Honey Girl(40)

She looks down to find Yuki staring at her, eyes wide. Suddenly, Grace wishes she hadn’t pulled the front of her hair up. She feels open and raw, exposed like a live wire. Is this how Yuki must have felt, letting Grace into her innermost sanctum of the radio station? This is Grace’s domain, at home amid the things that venture into the endless abyss, and this is her letting Yuki in. Letting her see.

“Too much?” she asks. “You can tell me to stop. I forget not everyone cares about this stuff like I do.”

“No,” Yuki says, wriggling into a more comfortable position. “You’re good at this.”

“Good at what?”

“Teaching.” Yuki gestures around them. “Making me interested in the faraway things.”

Grace narrows her eyes in thought. “You think so?” she asks. Professor MacMillan wasn’t initially a teacher. She didn’t have a passion for it. She was a researcher at heart. She wanted to open things up and understand the writhing pulse of the cosmos. She did not want to be constrained to teaching its basics in a lecture hall. “My mentor always said astronomy was romantic, and I think I agree. I can’t help but want other people to see that what may seem out of reach and untouchable is actually—” She cuts herself off. “Am I rambling?”

“It’s actually what?” Yuki prods. One of the little barrettes in her hair has gone crooked, and Grace reaches down to straighten it. They are blissful and giddy and entangled. Yuki’s denim overalls scratch rough against Grace’s bare thighs. Her little upturned nose is blush pink.

Grace married a very cute girl.

She blinks down at Yuki. “It’s everywhere,” Grace says. “It’s in our skin and our hair, and it turns our midnight blue blood to rust red.” She presses fingers to the dotted freckles across her cheeks. “We are birthed from its dust and ashes the same as those hulking masses in the sky.” Her words rush together, embattled on her tongue. Yuki listening so earnestly makes her loose and flushed and impassioned. It makes her want to tell Yuki all the ridiculous notions of the universe she keeps tucked under her breastbone, out of sight but thumping just as steadily as her beating heart. “How can anyone think we are not evidence of the thumbprint of the galaxy?”

“Holy shit,” Yuki says. She laughs, bright and loud. Loud enough that some of the people turn to look, and Grace glares at them. “Grace Porter, you are magnificent,” she says. “You are the best astronomer there has ever been.”

Grace rolls her eyes. “Too bad I can’t use you as a professional reference.” She thinks of the email she swiped angrily into her trash file this morning.

“Why can’t wives be references?” Yuki asks. “I would tell them that you, Dr. Grace Porter, are the best Black, lesbian astronomer they will ever have the pleasure of meeting. It is their honor to be in the same field as you.” She wrinkles that pink upturned nose. “And fuck them, also.”

Grace laughs, shoulders relaxing. She laughs, and the screen in front of them flickers. The short film is about to start, but she can’t look away from the glinting, sharp girl in her lap. “I think that would be an excellent reference, actually.” She looks away for a moment. “I would say the same about you, you know,” she says, quieting her voice. Yuki meets her eyes. “I don’t know that I’ve ever called anyone magnificent, but if I did, it would be my Japanese wife, who is one of the smartest people I know. History is lucky to have you as its orator.”

“It’s my turn now,” Yuki says. “You showed me your big, bad cosmos. Next, I want to take you on a monster hunt. We can make it a group trip.”

“I’ll hunt monsters with you,” Grace says. “I bet Porters are great at monster hunting.”

The big screen in front of them turns on, and the opening credits for the documentary start to roll. Grace doesn’t see them, though, because she decides that this day will not be about studying the cosmos. This day will be about how the sun feels against her skin. About how Yuki is soft and malleable to the touch. About how she tastes like berries and melon and the red wine they sneaked in, and her lips are stained with it, too.

Grace tastes the universe bursting on Yuki’s tongue, and it is—magnificent.

It takes nearly five hours to drive to Lake Champlain. Five and a half, if you count the coffee pit stops and the pee breaks and the way they have to pull over and combine all the change from their wallets to get through the toll, because no one carries cash.

Grace spends most of it smushed in the backseat, legs entangled with Sani. Dhorian spreads across both their laps, and Sani pretends like he’s not stroking his neck and his back and his shoulders while he sleeps.

“Cis men take up so much space,” he says huffily, tracing Dhorian’s little gold hoop earrings. There’s a matching gold ring in his nose, and it makes him look a little otherworldly. “Does he think he can sleep like this for five fucking hours?” He scoots a little, probably trying to get feeling back in his legs, and his mouth comes right next to Grace’s ear. “Porter,” he says quietly, “at the next stop we’re tricking Fletch into letting me drive.”

“Hey,” Fletcher says, eyes up in the rearview mirror. “I hear plotting. I thought we agreed you are not allowed to drive my dad’s car. You ran straight through a red light last time.”