Honey Girl(32)

“Calm down,” Ximena says softly. “Don’t cry, you know it stresses me out.” She lets out a deep exhale, and Grace can almost hear her mind whirring. “Okay, do you need me to tell you again why this isn’t a terrible idea?”

Grace sniffles and hides a smile in her sleeve. It’s too hot for her tie-dye hoodie, but she’s wearing another one she’s taken from Raj, and she pretends she can still smell his cologne in the fabric. It’s comforting to have this reminder of her family. “Yes, please. Love you.”

“So much it hurts,” Ximena says. “Now, we decided—you decided—it was okay to need a break, right?”

Grace shrugs. “I guess,” she mumbles. “I probably should have taken a break in Florida.”

She hears an exaggerated “oh my God” in the background. “Is that Grace Porter?” Agnes asks. “I thought we already convinced her it was okay to enjoy being married to a cute girl? Summer in NYC. It’s like a movie!”

Grace’s eye twitches.

“Go away, Ag,” Ximena tells her. “Go eat before you leave to terrorize the working world. There’s mangú and huevos fritos and aguacate.”

“I want mangú,” Grace sulks. She’s starving after a five-and-a-half-hour flight, and it mixes with the apprehension and anxiety churning in her belly. The tops of her wrists are sore. Where the skin is thicker and sturdier, and she pinched and released and pinched and released while she waited at baggage claim.

“You,” Ximena says. “You need to just relax. I promise it’s okay.” She lowers her voice, so it is just her and Grace the words fall between. “I know we think we have to be on all the time. But, Porter?” she asks, voice quiet. “It’s okay for us to just be, too. Enjoy this, okay? Enjoy getting to know Yuki, and don’t overthink this like your ridiculous Virgo brain tells you to do.”

“But—”

“Go meet your wife. Fall in loooove.” She yawns, a little squeaky thing that makes Grace homesick. “I worked a late shift last night. I’m heading back to bed.”

“But, Ximena—”

“Text me later! Love you!”

The call ends, and Grace lets out a muted scream through clenched teeth. She hides under her hood and stares out the car window.

“Okay, Grace Porter,” she mutters. She squares her shoulders. “You married this girl. Now, go get her.”

The car pulls up in front of a redbrick building. Her heart skips because this is it. She’s a Porter, and Porters are strong and fearless. But she is also Grace, and Grace is nervous and scared. Her hands tremble as she gets out of the car and grabs her bags.

Up ahead, a girl sits on a stoop with a bouquet of yellow and orange flowers next to her.

“Yuki?” Grace calls, and the girl jolts, standing up jerkily. “Yuki Yamamoto?”

She decides to be brave about this. She dumps her duffel bag on a dirty New York City sidewalk and throws herself into Yuki’s arms. Yuki catches her. There is a solid body against hers, and the world goes quiet. She squeezes her arms around this girl’s soft waist, her girl’s soft waist.

“Grace Porter,” Yuki murmurs. “In the flesh, at last.”

Grace leans back. “Were you afraid I was a figment of your imagination or something?” She reaches out, hands hovering over Yuki’s hair. It’s shorter, she’s positive, hanging just over the tops of her ears. Feathered, too-long bangs fall into her eyes. Her undercut is neatly buzzed. “Did you cut your hair just for me?”

Yuki steps away, head down so all that shows is her septum piercing and the curve of her mouth. “Yes to both things,” she says. When she talks, it’s different from her radio voice and less distorted than how she sounds on the phone. She sounds like a real person with a real body and real fingers that grip a bouquet of yellow and orange flowers tight enough that they start to droop.

“Here,” she says, holding them out.

Grace takes the flowers gently and buries her face in them, inhaling. “You got me flowers,” she says, her voice held tight with wonder.

Yuki scratches behind her ear. She tilts her head up, just enough that one eye peeks out from underneath her fringe. “If you hate them, then it wasn’t my idea,” she says quickly. “If you like them, then they reminded me of you. The yellow and the orange. As close to gold as I could find.”

“Yeah,” Grace breathes out. “I like them. They’re beautiful.”

Yuki squints at her. “Good,” she says. “Then it was my idea.”

Grace rolls her eyes, feeling light and silly. “Thank you.”

Yuki looks up fully. Grace can take in all of her: her scrunched nose and her sharp eyes and her dimpled cheeks and the quarter moon light that glints off her ears from all her piercings. “You’re welcome,” she says back, like a challenge. She steps back and holds out her arms. “Welcome to Harlem.”

Grace turns and just from here she can see copper-brick row homes and small apartment buildings and cramped little food spots. There’s soul food and West African carryouts at two opposite corners and a buffet farther up that smells like Maw Maw’s at Thanksgiving, the table filled with mac and cheese, and greens, and yams with the syrup dripping from them like grease.