Honey Girl(2)

In it, Grace is tall and brown and narrow, and her gold, spiraling curls hang past her shoulders. She is smiling brightly. It makes her face hurt now, to know she can smile like that, can be that happy surrounded by things she cannot remember.

Across from her, their hands intertwined, is the girl. In the picture, her cheeks are just as rose pink. Her hair is just as pitch-black as an empty night sky. She is smiling, much like Grace is smiling. On her left hand, a black ring encircles her finger, the one meant for ceremonies like this.

Grace, hungover and wary of this new reality, lifts her own left hand. There, on the same finger, a gold ring. This part evaded her memories, forever lost in sticky-sweet alcohol. But there is it, a ring. A permanent and binding and claiming ring.

“What the hell did you do, Porter?” she says, tracing it around her finger.

She picks up the business card, smaller and somehow more intimate, next. It smells like the right side of the bed. Sea salt. Sage. Crushed herbs. Star anise. It is a good smell.

On the front, there is plain text.

ARE YOU THERE?
brooklyn’s late-night show for lonely creatures
& the supernatural. sometimes both.
99.7 FM
She picks up the hotel stationery. The cramped writing is barely legible, like it was written in a hurry.

I know who I am, but who are you? I woke up during the sunrise, and your hair and your skin and the freckles on your nose glowed like gold. Honey gold. I think you are my wife, and I will call you Honey Girl. Consider this a calling card, if you ever need a—I don’t know how these things work. A friend? A—
Wife, it says, but crossed out.

A partner. Or. I don’t know. I have to go. But I think I had fun, and I think I was happy. I don’t think I would get married if I wasn’t. I hope you were, too.
What is it they say? What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas? Well, I can’t stay.
Maybe one day you’ll come find me, Honey Girl. Until then, you can follow the sound of my voice. Are you listening?
It all barely fits, the stops and starts, but Grace finds herself holding the paper close and tight. A calling card with no number, a note with no clarity.

Someone knocks on the door, and all of Grace’s adrenaline snaps like a stretched rubber band. She shrieks, heart thumping as she swings the door open.

“Stop screaming,” Ximena says. She’s already dressed, burgundy-red hair slicked into a bun and outfitted in what she calls her airport clothes. Grace wonders how Ximena can make edge control work in this heat. “If anybody should be screaming, I should be screaming. You know why I should be screaming?”

I got married last night, Grace thinks. To a girl with rosebuds on her cheeks. To a girl whose name I don’t even know. I should be screaming.

“Why should you be screaming?” Grace asks instead. “Why are you already dressed?”

“I should be asking the questions,” Ximena says, eyebrows raised.

“Oh my God.” Agnes peeks her head from behind Ximena’s shoulder. “We have to be at the airport in an hour. The fact that you’re not dressed and ready means you’re actually an evil doppelg?nger. So that means I, in fact, should be screaming. Are you going to let us in? Rude.”

She shoves past, and Grace sets the photograph and the business card and note on the little nightstand by the window and covers them up with a stray Bible.

Ximena follows more primly, perched carefully on the edge of the bed where Agnes has already sprawled on her back. They stare at her, and Grace stares back.

“Well?” Ximena asks. “Aren’t you going to tell us where you were last night?”

Grace frowns. “I was here.”

Ximena stares in disappointment at the blatant lie.

Agnes props herself up on an elbow. “Nice shirt,” she drawls. “Now, what did you really get up to when we left?”

Grace plucks at the shirt. The gold ring on her finger feels heavy and damning. Someone has laid claim here, it says. This person is not yours now, but mine. She hopes they don’t notice. “Not much after you guys left,” she says. “Hung out.”

Ximena blinks. “Hung out,” she repeats.

Grace blinks back. “Yes.” She tries to remember when exactly Ximena and Agnes left. Was it before or after the girl smiled at her over shot glasses? The girl that tangled their fingers together as they walked through crowded streets, past theater lights and clubs with rhythmic music. Grace danced, she remembers now, right there in the street. She clung to the girl and laughed, like it was uncontrollable. “We just walked around, I guess.”

Agnes sits up abruptly. Her mouth curls, a glinting, knife-sharp thing. “You’re lying,” she says. Agnes’s hangover is apparent in her messy, bleached hair and the shadowed crescent moons under her eyes, but excitement brightens her up like a dog after a bone. “Grace Porter, you are lying. Oh my God, I’m putting this in my calendar.” Her black, pointed nails click frantically against her phone screen.

“Dr. Porter,” Grace says weakly, trying to run fingers through her own tangled hair. She should have tied it up last night. “If you’re going to slander my good name, at least address me correctly.”

“Sue me,” Agnes says distractedly, still looking down at her phone. “Sue me in court, you liar.”

Ximena narrows her eyes and examines Grace like she is one of the patients she must keep careful watch over. “You have flowers in your hair,” she says. She watches as Grace reaches up and feels dried petals in her honey-dipped strands.