Chapter 31
Chapter Thirty-One
GRACE
Knowing it was too early to get up even before opening her eyes, Grace struggled to stay in a dream. But then a small wave of nausea crested at the top of her stomach, and she remembered the taste of tequila. The smell of dewy grass. The feeling of Alix’s arms around her and the music of her laugh.
Her heart rose, beating too fast to ignore. Grace blinked awake and immediately remembered why her elbow was sore. She bit back a smile in the dark, just in case Alix was awake and her eyes already adjusted. The last thing she wanted to do was remind her of a creepy doll from her aunt’s house.
Alix, however, was still breathing deeply. On her stomach with an arm outstretched, Alix was very asleep. Grace tried so hard to join her. To drift back into whatever her subconscious had created for her.
On her side, Grace’s leg was hooked around Alix’s thigh. She nestled closer to her, palm on her bare back, feeling the rise and fall of her breaths against her skin. Like she might catch her breath in her hand and keep it.
Matching the rhythm of Alix’s inhales, Grace’s nervous system flooded with a calm she’d never experienced in her life.
Nothing about being with Alix was like anything she’d ever felt.
From the moment they’d met, she’d coaxed out some dormant part of her.
Or maybe Alix had built it from scratch, weaving the best parts of Grace into a happier, more content person. A person Grace realized she liked.
Grace had never even been particularly affectionate, and definitely not while she slept. But everything was so different with Alix. So natural.
She closed her eyes and tried to fall back asleep.
In that liminal place between dream and reality, Grace imagined herself as a seahorse.
So tiny in an ocean so vast and varied and dangerous.
Where the swells on the surface crushed, and the predators in the middle killed, and the depths were cold and still and desperately dark.
Hooked around Alix, the currents couldn’t push her wherever they wished. She’d chosen her spot and rooted herself there, and the steady safety was unmatched. Alix was a coral reef of color and life and protection.
How could someone she’d only known for months feel so much like home? She should worry about falling for an illusion, for not having enough time to know whether she could trust the coral branch not to snap. But the more Alix showed her, the more she loved. The more Grace loved her.
Eyes snapping open, Grace decided that she needed to eat something. Hunger was definitely the cause for the roiling in her stomach.
Rolling away quietly, Grace moved soundlessly. In the dark and without contacts in, she reached for the clothes she’d dropped on the floor before slipping into Alix’s bed. Before she’d had some of the best sleep of her life.
It was only when she stepped out into the hall with her glasses on that she realized she’d gotten her jeans, but Alix’s shirt. A faded black tee that was perfectly oversized on Alix but snug on Grace. Instead of going back in and risking waking her, Grace kept the shirt on.
The light cotton and unmistakable scent of Alix’s cologne set off a chemical reaction in Grace’s body.
Heat over her skin and a hard flutter in her chest that made a full breath impossible.
Lightheaded, Grace floated into the kitchen and became immediately intimidated by Phyllis’s one true love, a fancy espresso maker.
An idea formed while she was already moving. Already putting on a sweatshirt Alix had left on the couch. Black and littered with dinosaur outlines, Grace took a greedy inhale of the collar and went outside.
Without the influence of booze and the night’s sky and Alix’s hands on her hips, she didn’t consider taking the longboard on the porch. Instead, she walked, the early morning cool and bright and brimming with possibility.
The mile walk to the street where the internet said there was a coffee shop was incredible without humidity. Grace absorbed every moment with a deranged grin dying to get loose.
The walk back should have been annoying while she carried a biodegradable tray and bag full of vegan croissants uphill, but all she could see were the cute raised houses and palm trees and inclusive pride flags.
Everything about Alix’s neighborhood was different than hers. By the time she was climbing the porch again, she was debating leaving her firm to sell handmade crafts at farmers markets and live on a lesbian commune.
Tiptoeing back into the house, Grace was relieved that Alix hadn’t woken up yet. She set her prizes on a mismatched nightstand and crawled under the covers.
