Chapter 36
Chapter Thirty-Six
ALIX
By mid-February, Alix had turned missing Grace into a full-time hobby.
She was still showing up — technically. She still cut face-framing layers, mixed dye, nodded at clients like she was following along. But her head was a fogged mirror, like everything she did, she did slightly blurred.
One of her regulars mentioned Florida, and Alix snipped her scissors mid-air instead of along her fingers.
Her stomach did an immediate twirl. She stifled the urge to interrupt, to shout, My girlfriend lives in Miami.
She’d learned early on that some clients used hairstylists as therapists, and truth be told, Alix usually lived for drama that didn’t involve her in any way.
It was always easiest to let the client chat about their life without giving them too many details of her own.
Now, though, she made eye contact with her client in the mirror, and they both chuckled in an I saw that kind of way.
“I’m sorry, it’s just one of those days, you know?” Alix admitted.
“Mercury is in retrograde,” the woman in her chair said with the kind of confidence that made Alix question her certainty that Mercury Retrograde was, in fact, not currently happening.
“That must be it.” Alix caught her reflection. Caught the dark circles and the way her own mouth didn’t quite believe her.
It wasn’t like she and Grace weren’t talking. They texted constantly. They FaceTimed. They’d gotten good at the long-distance routine. Good enough that everyone else would’ve thought they were thriving. But every time Grace’s face blinked off the screen, something inside Alix wrenched in pain.
The house felt emptier, the bed colder, the hours longer. Even Phyllis’s nightly murder podcasts didn’t drown it out anymore.
She’d gone from sleeping on Grace’s shoulder to sleeping beside Grace’s contact photo. Some nights she’d scroll through old texts, rereading things that didn’t need rereading — jokes about bad hotel shampoo, half-drunk selfies, little pieces of intimacy meant to fill the gap. They didn’t.
The ache wasn’t cinematic. It was dull, constant, exhausting. It sat behind her ribs like a bruise she kept pressing just to feel something.
At lunch, she sat outside with her usual lukewarm burrito, scrolling through Grace’s Instagram. Grace had posted a photo of the cats tangled in sunlight. Alix saved it to her phone, even though she already had a dozen just like it.
She tried not to be the kind of person who counted hours between texts, but she knew exactly how long it had been since they’d last talked. A miserable five hours and forty-two minutes.
When Lola sat down next to her and offered her half a cookie, Alix realized she’d been staring into space for several minutes.
“You okay?” Lola asked.
“Sure,” Alix said automatically. “Why?”
“You just sighed like someone in a black-and-white movie about war.”
Alix cracked a smile. “That’s just my new thing. Melancholy chic.”
“That’s so 2005. Joy is in now.”
“I’ll consider it.”
“You know, I have a good friend who is a stylist in Miami at a super cool shop. Like so cool Vince would call it ‘overwrought.’” Lola nudged Alix’s shoulder.
Alix side-eyed her. “Oh?”
Lola shrugged, leaning over to take a bite of Alix’s burrito. “Just something to keep in mind, like if you ever want an introduction,” she said around a mouthful.
Alix snorted, but she was grateful, deep down. “Sure. I’ll let you know.”
By the time she finished her final set of beachy highlights for the night, Alix was wrecked — the good kind of tired layered with the bad kind of lonely.
She packed up, walked home under a dusky sky, and told herself she was fine.
In two days, she’d see Grace. They had a plan.
A flight. Valentine’s Day. Everything was fine.
Except that she didn’t believe it. Not really.
The thought followed her through the door, through the quiet, through the faint smell of incense Phyllis had burned earlier.
What if we fade?
It came uninvited and merciless.
She kicked off her Docs and fell onto the end of her bed, blinking back tears, when her phone lit up with Grace’s name.
Grace
You’re finally home!
Relief and longing hit her at once.
Alix
Stalker.
She hit call before she could think twice.
Grace’s voice came through the speaker low and warm. “Hey, beautiful.”
Alix smiled despite herself. “Hello, gorgeous.”
“Rough day?”
“Long day,” Alix said. “So many bleach fumes that I blacked out and bought a family size bag of Reese’s plant-based mini cups at the convenience store on the way home.”
Grace laughed. Laughed that soft, belly laugh that made Alix’s chest hurt. “I’m not sure if those sound very good.”
“I sure hope so, because I’ve really committed to the size of this bag,” Alix joked.
“That settles it. I could never go vegan because of Reese’s alone. That, and your tofu scramble.”
Alix faked a gasp. “You love it.”
“I do.” Grace’s laugh was like a wind chime on the front porch of a place Alix always wanted to call home.
