Honey Girl

by Morgan Rogers

  “Ah.” He nods. “You asked her, didn’t you?”

  “Asked her what?”

  With one foot he kicks the back of Fletcher’s seat, and the car lurches. “Turn the music up,” he demands. “We’re trying to have a private conversation back here.”

  “We genuinely could have died,” Fletcher says, but he hovers over the radio. “Any requests?”

  Sani passes his phone up. “Turn on NAO,” Sani says. “The Saturn album, in honor of our very own space girl.”

  Fletcher grumbles but obeys, and music plays through the speakers. Sani waits until it’s loud enough that they can whisper without the threat of being overheard. In the front seat, Yuki remains engrossed in her show draft. “You asked her if she really believes in this shit.”

  Grace shrugs. “I didn’t think she’d get so—”

  His eyebrows rise. “She read you the riot act, huh?”

  “She made me feel very ridiculous for asking, yes.”

  “Poor baby. Listen,” he says, “I’m going to tell you something about our feral leader, okay? And it’s weird and disgusting, so don’t think any differently of her for it, okay?”

  Grace sits up, alarmed. “Maybe this is something I should be hearing from—”

  “Nope,” Sani says somberly. “I’ve let it go on long enough without stepping in and saying something.” He inhales and leans close. “Yuki,” he says, “she cares about people.” There’s a pause as he watches Grace. “I’m sorry you had to find out this way.”

  There’s a moment where Grace’s brain goes off-line, before she elbows Sani hard enough that he falls onto a sleeping Dhorian. “I thought you were being serious,” she hisses.

  He cackles, hands covering his face. “Shit, I’m sorry, I couldn’t help it. You looked so distressed. God. Okay.”

  “Can you be serious now?”

  “I am, I am,” he says, laughter fading into a wide, but sincere smile. “I am. Really. She believes in people. That’s what this whole thing is really about. She’ll never say that, though, but you learn a lot being friends with someone for as long as we have.”

  “But what does that mean?” Grace asks, frustration boiling over. “What does that have to do with sitting on a lake dock for hours?”

  Sani shrugs. “I don’t know how to explain it, exactly. It’s just—there are people who write into her show with bullshit. She knows it. But sometimes there are ones that—” He looks out the window, eyebrows furrowing. “I think the people who find comfort in her show, real comfort, are just really, really lonely. Have you ever felt loneliness like that?” he asks. “When more than anything, you want someone to hear, really hear, what you’re saying? Even if it’s a stranger on the radio?”

  Yes, Grace thinks. I’m that lonely now, stuck inside my own head. This fading image of my future, folding in on itself from too much weight. Do you hear that? Do you hear me?

  Grace wonders at the girl in the front seat. Have you ever been that lonely? Have you ever been so lonely you ask every show if someone is there, if they’re listening?

  “Someone wrote in to say there was a monster at the bottom of that lake,” Sani continues. “It doesn’t matter to Yuki if it’s there or not. What matters is she walked through the same woods they did, and sat on the same dock they did. The same sand under her feet. The same seaweed creeping up from under the water, you know?” He grabs one of her hands with rare, genuine solemnity on his face. “Are You There? isn’t about monsters. It never has been, don’t you get it? It’s about people. Every episode is about people.”

  Later, days later, episodes later, Yuki talks about Champ, the monster of Lake Champlain.

  Yuki

  11:34 p.m.

  listen to the show tonight

  blue says hi

  Grace reads the text at the apartment as she and Fletcher watch a marathon of Love It or List It. She turns the radio show on and puts the volume up, and Yuki’s voice filters through the apartment, fills up all the space between the walls.

  “Hello, lonely creatures,” she says into the mic. “Are you there?”

  Grace, warm from wine and the open windows and Fletcher squished next to her, thinks, Yes.

  “Tonight, I want to talk about what causes us to believe in monsters. I’ve been thinking a lot about it. I’ve been thinking about if we have to believe, or if maybe just wanting to, is enough. Someone made me think about this recently, and made me question why it is that this lonely creature created this show, and why lonely creatures listen to it when they could be sleeping.”

  Grace listens.

  “I think believing in monsters is not what this show is about. It’s not what I think about when I come here to talk to you all. What I think about is, what makes me any different from this terrible thing? What makes me the same? At the end of the night, I do not find myself asking if I truly believe in the sea monster that lies waiting in the body of a lake. At the end of the night, when I pack up and shut off the lights I think, is that me? Am I that monster? In what ways am I the terrible, frightening thing?”

