Honey Girl(75)

Grace and Ximena both valiantly pretend they don’t hear her voice tremble.

“I promise,” Grace swears. “Southbury’s boring without you guys anyway. Nothing happens here except orange picking and, like, gossiping with my therapist.”

Agnes raises an eyebrow. “You got a therapist?” She looks impressed. “Tell us everything.”

Grace shrugs, but she can’t help the smile that pulls across her face. “Yeah. Her name’s Heather,” she says. “She’s, like, disgustingly beautiful and competent and more put together than I will ever be. It’s annoying.”

“I bet,” Ximena says dryly. “I mean you only have a dumbass PhD. Loser.”

“Don’t be mean to me.” She pouts. “And don’t think I didn’t notice neither of you guys said you missed me back. That doesn’t hurt or anything.”

“I missed you,” Ximena says primly. She nudges Agnes. “This one shares the bed with Meera sometimes because she says it just feels like you in there. I don’t know how, considering Colonel had a lot of your stuff moved back to his house. I think Agnes might miss you more than anyone.” She widens her eyes in fake disbelief when Agnes groans next to her. “Oh shit, was that supposed to be a secret, cari?a?”

“Fuck you,” Agnes mumbles, and slumps down so far she disappears from the screen. Ximena leans down and kisses her head obnoxiously. “And fuck you, Porter, for having Meera sublet.”

“You guys love Meera.”

“We do,” Ximena agrees. “She’s giving our poor little demon here a complex. Can’t imagine why.” She rolls her eyes.

Agnes reappears, glaring. “She’s so—” She stutters, and her hands flail. Grace tries so, so hard not to laugh. “Cute,” Agnes finishes angrily. “She makes me this amazing tea and rasam rice since I’m trying a new set of meds and they make me feel like shit. Plus, she sings in the shower. She sings in the shower.”

“This is bad?”

“She has a wonderful singing voice,” Ximena explains.

“It’s beautiful,” Agnes spits out. “And have you ever talked psych with her? God, her mind is just—”

“Ah,” Grace says, suddenly understanding. “I get it. You have a crush on her.”

Ximena bursts out laughing, nearly folding in half. “Such a crush,” she emphasizes. “I didn’t even know Agnes could give heart-eyes like that to someone.”

Agnes makes a face. “I can think of someone else I give them to,” she snipes, just to see Ximena get flustered. “Anyway, yes. I have a crush. It’s terrible. Let’s move on.” She tilts her head at Grace. “What about you, Vegas Girl? Is the wife picking wheat and barley with you on your Florida farm?”

“Okay,” Grace starts, mostly to give herself some time to gather her thoughts. She knew they’d ask about Yuki, of course they would. That doesn’t mean she knows what to say. That doesn’t mean she wants to say anything. She hasn’t even talked to Heather about all the details of Yuki Yamamoto. “First of all, it’s an orange grove? We pick oranges.”

Agnes narrows her eyes and leans in. “Not what I asked,” she says. Ximena leans in, too, both their faces too close to the screen. “Spill it.”

Grace tries to smile. The thing that comes out is shaky and painful. “Not much to spill,” she says, refusing to look at either of them. She looks at her blue stars instead. It’s strange how much comfort they give her. “I thought I—” She shakes her head. “It doesn’t matter what I thought. I had the chance to start trying to incorporate her into my grand life plan, and I didn’t want to give an inch. It felt like giving in, giving up. I always wanted, needed, to be the best, and she asked me what the best meant for me.” Grace grits her teeth. “I thought my best couldn’t possibly include her, because that would mean settling. I—” She shrugs. “I haven’t talked to her since my birthday. I left New York that night.”

“Oh, Porter,” Ximena sighs. “Why do you never think you deserve anything good without having to kill yourself for it?”

Despite her best efforts, Grace has to blink away some more stupid tears. She hates unburying all these feelings. She hates having to open up. She wants to fall back on her old Porter attitude because it kept her guarded and safe.

She doesn’t feel safe, having her soft underbelly exposed like this. Heather would say it’s progress, but Grace is allowed to hate it. She has to be allowed to hate it.

“I’m working on it,” she says. “My idea of best was—is still—so skewed. How could it mean a beautiful girl that—that I started to love, and who started to love me, too?”

“Love?” Ximena repeats quietly.

“I should have told her,” Grace says. “I should have told her what was happening in my head instead of getting so defensive. But I didn’t want her to know, really know, how screwed up I was. How terrified I was of doing it wrong. I wanted Yuki to think I was strong and fearless and unintimidated. I didn’t want her to see me as weak.”

“You know being vulnerable and honest is not weak,” Agnes says. It was one of the first things she learned in group therapy after she was discharged, and she held Grace and Ximena to it, too. “It takes so much courage to be open with people and to let them help when you need it. It takes strength to tell someone you’re scared, you’re terrified. That you’re not perfect.”