The silence that followed was the comfortable kind — or it used to be. Lately it felt loaded. Too full of things they weren’t saying. Grace sighed, and Alix could practically picture her in bed, hair in a messy bun, face lit by her phone.
“I miss you,” Grace said quietly.
“I miss you more.”
“You can’t know that.”
“Objection, your honor,” Alix teased.
“On what grounds?” Grace’s voice dipped to a lower register that had Alix pressing her thighs together.
“Uh, leading the witness?”
“Objection sustained.”
“I don’t know what that means,” Alix admitted. “Did I just win?”
Grace chuckled, and something in the sound loosened Alix’s spine.
“Your lawyer voice drives me crazy,” Alix whispered.
“You know,” Grace said, voice dropping an octave, “we could do something about that.”
“Oh?” Alix teased. “You mean… what, like emotional, verbal scissoring?”
“I was thinking something a little more fun.”
Alix grinned, turning onto her back. “So direct.”
Grace hummed. “Take off your shirt.”
Alix froze. “What, right now? You mean, like, over the phone? You know I’m on speaker, right?”
“I assumed that was part of the appeal.”
“Wow. Okay. I see you, Gator.” Alix laughed, nerves buzzing. “Let me just… Hold on. I don’t want to alert Phyllis to what’s going on in here.”
She tried to shift the phone onto the pillow beside her, but Siri suddenly blurted, “Calling Phyllis.”
“Jesus fucking Christ,” Alix hissed, fumbling for the screen. “Abort, abort.”
Grace was laughing so hard she could barely get words out. “You almost called Phyllis?”
“She would never recover,” Alix said, her pulse still spiked from the adrenaline of frantically hitting the red button.
“I would never recover.”
“Okay, fine, we can pretend that didn’t happen.” Alix cleared her throat and tried to compose herself, but the more Grace laughed, the harder it was to take any of it seriously.
“All right. Focus,” Grace said, still giggling. “Where were we?”
“I think I was about to seduce you, but technology cockblocked me.”
“How quickly technology has turned against us,” Grace said with mock-solemnity.
They tried again. Grace’s voice went molten, deliberate and sweet, describing where she wanted Alix’s hands, what she missed most. Alix closed her eyes, tried to follow along, sliding her hand beneath her boxer briefs.
But halfway through, Grace snorted — actually snorted — because Phyllis’s crime podcast ad break had started playing faintly through the wall. “Today’s episode of ‘Deadly Women of the Midwest’ is brought to you by—”
“Oh my God,” Alix groaned. She lost it. “I can’t. I’m sorry. She listens at full volume.”
They were both laughing now, gasping between words, their faces flushed for entirely different reasons.
“Okay,” Grace said after a long pause, voice quieter again. “Maybe just not our night.”
“Yeah,” Alix admitted, still smiling but feeling her chest twist. “Turns out I’m more of an in-person learner.”
Grace’s sigh came through faintly, and then, “God, I just want to touch you.”
The laughter drained into quiet.
Alix closed her eyes, swallowing the ache in her throat. “Yeah,” she whispered. “Me too.”
For a while, neither of them said anything. They just listened to each other breathe. An imperfect, half-digital version of closeness.
“Soon,” Grace said eventually. “Tomorrow.”
“Well, technically two days, since it’s a red-eye and then I’ll be there in the morning, so—”
“Don’t ruin it.”
“Right. Tomorrow,” Alix echoed, trying to sound confident. “Tomorrow-ish.”
But when they hung up, Alix lay in the dark with the silence rushing back in, the phone warm against her chest. The space between them suddenly felt endless, and the thought slipped through again before she could stop it.
What if we fade?
She kicked off the blanket, stumbled into the kitchen, and found Phyllis perched at the kitchen table in her silk flamingo robe, reading glasses on, a half-finished crossword sitting beside a glass of white wine. Behind her, Midwestern Mommy Murderers blared from a speaker.
Without looking up, Phyllis said, “You pacing, or plotting murder?”
Alix slumped into the chair across from her. “Somewhere in between.”
“Long-distance romance.” Phyllis clucked her tongue. “It’s God’s cruel joke for people who think they’re emotionally evolved.”
Alix smiled weakly. “Didn’t realize God was that petty.”
“Oh, she’s a real bitch sometimes.”
That earned a laugh. A small laugh, but a real one.
Phyllis studied her for a long moment, then leaned back in her chair. “You’re in love, kid.”
Alix groaned. “Don’t say it like it’s terminal.”
“It is. That’s why it’s fun.”
“I’m not having fun,” Alix said. “I’m miserable.”