At the motion, Alix turned. “Hey,” she said, voice groggy while she rubbed one eye. “Happy New Year’s Eve.” She eyed the coffee. “Did you go somewhere?”
Grace ran her hands through Alix’s messy hair. Even her bedhead was cute. “I did.”
Grace kissed her jaw before nestling into the crook of her neck. If she’d ever wanted anything, it was to stay there forever. To exist only in a place where she was breathing Alix in while wrapped around her body. Where she swam in sheets that smelled like her.
“Did you steal my clothes?” She hugged Grace like she’d missed her without even knowing it.
“I did.”
Alix chuckled and squeezed her tighter. “I like that.”
“Me too.”
Grace was unexpectedly drifting to sleep when Alix kissed the top of her head before brushing back the hair she only realized she hadn’t bothered brushing.
“Where did you go?”
“I walked up the street to get us some coffee so that I didn’t lose Phyllis’s approval by messing with her machine.”
“You walked?” Alix asked in the same surprised shriek as if Grace had popped out for a face tattoo. “No one walks in LA.”
Grace chuckled. Nobody walked in Miami either.
“I love your neighborhood.”
Alix made circles over Grace’s back. “I’m pretty lucky. Phyllis has been renting here since the nineties. It’s like a rent-controlled oasis. I’ve never even met or talked to the landlord. Phyllis has handled it all because she’s been here so long.”
A lifetime of believing that renting was akin to flushing money down the toilet almost made Grace ask why she’d rent so long, but she was self-aware enough not to ask.
“Will you show me more of it?” Grace traced the leaves over Alix’s collarbone with her finger. “Your neighborhood?”
“Mm-hmm,” Alix said like she was drifting away.
Grace settled against her chest and closed her eyes. When they woke after inadvertently falling asleep, they drank lukewarm and mediocre coffee and headed out the door.
“I can’t believe you don’t get sick of not having a car,” Grace said when they stepped out of the rideshare and toward a smattering of shops and restaurants.
Instead of heading toward the stretch of businesses, Alix took them to a tucked-away shady alley. “I borrow Phyllis’s when I need it, but everything I need is close enough to ride to.”
Grace was going to ask whether that felt claustrophobic, but they turned a corner and were suddenly in front of a set of rainbow-colored stairs carved into a hill.
“What is this?” Grace asked when the stairs, tagged with only a little graffiti, seemed to lead to nowhere.
“The height of Silver Lake touristy magic.” Alix grinned and Grace imagined her eyes crinkling behind her sunglasses. But it was her dimples that dismantled Grace every time. “Should we try to get a single, in-focus selfie?”
Grace chuckled. “And break our streak? Absolutely not.”
Alix sat halfway up the stairs and parted her thighs.
After entertaining a filthy thought for only a second, Grace sat between them.
With her arms resting over Grace’s shoulders, Alix positioned her phone for a photo.
Unable to help herself, Grace turned her head and kissed Alix’s cheek, knocking her arm.
“You’re a menace,” Alix said with the sun in her smile before dipping down to kiss her lips.
Grinning, Grace reached up to thread her fingers through Alix’s hair and pulled her in closer. She’d never been one for PDA, but when Alix parted her lips with the tip of her tongue, Grace was sure she’d have to defend them against public indecency charges.
It was all Grace could do not to confess that she didn’t want to go back to Miami.
That she couldn’t stand the thought of mornings without Alix.
That she might never be able to sleep again if it wasn’t curled around her.
That food never tasted as good as when they shared it.
That she already missed her and ached for her and loved her.
By late afternoon, they were back on Alix’s street and walking hand in hand. An OPEN HOUSE sign on a huge Spanish-style house perched high on a corner caught Grace’s attention. She tugged Alix toward it.
“Damn, Gator. I didn’t know you were a millionaire,” Alix joked when they stopped at the open gate and narrow steps leading up to a bougainvillea-covered wood-framed porch.
“Come on. There’s no cover charge just to walk in.”
Alix laughed while she followed. “Are you a… lookie-loo?” she asked like she was delighted by every new fact about her she collected.
