“God,” Meera says. “Pray I make it through the day. Baba would hate it if I threw a fit.”

“Which god am I praying to?”

“Pick one,” Meera tells her, straightening her kurti as she steps out of the kitchen. “Choose wisely.”

Grace stays in the back most days. She lets Meera be the face of the tea room. The white liberals of Portland flock to the White Pearl to aggressively compliment Meera on the tea selection and the jeweled bangles that wrap around her wrists like planetary rings. They love her thick, arched brows and her intricately decorated kurtis and the way she smiles as they leave.

They do not care about Grace in the back: not Indian, not draped in beautiful fabric. A Black father and a white mom. Old news for the diversity quota in Portland.

Today, it’s good. It’s quiet. No one is going to ask why Grace presses the key and gold ring at the end of her necklace tight in her palm. Can you feel this? Did you keep yours, too? She sends her thoughts into the universe, and she hopes someone, her someone, is listening.

It remains calm and quiet until closing. Meera lets out mournful little sighs between the MONSTA X playlist she blasts out of the speakers.

“You sound like a broken record,” Grace teases while they tag-team the last of the dirty dishes.

“I’ve given you, like, ten chances to open up to me today! I’m being emotionally available.”

Grace snorts. “I don’t think that’s how it works, but thank you.”

Meera crosses her arms in a childish pose. “Whatever it is, did you at least tell Ximena?”

Grace puts down the dishrag. “I’m not confirming there’s anything wrong, but why would Ximena have to be involved?”

Meera gives another frustrated huff. “Because,” she says, like it’s the most obvious thing in the world, “Ximena is beautiful and smart and can fix anything.”

“All true,” Grace concedes, “but why do you think I need fixing?” Meera lifts herself up onto the counter and shrugs. It’s another surface they’ll have to wipe down, but for once, Grace doesn’t complain. “I’m good,” she says.

“If you say so.” Meera frowns. “But something is going on. People are supposed to be relaxed after vacations, but you came back so on edge. I’ve known you too long. I can always tell.”

Grace grits her teeth, then forces her jaw to relax. “I just have—things on my mind, okay?” Things like rose pink girls and blooming flowers and a man that held their hands together while Grace said yes and I do. Things like pieces of paper with Dr. Grace Porter on them with no directions on where to go next. She wonders how those things intersect, and if she can find herself in the point between. “I’m fine,” she says, and the folded-up edges of her feelings poke at her ribs.

“Okay,” Meera says quietly. She opens her arms. She smells like bitter tea and steam water and soap. Grace rests her head against Meera’s chest and for a moment, the world stops spinning. She lets herself breathe as Meera starts to lament about yet another customer and “Did you see the shoes she was wearing? Suede pumps in the rain. Is this her first time in Portland?”

Eventually, Raj emerges from the back office where he and Baba Vihaan have been reconciling the till.

“Ready, Gracie?” he asks. He grins when Meera makes a face at him. She’s always hated that nickname for Grace.

Grace extracts herself. Meera gently shoves her toward the door, even though the dishes aren’t done, and they haven’t swept the floors yet. “You can owe me one,” she says. “Go tell Ximena I said hi.”

Grace flicks the end of Meera’s braid and kisses the side of her cheek as a goodbye. She follows Raj outside. “You know you don’t have to walk me home. I’m a big girl.”

It’s raining, and he pulls an umbrella out of his front hoodie pocket. His wavy, black hair hangs in his eyes, and his nose ring shines in the dark. “Now that you’re a doctor, you don’t need any company walking home?” he asks.

Grace rolls her eyes and pushes closer so the two of them can fit underneath the umbrella. She’s tall, but Raj is taller. “I don’t need you to walk me home, because I learned self-defense when I was eight.”

“Okay, Danger,” he says, linking their arms together. “If someone runs up on us, I’m fully expecting you to protect me. I’ll be your damsel in distress.”

“That’s not a new thing.”

“Ouch.” He clutches his chest. “Will you tell me what’s up, or are you just going to roast me?”

The two of them have come a long way. He didn’t always like Grace, but once he did, once he started calling her “little sister,” they could talk about anything on their walks home. Even still, she hesitates.

Raj and Meera are so alike as brother and sister, and they both know her too well.

“I’ve been thinking too much,” she says eventually. “It’s just—” Have you ever gone to bed thinking of someone you only knew for a night? Have you ever stared up at the sky and wondered where it was you saw yourself, all those years ago? Which star it was you followed here? She doesn’t say any of that.

She tries to find the words to encompass her tangled thoughts. The words for missing sheets that smell like sea salt and wondering if the girl that left it behind misses her, too. If she regrets leaving or is glad to have escaped when the sunrise and sobriety revealed what they’d done. The words for not wanting to talk to Colonel about jobs and the future when her pride is still stinging from the interview she has not gathered the nerve to tell anyone about yet. The words for wanting things to be as simple as they were on a desert night with just two girls and a locked promise.