“Please don’t,” Grace says again, and she trusts that Agnes hears all the things within it.

“I won’t,” Agnes promises. “But for Christ’s sake, get a little better at lying. I know I’ve taught you better than that.”

She leaves, and Grace buries the photograph and the business card and the note under her silk hair scarf for safekeeping. She buries her rosebud girl and her calling card.

She closes her suitcase.

Agnes sticks close in the cab. On the plane, she whines until Ximena agrees to switch seats, and she gives Grace the window seat. She pulls Grace’s nails out of the tender skin on her palms. In the air, the clouds mold themselves into different shapes. A dog. A bunny. A human heart.

Grace thinks, Can you see these, too? Wherever you are, can you look up and think of me, hidden behind a heart made out of clouds?

Agnes grabs her hand. It pulls Grace from her daydreaming, the grounding squeeze of Agnes’s fingers. She grabs back.

What happened in Vegas is tucked away in her suitcase. It is under her shirt in the shape of a key. It is hidden in her hair with the last little bits of dried petals. It hides in the gold ring wrapped around her finger like a brand.

It travels back home with Grace. It does not stay.

Two

How is the job search coming along? The text from Colonel burns hot in Grace’s hand. She puts her phone away in her apron pocket.

After eleven years of chasing the brightest stars and relentlessly working toward her PhD, she was done.

She’d stood in front of her panel of professors. They did not know her as Grace Porter, tall and freckled and raised by a soldier to be the best. They knew her as Grace Porter, Doctor of Astronomy. Hardworking, detailed, Black.

Her deep brown skin dotted with sweat while Professor MacMillan and her peers, all white, studied her as she hid her trembling hands after defending her dissertation. With Colonel’s voice in her ears, urging her forward, she’d grappled to the top of this mountain. Mom urged her to follow her dreams, so she chased the stars. She poured blood and sweat and tears into her work and here was the proof. Here was her vow of success to Colonel completed.

Professor MacMillan had asked her a final question with a wide, completely unprofessional smile, and Grace had answered, holding her bound defense against her chest. She waited with choked breath as they validated what she already concluded. There was more to be seen in the sky; there was more to be seen in her.

Congratulations, Dr. Porter, they’d said, and there she stood, feeling as expansive and terrifying as the universe itself.

And now she stood in this tea room, wiping sweaty palms on her stained apron and not responding to her father’s messages.

“Are you okay?” Meera asks, and Grace blinks back to the White Pearl Tea Room. “Are you daydreaming about the end of your shift, too? If I make another masala chai for a white guy I’ll scream.”

“I’m fine,” Grace says. “Daydreaming, like you said.” She blows her curls out of her face, and Meera squints. “I’m going to do an inventory check. Be right back.”

She escapes to the back room and stares at her metal reflection in the large fridge. “Get it together,” she mutters, palms pressed to her eyes. “Stop thinking. Do your job. A Porter always does their job. A Porter does every task with precision.”

“Grace!” Meera hisses from the door. “I have a code red customer. He might get his tea dumped on his head.”

“That bad?” Grace asks, carefully pulling herself back together. She folds it all up into something small, something she can tuck between her ribs and feel its sharp edges poking her, but no one else will be the wiser. “Taking down the patriarchy one third-degree burn at a time.”

“Baba would love that,” Meera says. She moves closer. “You sure you’re okay, Space Girl?”

“Hmm?” Grace asks, not looking up. “Yes. What makes you ask?”

Meera scoffs. She opened this morning, and Grace can see exhaustion around her eyes. The bitter smell of loose tea leaves clings to her dark umber skin and hair. Up close, you can see she is young and tired and hardworking, and Grace sighs. She doesn’t want to burden Meera with more worries.

“It’s nothing,” she tries. “Nothing I can’t handle, at least.”

“You’ve been so quiet,” Meera points out. “You didn’t gossip about customers at all today. Not even that woman that tried to smuggle her dog in with her coat.”

“Really, that spoke for itself—”

“A goddamn bichon frise! Under her coat!”

“Emotional-support bichon frise?”

Meera groans, grabbing two of the tea containers. “You’ve been like this since you got back. Not even talking my ear off about your space stuff.”

Grace raises an eyebrow. “I just got a PhD in my space stuff, you know.”

“I know,” Meera says meaningfully. “And then you left me here all alone while you celebrated in Las Vegas. You haven’t even mentioned it! You haven’t given me any details! Did you get super wasted? Gamble away all your savings?” She moves even closer, voice low and eyes big. “Did you score?”

“Absolutely not, Meera.”

“Meera!” Baba Vihaan calls from the front. “We have customers.”