“I prefer to call myself reasonably curious,” Grace replied with an eyebrow wiggle before opening the carved wooden door.
“I’m sure you do,” Alix teased. “You’re going to be such a nightmare of an old lady.”
Grace laughed. “As long as everyone keeps their grass at the regulated height, we won’t have any problems.”
Alix pulled off her sunglasses and shone her bright brown eyes on her. “I bet you look so cute with a little ruler.”
From a gorgeous foyer with an intricate and colorful tile pattern on the floor, they passed a formal dining room. Alix stopped, arms crossed and expression pensive.
“But is this enough room for entertaining?” Alix asked like the unlikable half of a House Hunters couple.
Grace made a sound in her throat to indicate she was giving the question careful consideration. “It might be a tight fit.”
Alix laughed and muttered under her breath. “You might be a tight fit.”
“Hi there.” A blonde woman materialized behind them. “That crown molding is original to the house. The current owners have spent so much time bringing out that 1920s charm.”
“Wasn’t the house built in the forties?” a man asked while on the way out.
The realtor shot him a glare as if to say You’re not buying, Bob. You’re dead to me. She smiled at Grace as much as fillers would allow.
“Is it just the two of you?” the realtor asked. “This is a great starter home,” she said of a place that could house a basketball team.
“Just me and the missus,” Alix replied before Grace could correct her assumption about their status.
The realtor beamed. “Newlyweds? Oh, you’re going to love it here.” She looked toward the door where another couple had walked in. “Why don’t you check out the kitchen and I’ll be right in to see if you have any questions?”
“I hope it’s a chef’s kitchen,” Alix said so sincerely that Grace almost forgot they’d been joking.
After a full tour, and deep conversation about how they’d make changes to suit their tastes, they ended up outside. The high-walled backyard offered no privacy from all the packed together two-story houses with a view right into the yard, but it did offer the illusion of seclusion.
“Oh, my God.” Grace squeezed Alix’s arm. “It has a guest house.” She led them toward it. “Couldn’t you imagine Phyllis living here?” She opened the door to a quaint but spacious one-room house larger than Grace’s first apartment.
Alix ran her hand over the butcher block counter in the tiny kitchen. “Or… Connie,” she said, voice light, teasing, like they were still playing house.
Grace caught the slip in tone. The silence that followed stretched too long, and something in her chest twisted.
She leaned back against the sink, fingers gripping the porcelain edge until it bit into her palms. The game dissolved, leaving that hollow echo of what it had almost felt like. Because that’s what it was. A game. A house they’d never buy. A guest space they’d never fill.
Guilt hit her low and sharp. She’d let herself imagine it. Alix’s laughter in the mornings. The warm comfort of her body at night. A version of her life that didn’t belong to her.
The truth was harder. Her real life waited three thousand miles away, full of clients and deadlines and the hum of expectation. Miami was movement and order. Alix’s world spun on the axis of something wilder, messier, softer.
For a heartbeat, Grace almost said it out loud. How in the world will this work? But she couldn’t bear to watch the spark fade from Alix’s eyes.
She didn’t have to speak. The light went out on its own.
Something in Alix dimmed, subtle but unmistakable. Her shoulders dropped. Her face went still. “We should go,” she said, the words too casual to be anything but defense.
Before Grace could speak, Alix was already walking out.
Her footsteps echoed down the tile hall, each one landing like a small loss. Grace followed, slow at first, then faster, a quiet panic climbing her ribs.
By the time she caught up in the main house, Alix’s energy had changed completely. The brightness was gone, replaced by something shuttered. The woman who’d been all laughter minutes earlier now moved like she was carrying something heavy she didn’t trust anyone to touch.
“Alix,” Grace said, barely more than a breath.
Alix looked at her, then away. “It’s fine.”
It wasn’t. Grace felt it in the quiet. The way the air had cooled. The way the day’s light turned brittle around them before it shattered. She didn’t know exactly what she’d broken. Only that she had.