Chapter 15
Chapter Fifteen
GRACE
The silence of working in the office on a Sunday was usually miraculous. No client calls demanding immediate attention. No partners barging in to throw their work at her. No chance of needing her spare suit to unexpectedly run to court.
Nope. Just silence. The perfect time to get work done. And Grace had plenty to do. But tonight, the silence was an echo chamber for all of her disjointed thoughts.
Grace was behind and drowning in guilt. And yet, she couldn’t keep her eyes on her computer screen. Despite having put her phone in her drawer to keep from picking it up every twelve and a half seconds, she found herself scrolling through photos again.
They’d only taken three, and one of them didn’t count because her mother had snapped it from so far away that it was just a blurry mess of dancing bodies.
Why hadn’t they taken any selfies? Something clear and well lit so she could see Alix’s face.
So she could indulge in her dimples whenever she felt like it.
Despite telling herself in no uncertain terms that she had to finish drafting a motion to suppress, Grace leaned back in her chair and stared at her favorite picture.
Of course Miriam had taken it, probably to embarrass her, but Grace didn’t mind right then.
Without her cousin being a little bit of a dick, she wouldn’t have the moment captured and hoarded on her phone.
Taken through the sliding glass door like a cheap private eye, Miriam had captured Alix laughing. Head thrown back and hair damp from dancing, dimples that could be seen from the moon. Standing across from Alix, Grace hardly recognized herself. She was grinning, her hand on Alix’s bare arm.
When she closed her eyes, she could still feel Alix under her touch. Her silken skin, warm and addictive. Grace craved it, which was weird because she’d never even really considered herself a high-touch person before. But she was alarmingly sure that she’d never get enough of Alix.
Grace was high again. Buzzing at the memory seared into her mind, her fingertips, her chest. God, she was pathetic. Every thought she’d had since Thanksgiving seemed to end in Alix. On the sound of her voice and the honey of her eyes and the way she’d looked in the pool.
Once she’d conjured the thought, she couldn’t dispel it.
Couldn’t stop seeing the water droplet forming precariously on Alix’s full, dark lashes.
The way her tattooed arms looked in the wet muscle tee that clung to her body.
Her imagination barreled forward, filling in the blanks.
Alix’s hands on her hips, pulling her in, the taste of her beautiful lips.
Groaning, Grace reached for her phone again. Maybe it was like an earworm. The only way to get Alix off her mind long enough to get anything done was to listen to the whole song. She went to her texts.
Despite only knowing each other a few months, they’d accumulated an insane number of messages.
She went all the way back to the beginning.
To Scissorsaurus and the River Styx, and an alarmingly easy intimacy they’d shared from the very beginning.
Their conversations had turned away from Kirstin and Julie more quickly than Grace had remembered.
They’d left the purpose of Breakup Buddies behind in favor of good-morning texts and photos of lunches and dinners.
She scrolled through inside jokes and late-night conversations about nothing.
Scrolled until she arrived at Alix’s clothing recommendations.
Links to jackets and shoes and long underwear.
She laughed to herself. Alix was so concerned about a Miami girl in the snow. Grace loved the way Alix always thought about her. She was better as a friend than any girlfriend she’d had in her life.
“Figured you’d be here,” Ivy said, standing in the doorway holding two coffee cups and dressed for yoga.
Grace jumped, fumbling her phone and dropping it face down on a stack of deposition summaries. Her heart hammered against her ribs like it might escape having been caught fluttering.
“Jesus, Ivy. Trying to kill me?” Grace shrieked.
“That depends,” Ivy set a coffee on Grace’s desk. “Am I in your will?” She dropped into the seat across from her desk. “Why are you here on a Sunday night?”
“Why are you?” Grace returned the question to give her nervous system a chance to reset.
“Asked you first.”
Grace playfully rolled her eyes and thanked Ivy for the coffee. “I have to file something in the morning, and I thought I might focus better here than at home.”
Ivy took a sip of her own coffee, her amber eyes sharp and missing nothing. “Uh-huh. And does focus usually involve you smiling at your phone like it just told you that you have a secret trust fund?”
A hot flush crept up Grace’s neck. “I wasn’t smiling.”
“That’s technically true,” she said with a smirk. “You were practically glowing.” She crossed her arms. “Spill. Who is she?”
Grace let out a long, slow breath and decided there was no point in lying to Ivy. Not about this part, anyway. She picked up her phone, her thumb hovering over the screen for a beat before she turned it around, showing Ivy the photo Miriam had taken.
With an exaggerated expression of surprise, Ivy snatched the phone for a closer look. “Well, hot damn. She’s gorgeous. And you look… happy.” Ivy looked from the photo to Grace, her gaze analytical. “Like, genuinely, non-court-mandated happy. Who is she?”
“Her name is Alix.” Grace’s stomach did an embarrassing little jig at the thought of her.
“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. “You like like 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 day before. 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 say Hi, 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.