  She pauses for a moment, and the dead air only adds to the tension of her question. “Lonely creatures, what makes us so different from the stories we tell in the dark?”

  Fletcher sighs, handing the wine bottle back to Grace. “Deep,” he says. They pass a joint back and forth and cuddle underneath a heavy blanket. “That’s some deep shit, bro. Yuki is so deep.”

  Grace takes out her phone and thinks about a girl that smells like sea salt and herbs and lingering incense. Her phone illuminates the room like something otherworldly.

  Grace

  12:20 a.m.

  i’m listening

  She pauses, and then her fingers type out another message.

  Grace

  12:21 a.m.

  idk if i believe in all the stories

  but i believe in you

  hi blue

  Thirteen

  Grace is trying to come to terms with her loneliness. It is not as clear-cut as being alone. She is not alone. But she finds herself missing the familiarity of Portland. She finds herself missing the rigidity of her academic schedule, the coziness of the White Pearl Tea Room. She misses the people that do not know Grace Porter taking a break and figuring things out, but Grace Porter in control, always in motion.

  But she is taking a break, and she finds herself in NYC surrounded by people that do not judge her for it, no matter how much blame she aims at herself.

  They’re in Sani’s bedroom. He’s icing bruised knuckles and trying to psych himself up to swallow down three ibuprofens.

  “You just throw ’em back,” Yuki says. “We go through this every time!”

  “And every time it’s traumatic!” he shouts back. “You’d think the billion-dollar pharmaceutical industry could make smaller pills. Some of us have delicate throats.”

  Yuki makes a face at Grace, who’s trying not to laugh over her late-night onigiri. “Bet that makes you a hit in bed,” Yuki mutters.

  Sani glares. “More than you,” he says, voice silky-smooth and dangerous. “Who exactly are you fingering with those ridiculous claws?”

  Grace chokes. Yuki lets out an inhuman screech and launches herself across the room. She lands on top of Sani and they go crashing to the floor, while Grace watches from the bed.

  “Is everybody okay?” Grace asks. “That sounded painful.”

  Yuki sits up and lets out a long, anguished groan. “He started it.”

  “Well,” Sani says huffily, not even bothering to get up, “you knocked over my pills and my water. Now I have to start that process all over again. It’s a very psychological experience for me.”

  “I have no sympathy for you,” Yuki says, sending him a nasty glance. She checks over her newly painted pink nails. “I’m a femme who likes long nails, and I am very val
id, thank you.”

  “Hey, Yuki?” Fletcher calls suddenly. “There’s a guy at the door.”

  “Does he live here?” Yuki calls back. “A lot of guys live here, maybe it’s one of them.”

  There is just Fletcher’s pointed silence.

  “No,” he says. “He does not live here.”

  “Does he want to live here?” Sani yells. “Is he at least cute?”

  “Can you assholes just—” Fletcher cuts himself off, murmuring low to whomever it is. “He says he’s here for Porter.”

  Yuki and Sani look at her, and Grace looks back with wide eyes.

  When she gets to the door, there is a guy waiting for her. A guy that smiles when he sees her, who has seen Grace at her very worst, snotty and bawling and angry. He smells like Portland redwoods and mamri tea.

  “Raj,” she breathes out. She barrels into his solid frame and waiting arms. “What are you doing here? How did you even know where here was?” She burrows into his rain jacket and overflowing hair.

  “You sent the address to everyone before you left, remember?” His fingers grip tight around Grace’s waist. “Just in case anything happened. The great Grace Porter, always prepared. Baba has the address printed out and tacked on the board in his office.”

  She hides a smile in his neck. If she could get herself any closer, she would. Instead, she sniffs and clings and tries not to pinch herself in case this is a dream.

  “Well, nothing’s happened to her yet,” Yuki says dryly. It hits Grace that all of them are in the living room watching. “Sorry you wasted a perfectly good trip.”

  Grace pulls away when she feels Raj stiffen. Yuki stands like a small, angry dog, all puffed up and indignant.

  “Yuki,” she says, unwilling to let go of Raj yet. One hand finds its way into his pocket, and she would try to fit herself in there if she could. “This is Raj. The one I told you is kind of like my—” She looks at Raj for help.

