Honey Girl(59)

Yuki looks up. Her eyes are dark, and her lips glisten. She is a monster, a siren, pulling Grace down and down and down. There is salt and burning sea in Grace’s lungs. She does not want to come up for air.

Yuki eats her out while Grace comes, shuddering and clenching her thighs around the head of the girl between them. She kisses up Grace’s heaving belly, her sweat-slick chest. She kisses Grace’s fluttering eyelashes. She pushes back the honey-gold curls so they splay on the sheets like treasure.

“Good?” she asks, mouth swollen.

Grace closes her eyes and nods. Tears streak down the sides of her face as she squirms with oversensitivity as Yuki’s fingers keep stroking her.

“Good,” she gasps out. “You’re so good, Yuki Yamamoto.”

It is her birthday, and the summer’s end nears. Grace holds on to her good thing with clutched fingers and an aching heart. She holds on for dear life, and she realizes she does not want to let go.

Grace wakes up to a phone full of missed calls and texts. There are voice mails from Sharone and Colonel and Mom. She scrolls through everything sleepily, sending a bleary selfie to the group chat with all her friends back home.

“You should not be allowed to look like that as soon as you wake up,” Yuki murmurs, digging her chin into Grace’s shoulder. Yuki is bed-mussed and mellow, hair still tussled from the fingers that twisted and pulled at it.

Grace feels heat in her belly at the reminder. She feels heat in her face, and though her brown skin doesn’t blush, she still knows it’s written all over her.

“Grace Porter,” Yuki teases, laughing quietly as Grace hides under a pillow. “Are you shy? You didn’t seem like it when I had my—”

“Okay,” Grace interrupts. “It’s my birthday. No jokes. I’m banning jokes.”

Yuki grins at her. “Fine.” She kisses Grace’s neck. There is nothing hesitant, no pause. They have seen the other at their barest, most vulnerable. They have left their soft parts unguarded and raw. “Happy birthday,” she says softly. “I think there’s probably a surprise waiting for you in the kitchen once you’re up.”

“A surprise?” Grace smooths out Yuki’s hair. She presses gentle fingers to the wine-purpling bruises on her jaw and the tender skin on her neck. Grace really did a number on her. “From your roommates?”

Yuki stretches, and Grace takes it all in. The way Yuki is dimpled and squishy and sharp and thorned all at once. “You’ve been here all summer,” Yuki says, rolling out of bed. Her shirt barely touches her thighs. “They’re not just my roommates. They’re your friends.”

“Oh,” Grace whispers, though it shouldn’t surprise her. She may be lonely, feel lonely, wanting to take the world on by herself, but she has never really been alone. She is still trying to absorb that. “Yeah. My friends.”

Yuki holds her hand out. “Come on. I want cake for breakfast.”

There is, in fact, cake. Dhorian and Sani present it to her as she sits at the head of their coffee table, and Fletcher sings an off-pitch version of “Happy Birthday.” It’s not the Stevie Wonder version, and Grace doesn’t even call him out on it.

“You guys didn’t have to,” she says, taking a bite. It’s French vanilla with cream cheese frosting, and it tastes so sweet on her tongue. There is a lick of frosting at the corner of Yuki’s mouth, and Grace kisses it away. That tastes sweet, too.

Sani frowns. “Of course we did,” he says. “It’s your birthday.”

“Your twenty-ninth birthday,” Dhorian adds. “It’s a milestone. Last year before you’re officially old.”

Grace stares down at the cake. The blue and purple icing that makes up a night sky. The little astronaut set delicately on top. She is twenty-nine years old today, in a new city with new faces. Later, she will call the old ones, and they will all start to mesh. They will just be her friends, and there will be no distinction.

“A milestone,” she repeats, picking up the little plastic astronaut. “I made it, huh?”

“You made it,” Yuki confirms. “You can do whatever the fuck you want.”

“I want more cake,” Grace says decisively.

There is more cake. Fletcher sets up the game system, and then there is an impromptu Mario Kart tournament. There is wine, even though it’s late morning, and shouting, and even more cake. Grace finds herself sipping a glass, situated on the floor and pressed back against Yuki’s legs.

“Why are you so bad at this game?” Grace asks when Dhorian wins again. He’s in his scrubs, ready to leave for a shift soon. He’s beaten Yuki on this course three times in a row. “Shouldn’t you be trying to impress me?”

“I don’t have to impress you,” Yuki says, clicking Replay. “You already married me.”

Grace smiles down at her phone. Everyone has been texting her all day, full of exclamation marks and emojis. Raj and Meera sent a video of Baba Vihaan wishing her a happy birthday, and Ximena and Agnes sent a picture of them in her bed, little party hat stickers edited onto the photo.

Grace checks her email. There is the normal onslaught of brand-sponsored birthday wishes, and she keeps the ones that Yuki can use as retail therapy later. She swipes more of them into the trash, the movement almost therapeutic.