Grace glares at the shower tile. Trust Raj to leave it up to her to fend off Meera. “It was nothing,” she lies. “We were just drunk.”

“He said he crossed some lines,” Meera says. “You know I’ll let him have it if he said something wrong. Love my brother, but he can be—well, my brother.”

“Seriously, M, it’s fine. He was just nervous about the meeting. The pressure was getting to him.”

She knows she said too much when Meera turns from protective to worried. “Pressured about what? Did Baba say something to him? I swear he lets that man guilt him into anything. I’m gonna call him back—”

Grace curses. “It wasn’t like that,” she says soothingly, voice quiet. “He just wants to do well. You know how much he loves the tea room. He wants to make a good impression. That was it. I probably shouldn’t have let him get so drunk the night before.”

It’s quiet for a moment before Meera speaks again, sounding small and scared, like a little girl. “You promise? You’d tell me if he said it was getting to be too much for him, right?”

If I told Meera I didn’t want to run the tea room, she’d drop everything, and she’d do it.

“Promise,” Grace says, the lie settling in with the rest of the sludge in her chest. “If he said anything like that, I’d tell you.”

Meera sniffs a little, but Grace hears the relief in the silence. “It’s good he has you,” she says. “He still thinks he has to protect me, but I’m glad he can be honest with you.”

“Me, too,” Grace croaks out. “But enough about that. Tell me about you. How’s that class?”

“Oh my God,” Meera says. “It’s seriously the best decision I’ve ever made. I love it. I can’t imagine doing anything but psychology. It just feels right, you know?”

She’d give up everything if I said I didn’t want to do it.

“That sounds so great, M,” Grace says. “You have time to talk? I wanna hear all about it.”

When they’re done, she creeps back into the bedroom.

Yuki’s eyes blink open, bleary and swollen, as Grace scoots closer. “There she is,” she says quietly. “The favored girl of the sun.” She reaches out and pulls Grace in. “Honey Girl.”

“Are you drunk?” Grace asks. “Or just sleepy?”

Yuki burrows into the covers. “Both. Are you done talking on the phone like it’s 1999?”

“Okay,” Grace scoffs. “Is that gonna be the new apartment joke? It’s already tired.”

Yuki hides a smile in her pillow. “Perhaps.”

She looks sleepy and giggly. No longer the lazy dream in Grace’s memories, but the real thing.

“Yes,” Yuki answers to a question unasked, looking back up at Grace. “You can kiss me, yes.”

Maybe Raj was right. Maybe Grace has been selfish. There are decisions to be made. She has a life to live and a home that waits. She cannot spend the rest of her days kissing a girl that tastes like tart red wine. She cannot stay huddled around a radio listening to the origins of misunderstood things. But she wants to. She wants to hold on to this just a little bit longer, before the universe makes her choose.

Soon, she will have to face the rejections in her inbox. She will have to apply for more positions and sit through more interviews. She will have to answer all their questions, and she will not give them the satisfaction of walking out. If there is anything she’s learned with Yuki, away from the constant pressures in Portland, it’s that it is okay to be the monster. To be the feared creature lurking in the dark with teeth and claws and blood.

She will embrace it. She will stare them down in their fear, and she will demand their time and their consideration and their equal opportunity. She will not let them spin her into a scary story, a thing whispered about and cast aside.

But Grace will also hold on to this good thing, her good thing, for just a little while longer. She has earned the right for something to be easy. She has earned the right to hold on to this place, this peace, this girl, this red-bricked home.

Just a little longer, she whispers to the universe. I will cling to it like stardust.

Fourteen

August comes with humidity and open windows and music speakers blaring from the stoops on the block. It’s Grace’s birthday month, and the passage of summer weighs heavily on her.

She spends one night of it on Yuki’s bed watching House Party while Dhorian two-strand twists her hair.

“You need to be committed to the protective style,” he says. “Don’t let your half-white side break down your edges.”

“I’m committed!” she argues. “I don’t want my edges broken! I do protective styles! I sleep on silk!”

Yuki gets dressed, hiding halfway behind her closet, ready to make her way to the radio station. She shimmies into some jeans that are more holes than denim. Grace peeks at her, eyes roaming over Yuki’s curves and the way her back is shaped like a bow. There’s a little bruise on her hip, purpling like wine, and she flushes at remembering how it got there. “You better take care of your edges,” Yuki says. “I would hate to be married to a bald-headed bitch.”

“Can you go?” Grace whines.

“Please,” Dhorian adds. He points at the TV and Grace’s hair. “Can’t you see we’re in the middle of a delicate cultural process right now?”