Chapter 16
Chapter Sixteen
ALIX
A few days after 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.
Lola chewed a fry and narrowed her eyes. “Tell us about the lawyer.”
“The lawyer is fine,” Alix said and then helplessly smiled. She could feel it happening. The smile of a person who had seen something golden and couldn’t shut up about it.
Oscar leaned in. “Everything.”
Alix tried to keep her voice calm. “She’s smart and solid. She makes cafecito by feel. She can dance in heels and make it look like breathing.”
Lola and Oscar traded the kind of look that was basically a high five.
“You sound different,” Lola said. “Not like you after the first three dates with a walking red flag. Like you after a perfect haircut. Calm. Very pleased with yourself.”
Alix blushed and took a very large bite of a chunk of cheese fries.
“Is it serious?” Oscar asked, softening the question with a little tilt of his head.
Alix took a moment, considering. “It’s… new.
Not nothing.” She traced a circle in the water ring on the table.
“And complicated. We’re friends first, of course.
And if we just stay friends, I’m okay with that.
She’s in Miami.” Alix paused, then said the next phrase quickly before stuffing another bite of cheese fries in her mouth to avoid follow-up questions.
“I am taking her to Colorado for Christmas.”
Lola slapped both palms on the table. “What? You never go home for Christmas. And now you’re bringing her?”
Alix laughed, and then the thought landed with more weight than any joke could hold. “It’s not like her Miami. My family is not her family. Her mom is loud and loving and feeds you even if you say no. My mom keeps a running list of everything I could have done differently.”
Oscar whistled through his teeth. “And you want to bring Grace into that?”
“Well, yeah,” Alix said, and the honesty surprised her ears. “She makes me feel… brave. I can face it with her.”
Lola’s expression gentled. “You want her to see you.”
“I mean,” Alix said. “That’s kind of dramatic.”
Oscar knocked his knee against hers. “This is adorable.”
They were on their second round when the door swung open and the temperature in Alix’s chest dropped out of reflex.
Kirstin. Her hair as glossy as ever. The same cool-lipped smile that used to make Alix feel like she was always intruding on her time.
The girl on Kirstin’s arm was tall and pretty in that breathless way of new things.
Since when did Kirstin ever come to The Hollow?
It had been months since they’d ended things, but the sight still pinched in that familiar place just under her ribs.
For a month or two after, Alix had pretended it hadn’t mattered, that she was fine, that casual meant painless.
It hadn’t. The quiet after Kirstin left had been worse than the fights — a kind of aching shame where her confidence used to sit.
Breakup Buddies had been an escape ladder thrown in haste, but it had become so much more since she’d met Grace.
Now, watching Kirstin tilt her head and laugh at something new, Alix felt the sting but not the collapse. There were other things ahead of her now. A trip. A maybe. Someone who made her want to try again, even if she wasn’t ready to name it.
Lola’s eyes cut to Alix. “We can leave.”
Oscar had already started to gather the glasses like they were under attack. His jaw was set the way it got when he was about to defend one of his people to the death in a very polite, very savage way.
“It’s fine,” Alix said. She waited. Checked in with herself like a pulse. No jealousy crawled up her throat. The sight of Kirstin made the past real and also small. Alix felt… okay. Not empty. More like a clear table where a messy one had been.
Kirstin’s gaze slid over, pausing in that familiar inventorying way. Alix lifted her beer in a tiny acknowledgment. Kirstin tipped her chin. That was the whole story. Kirstin looked away. She felt the laugh bubble at how anticlimactic it was.
“Alert the press,” Alix said. “I am healed.”
Oscar exhaled like he had been holding his breath for six months. Lola clinked her bottle against Alix’s. “Proud of you.”
“Me too,” Alix said, and was surprised to mean it.
For a second she thought about texting Grace.
A small, triumphant report. Saw Kirstin.
Felt nothing. She thumbed her phone awake and then stopped.
It wasn’t that she wanted to keep things from Grace.
It was that she wanted their conversation to live in the present, not in the archaeological dig of old hurts.
There were better things to talk about. The future.
Snow boots. Whether Grace could survive on diner coffee without suing the state of Colorado.
She tucked the phone away and continued on with her night.
At the salon that week, one of her regulars tilted her head as Alix sectioned off her hair, chatting about holiday plans.
Her client, a kind woman in her early fifties, asked, “What’d you do for Thanksgiving?”
“Visited a friend in Florida,” Alix said, clipping a strand. “Went for a few days.”
“You’d willingly go to Florida? In this political climate?” the woman asked with a grimace.
Alix laughed. “It was Miami, so not like the worst parts of Florida. And it was fun.” Alix smiled at the mirror. “There was a haunted doll involved.”
Her client laughed, assuming it was a joke. Alix didn’t clarify.