“Of course you are. You’re in two different zip codes. Love’s supposed to be inconvenient. If it were easy, everyone would do it and the Hallmark Channel would go bankrupt.”
Alix dropped her head onto the table. “You’re so wise. Like a drunk, grammatically correct Yoda.”
“Thank you. I accept that.” Phyllis straightened her shoulders with a theatrical shimmy.
For a few minutes, they sat in companionable silence — Alix tracing the bottom edge of the wineglass with her finger, Phyllis tapping her pen against the table.
“I know I leave tomorrow night,” Alix said quietly. “But I keep thinking about what happens when I come back.”
Phyllis made a sound like a snort trying to disguise itself as empathy. “Then don’t.”
“Don’t what?”
“Don’t come back.”
Alix blinked. “I can’t just move across the country. I have clients. Rent. Responsibilities. I have you. Who else is going to put up with your loud-ass podcasts? And how will you afford a rental in Silver Lake on a fixed income without a roommate?”
Phyllis waved a hand, dismissing all of it like lint. “Sweetheart, you think I advertised for a roommate for the money? And that this is a rental? I own this house. Outright.”
Alix frowned. “You… what?”
“Please.” Phyllis sipped her wine. “I wrote a song in 1978. You know ‘Snowed In with You’?”
Alix sat up straight. “I’m sorry, you mean like the second-most famous Christmas song in the world?”
“Fucking Mariah,” Phyllis muttered.
Alix blinked. “Are you messing with me?”
Phyllis smiled. “I wrote it with my second husband, technically. He got the credit, I got the royalties. Well, most of them.”
“First of all, hell yeah, Phyllis,” Alix said, reaching to high-five her. “Okay, so you’d be fine alone, which does help. I was trying to figure out how to fit you in a closet in whatever tiny apartment I find out there.”
“Alive, hopefully.”
“Phyllis,” Alix scolded. “You listen to too much true crime.”
Phyllis smirked.
“But it’s not like I have a Christmas nostalgia cash cow to help me get by in Miami,” Alix continued. “It’ll take time to build up savings and be comfortable enough to move and…”
Phyllis shrugged. “I never needed your rent money, so I set it aside.”
“Aside… how?” Alix stepped carefully.
“In a fund,” Phyllis corrected. “A very boring, responsible fund that I started when you moved in.”
“Why would you— Phyll. That’s… your money. I paid that to you for six years.”
Phyllis reached for a small envelope resting beside her crossword and slid it across the table. “You struck me as a bright woman, but you just needed a little help. I figured you might need it back someday. Looks like someday’s knocking.”
Alix stared at it but didn’t touch it. “Is this a metaphor, or are you about to make me cry?”
“Both.”
When she finally opened it, there it was. A check. A big one. Six years’ worth of rent. Her throat went tight. “This is way too much.”
“Use it to start a new life. Or a tattoo of my face on your ass. Dealer’s choice.”
“Why not both?” Alix’s laugh cracked into a sob halfway through. “You can’t just give me this money.”
Phyllis leveled her with a hard look, or as hard of a look as an elderly woman in a flamingo robe could muster.
“I can, and I will. I’m not buying your happiness, Alix.
I’m making sure you don’t talk yourself out of it.
” She said it so simply, like it was the most obvious thing in the world. And maybe for Phyllis, it was.
Alix wiped her eyes on her sleeve, shaking her head. “You’re unbelievable.”
“I get that a lot.”
They sat there for a while — Phyllis pretending to work on her crossword, Alix pretending not to cry — the quiet full of everything they didn’t have to say.
Finally, Phyllis looked up. “You could still make the red-eye tonight, you know.”
Alix glanced at the clock. 7:42 p.m. She looked down at the check, then back at Phyllis. “You think?”
“I know. Take the big pink suitcase. It’s hideous but lucky. Like me.”
Alix stood, heart pounding. “What would I even tell Grace?”
“Tell her the truth. That you’re done waiting for tomorrow.” Phyllis’s smile was warm and genuine, and seeing it made Alix want to cry again.
Something in Alix cracked open. Fear, hope, maybe both. She rounded the table and hugged Phyllis tight, catching her off guard.
“Okay, okay,” Phyllis muttered, patting her back. “Don’t wrinkle the robe. It’s vintage.”
Alix laughed, watery and real. “You’re the best, you know that?”
“I know.”
Alix couldn’t tamp down the smile on her face as she closed the front door behind her, the porch light flickering once like the old house’s nervous flinch.
She adjusted her grip on the ridiculously large pink suitcase, heart hammering in her chest. For years, she’d been waiting for the right time, the right plan, the right version of herself.
It wasn’t the timing that mattered anymore. It was the direction, and Alix was running toward something good.