“Didn’t tell him.”

“Wow,” he says again, falling back on the bed. He stares at the ceiling like it will provide him with answers. “Ximena and Agnes?”

“Surprisingly okay. Agnes asked me about tax benefits.”

Raj turns to look at her, and she fights hard to keep her face blank. “And you?” he asks. “How are you?”

“I’m fine,” she says evenly. She looks at both of them, both of their concerned faces. “I don’t know what you want me to say. I’ve never even thought of marriage, much less to someone I don’t know. But, here I am. It’s—” Nice, is what she wants to say. I don’t want to worry about this like I have to worry about everything else. “Okay,” she says again.

“Divorce?”

“No,” Grace says. “So Colonel can find out? He’d probably have to pay for it. Absolutely not, no. I haven’t even told my mom.”

“Then, what? What’s next?”

It’s the question that’s been circling Grace’s head. It keeps her up. What’s next? She knows, but taking that first step is terrifying. Taking your millionth step is scary. She feels like she has been taking steps for a long time.

“I can handle it,” she says. She tries to smile, and Meera raises her eyebrows. “I’m a Porter. I’ll figure it out. Haven’t I always figured it out?”

Raj opens his mouth, but Meera cuts him off. “If you think you can handle it, then you can. We just don’t want you to get hurt.”

“I won’t,” she says. “She’s still a complete stranger. Maybe I just needed to realize things don’t have to be as planned out and rigid as I thought. Isn’t that a good thing?”

“Okay,” Meera says. “We support you.”

“She supports you,” Raj corrects. “Come help me wash this stuff off my face. I can’t judge you properly while I’m peeling.”

It doesn’t have to be a big deal. It can just be a good thing for right now, the connection between two girls on opposite coasts. A siren and the one who stands ankle-deep at the shore.

It can just be a good thing, while it lasts, and then Grace will fold it up like the hotel stationery that still smells like sea-salt magic. She will gather it up and hide it in the deep cavity of her chest, camouflaged under her heartbeat. It will be a good thing, a good memory.

She has other things to worry about. Her future. Her job search. Her place in the vast, blue-black sky.

“Coming?” Meera calls from the door. “You know he only lets you touch his face.”

“Right behind you,” Grace says, and the echoes of Yuki’s words come with her. I think the sun saw something in you, something bright all on its own, and it picked you. She lets out a trembling breath and shuts the door firmly behind her.

Late at night, when everyone is asleep, Grace crouches on the metal balcony under the moonlight.

Yuki
11:58 p.m.
Goodnight grace porter, who i rmr
shines like the sun is reaching out from
the very core of her
Grace
12:00 a.m.
goodnight yuki yamamoto, who tells
stories like they were crafted within her,
spun with magic
and sea salt

Seven

The hallways that lead to the labs and Professor MacMillan’s office echo under Grace’s feet. There is history in these halls. There is a younger Grace Porter, wide-eyed and determined and desperate to find a place that she carved out for herself.

It is all in us, Professor MacMillan said of the bits and pieces collected in her office. These things, essentially small rocks and stones now, were once a part of the universe. I know many astronomers think I take a romantic approach to the science, but how can we not when presented with such grand facts? That something so small was once a part of something bigger than what our human brains can grasp?

The younger Grace Porter tilted her head up. Up there, you see, where the stars drew a path and the comet fire lit the way? That was where she found her purpose. She fell in love with the stars, and she was going to follow where they led.

Now, she’s twenty-eight years old and she’s reached the comet’s end. There is just Grace with a piece of paper to prove her academic merit and uncertainty eating at her insides like a black hole.

No one told her astronomers, the ones that publish research every few months and get tenured at universities and navigate programs at NASA, that those astronomers don’t have sun-gold hair. They don’t have sun-browned skin. Those astronomers don’t have ancestors that looked at the stars as a means of escape and not in awe.

“The prodigal student returns,” she hears, and the office door opens. “Grace Porter, in the flesh. It’s been months. Come in.”

Professor MacMillan’s office is still the same. Same posters on the wall. Same plaques. Same bookshelves and encased pieces of the universe she’s used in her research. She is still the same: dark blue cat-eye glasses, the way she stares at Grace as if she can see through her.

Grace is the one who has changed in the time since she’s been away. She felt victorious and proud standing in front of a panel of her professors after defending her thesis. She’d worked and climbed and fought, and she made it. There was nothing, no one, that could hold her back. Not her fear, not her uncertainty and especially not thin-lipped smiles that questioned her worth.