Later, she put on the playlist she and Grace had made in Sylvia’s kitchen. The smell of bleach and hairspray mixed with Latin beats, and Lola yelled over the dryers, “Is this your Miami sex playlist?”
Alix blushed and stuttered, but she didn’t change it.
At the flea market that Saturday, she texted Grace a photo of a ceramic frog holding a margarita and wearing sunglasses.
Grace replied with a picture of a bubbling pot of some kind of chicken stew. Alix could nearly smell the spices through the phone.
Grace
Fricase de pollo. Connie’s specialty.
Alix
Save me a bowl.
Grace
Cuban food will make a carnivore out of you yet.
Alix
A secret indulgence. My morals don’t have to know.
Grace
Good luck with that.
Their rhythm built again, little notes strung between miles. Late nights and constant texts:
Still awake?
At the office.
You’d hate LA traffic today.
A photo from Alix’s dusk longboard ride along the empty street. Grace sent a courthouse elevator selfie captioned: “Do I look intimidating?”
Alix saved the photo immediately but didn’t type out exactly what thoughts went through her mind. No overt flirting. Just that steady, quiet connection between them.
A week later, Alix was home lounging in pajamas, Phyllis passed out beside her on the couch beside a woefully empty crossword. When her phone buzzed, she answered without thinking.
Grace’s face filled the screen, haloed by warm kitchen light. “Hey.”
“Hey, yourself.”
From somewhere off-screen, a voice called, “Is that her? The vegan?”
“Mom.” Grace groaned. “She has a name, remember? Alix.”
Connie leaned into the frame, eyes bright. “Grace said you want to learn how to make Cuban black beans. Naturally vegan.” Her smile was somewhere between shy and shameless. “And not because of avocado oil.”
Before Alix could either confirm or deny, Phyllis, suddenly awake, propped herself up. “Who’s this beautiful and charming woman?”
Connie grinned. “You must be the saint living with Alix’s sad tofu dishes.”
Alix could hear Grace sighing somewhere off-screen.
Phyllis countered, “I prefer the term martyr, actually.”
The phone turned back to Grace, who looked half mortified, half amused.
Somehow, in the exchange, Connie decided to teach Alix how to make Cuban black beans right there over FaceTime. Alix grabbed spices from the cupboard; Phyllis brought her reading glasses and a highlighter. Connie barked out instructions while Phyllis argued about the proper garlic ratio.
“Garlic’s not measured in cloves,” Connie said. “It’s measured with your heart.”
“I’m writing that down,” Phyllis said. “You’re a poet.”
Grace sighed into the phone. “I’ve lost control of this call.”
By the time Connie finished lecturing about bay leaves, Phyllis had claimed a pen pal. “Add me on Facebook,” she said.
“I’ll send you my mojo dip recipe, too,” Connie promised. “We’ll keep this girl fed.”
Alix beamed. “I love this for me.”
After the call ended, Phyllis looked at her over the shopping list they’d prepared for their future attempt at Cuban black beans. “She’s gorgeous. Her mother likes you. When’s the wedding?”
Alix’s throat tightened. “We’re just friends. She’s… important to me.”
“Keep telling yourself that,” Phyllis said wistfully, patting her arm.
The next time Alix went to The Hollow, Christmas lights tangled above the bar and the air outside had turned sharp with mid-December chill.
She nursed a cider, letting the hum of conversation wrap around her.
She thought about Colorado — about her critical mom, her quiet dad, her brother who still lived in the basement, the horse stable that smelled like hay and cold metal.
She pictured taking Grace up the ridge behind the barn, the one the neighborhood kids used like a sled track when the snow cooperated.
They could go at night. The sky would be clear.
They could stand on the top and she could point out the lights of Fort Collins, small and far, and say This is where I learned to want more and to feel bad about wanting it.
She could hand Grace a flask of whatever her dad kept in the garage, and Grace could pretend it was delicious.
She could show her where the barbed wire fence had caught the back of her leg the first time she climbed it, and she could laugh at how clumsy she had been.
She could tell her the truth. About how her mom said “Alexandra” like an anchor, and how Alix was a raft she built with her own hands.
The imperfect, unvarnished truth of where she came from.
She opened her phone.
Alix
So, hypothetically, how cold are you willing to get?
Grace
Hypothetically, I can handle snow. Can you handle my mom texting you about beans forever?
The word forever landed easy and steady in Alix’s chest. Surely Grace didn’t mean forever in the same way Alix wanted, though, so she marched right past her feelings yet again.
Alix
You think adding Connie and Phyllis to a group chat together would be the best or the worst?
Grace
I’m too nervous to give them unsupervised access to each other. Think of the world domination.
Alix
That’s fair.
She pocketed her phone again, smiling into the warm, noisy air of The Hollow. The maybe lingered between them, tender as a secret. And if friends were all they ever were, she’d still count it as a small, quiet miracle.