glitter catching the neon like sparks.
And somewhere in all that chaos, her first call with Grace.
Grace.
Grace’s birthday. Grace standing in a pantry, of all places, lit by the weak bulb overhead, laughing as if the shelves of canned beans were a comedy club. And Grace being… well, fucking gorgeous.
Alix hadn’t really bothered to picture her before; imagining what “Gator” looked like had always felt like crossing some forbidden line in their Breakup Buddy bromance.
But Jesus. When she had let her brain wander, she definitely hadn’t conjured this — bright hazel eyes steady enough to level her, lips that made promises just sitting there, skin flawless in a way that didn’t feel fair, and that sleek, glossy hair like it belonged in a shampoo ad instead of a pantry FaceTime.
Now, in the kitchen, her skull pulsing, she fussed with Phyllis’s fancy coffee maker and cursed herself for being a drunken idiot on their first video call.
The doorbell rang.
“Phyllis?” she called, because Phyllis had a habit of going out for yoga or a farmers market and returning without her keys, certain that Alix’s psychic gifts would detect her at the door. “Did you forget your—”
She cracked the door open, T-shirt and underwear and bedhead and glitter, expecting Phyllis to be holding four bundles of kale and something inexplicably perfect, like the time she brought home a Venus fly trap.
Instead, a Postmates driver smiled at her past a paper bag that smelled like heaven and hydration.
“Delivery for… Alix?” the driver read off their phone, then clocked the glitter and nodded like they’d seen this battlefield before. It was the day after Halloween in Silver Lake, after all. “You look like you need this.”
“I didn’t… Wait, what is it?” Alix asked.
They handed over the bag and a drink tray that sloshed with Gatorade and what looked like — could it be?! — mint tea in a lidded cup. Taped to the side was a receipt with no name.
Alix stared down at the bag, too hungover to do the mental gymnastics of subtle investigation. “Wait, who sent this?”
The driver shrugged, already backing down the steps. “Order said Gator. Tip was great. Feel better.”
Gator. Alix’s stomach did a giddy leap of excitement, and she didn’t even try to tamp down the dread of her stomach doing anything right now.
She closed the door with her hip, carried the offering to the table like a relic, and pulled out the contents like treasure: a small bottle of ibuprofen, two neon-blue Gatorades, a steaming mint tea (the scent alone was healing), and…
She opened the compostable clamshell and just about wept.
Inside was a still-warm everything bagel with a packet of vegan cream cheese, complete with two greasy hash brown patties on the side.
She popped two pills, chased them with Gatorade, and finally let herself smile. Her thumbs were already moving.
Alix
Are you an angel? How do you know exactly what I need and also where I live?
The three dots blinked. She took a bite of the bagel and groaned, then bit into the hash brown, all salt and starch and grease — complete, like a holy trinity. Another blink, another swallow, her pulse thudding somewhere near her ear where glitter had migrated.
Grace
Angel is strong, but I do accept compliments. And I asked you to share your location last night to make sure you got home okay. You don’t remember?
Alix slapped a hand over her eyes. God. What else didn’t she remember?
Alix
That doesn’t sound like me at all. I am subtle. I am elegant.
Grace
You are glitter. There is a difference.
Alix
I am both and also starving. This is perfect. Thank you thank you thank you.
Grace
I guessed on the mint tea. My mother swears by it for hangovers. I go with water and shame.
Alix laughed, then winced because laughing made the pulsing ache inside her head do a triple-axel jump.
Alix
Please pass my compliments to your mother. Also to the person who invented hash browns.
Grace
Consider it done.
She took another bite, then another, then remembered more of last night’s video call like a rush of cold water. The awareness had sat in her like a sparkler: bright, insistent, throwing off heat even after the flame died.
Bury it, she told herself now, chewing, gulping Gatorade.
Bury the part that wants too much too fast and always with unavailable women.
She had a long and noble tradition of sprinting toward whatever glowed, then crashing into it with all the grace of a shopping cart.
She was not going to do that to Grace. Grace had a job that required composure and words like “precedent” and “therefore.” Grace had a mother who dispensed mint tea wisdom. Grace had… that face.
Alix tossed the empty clamshell in the compost bin, rinsed her fingers, and caught her reflection again: a raccooned Edward Cullen, glitter embedded in every pore. She sighed, a little dramatic for an audience of none, and sipped the tea, which tasted like kindness.
Her phone lit with an incoming call. Grace. She stared at it as if it might bite, then swiped to answer, leaning her hip against the counter, one bare foot crossing the other.
“Hello?” she said, aiming for breezy and, unfortunately, hitting croaky. “Look at us on calling terms.”
“How are you feeling after breakfast?” Grace asked, voice warm and a little husky with morning. Or maybe that was Florida humidity through a phone line. Alix didn’t care. She felt it, low and pleasant.
“Honestly?” Alix said, smiling despite herself. “Like a million dollars with the world’s nicest breakup buddy.”
“I’ll take that,” Grace said, and Alix could hear the smile. “So you’re alive. That’s good.”
“Alive is generous. Re-animated, maybe.”
“On-brand for Edward.”
Alix groaned. “I was hoping you’d forget.”
“Alix, I could never forget the glitter. I’m pretty sure if I fly west I’ll see it from the plane.”
“Rude. True,” Alix conceded, then tipped her head back to swallow more tea. “Hey, um, about last night…”
There was a very small pause. “Mm?”
“I sincerely do not remember most of what I said. Because I think I probably drank gasoline from the way I’m feeling now. And I just… if I made anything weird—”
“You mean offering to come to Miami for Thanksgiving?” Grace asked, gentle as a finger under a chin.
Oh. That. Yeah, that was coming back to her now, too.
“Oh my God,” Alix said, pressing her free hand over her face again. “I did that.”
“You did.”
“I’m sorry,” Alix said, wincing in place. “I didn’t mean to… I mean obviously you were kidding. I was kidding. Imagine me just showing up at your family’s Thanksgiving like a stray cat you found. That’s so weird.”
Grace laughed — a low, delighted sound that did not help Alix’s resolve to bury feelings. “Honestly? The cat would be a hit. My mother feeds every stray.”
“I really didn’t mean to overstep a boundary,” Alix rushed on, because if she didn’t, the part of her that meant it might start talking. “We’re bros, and I would like to continue being your friend at a pace that does not make your relatives alert the authorities.”
“Alix,” Grace said, kind in a way that made Alix’s eyes go suspiciously hot for a second. “You didn’t overstep. I wasn’t offended.”
“Okay,” Alix said, blinking ceilingward until the glitter in her lashes turned the kitchen light into a tiny disco. “Good. Great. Normal.”
There was another one of those thoughtful pauses. She could hear something clink on Grace’s end, a mug against a counter, the sound of a cabinet. “And,” Grace added, just enough air around the word to make it land. “For what it’s worth… I’m kind of into the idea.”
Alix forgot about her head for a second while everything else in her body ignited. “Into…”
“The idea,” Grace said, not rescuing her from the fluster.
“Of you coming. Not this week. Obviously. But… yeah. Meeting, in person, that whole radical concept. Honestly, Thanksgiving here is chaotic and loud and full of cousins and domino tables and I’m definitely not looking forward to being secretly heartbroken over Julie in that crowd, and obviously I wouldn’t want you to be overwhelmed, but—” She stopped, then laughed at herself.
“I’m sorry, I’m doing that thing where I’m suddenly nervous and I can’t stop talking, even now, realizing that I’m… ”