  He pulls back his shoulders. Wet from the rain outside and challenging. “I’m her brother,” he says flatly. “Hi.”

  “Hi,” Fletcher says, moving forward to shake Raj’s hand. “Shit, like, come in, man. Sorry for all the questioning.”

  Grace pulls him inside. “Come in,” she says. “Sit down. Tell me everything. Why are you here?”

  They sit on the couch. Yuki stands against the exposed brick and crosses her arms, and Fletcher pushes Sani out of the room. “The tension,” he whispers loudly. “Let’s go be bad people and text Dhorian about it while he’s at work.”

  Grace grabs Raj’s hands as they leave. She can’t believe he’s here. She can’t believe a piece of her Portland galaxy navigated its way to New York.

  “Why are you here?” she repeats. “How are you here?”

  He shrugs. “I’m not really here,” he admits. “If Baba finds out I made a pit stop in New York on the way to my meeting, he won’t let me use his flier miles again.”

  “What meeting?”

  “It’s probably nothing,” he says, ducking his head. “But it’s to discuss opening another White Pearl Tea Room in Boston. So. I’m going to that. But for tonight, here I am.”

  Her eyes grow big. Baba Vihaan has put his blood, sweat and tears into that tea room. Even when he was shrouded in grief after his wife died, Grace never doubted his dedication to his work.

  “Holy shit,” she says. “You have to tell me everything.”

  He laughs, a thing that’s mostly a shaky exhale. “Can we do it over a drink?” he asks. “I have to catch my next flight tomorrow morning, and I could really, really, use a drink with my favorite sister before I have to leave.”

  “You know I’m telling Meera, right?”

  He scoffs. “You think I didn’t tell her? You take me for a coward, Gracie?”

  The banter hits her right in the chest. She is home, just for a little, with Raj here. She sees home in his wild hair and his dark eyes and his calloused hands. “Jesus,” she whispers, blinking fast. “I missed you. Yes,” she says. “Let’s get drinks. Let’s get drunk.” She gets up from the couch and looks back. “Don’t move, okay? I don’t wanna come back and you’re gone.”

  “Little sister,” he says softly. “When have I ever left you?”

  She nods, disappearing down the hall to change and grab her wallet. She hears Yuki’s soft bare feet behind her, little thumps that have become as familiar as the other sounds of the city. Grace drops on the bed and tries to untangle all the knotted feelings that have curled up in her chest. How strange it feels to have part of her orbit back in its place again.

  Yuki leans in the doorway. “So,” she starts, and Grace looks up at her tone. “Going out?”

  Grace blinks. “You should come,” she says. “Raj was just being protective. You’ll like him, I promise.”

  Yuki crosses her arms. She’s in her pajamas: the same thin, white T-shirt Grace has, with BRIDE printed across the front and these frilly, yellow shorts that barely cover her ass. She looks dimpled and a little angry. She could make Grace do just about anything like this.

  “Did I do something?” Yuki asks. Grace sits up straight and waits, curious. “Did your friends really have to come and check on you? Did you ask them to?”

  “Yuki Yamamoto,” Grace says carefully. She studies the girl in front of her. “What are you asking me?”

  Yuki huffs, pushing flyaway strands away from her face. “I know I don’t know you like they do,” she says, a little bit of a bite in her voice. “God knows half the time I don’t even feel like I get you, Grace Porter. But I’ve been trying. I’ve been—I’ve been trying, you know?”

  “Trying to what?” Grace asks slowly.

  “To take care of you!” she says, shutting the door. “I’ve been doing a terrible job. Go on, tell me.”

  She stares, and she waits for Grace to tear her down. Terrible, scary Yuki. Soft, trembling Yuki. Yuki sprouting thorns and velvet petals.

  “Okay,” Grace says. “Can you sit down?”

  “Absolutely not,” Yuki says, covering her face. “Just send me a text message about it like a normal maladjusted person in this millennium.”

  Grace smiles. “I’m not going to text you when you’re right in front of me,” she says. “But, Yuki, I don’t—” She shakes her head, as if that will help the words fall into place. “Being here with you is a good thing.” She takes a deep breath to steel herself. “You’re a good thing.”

  “Okay.” Yuki blinks. “You’re. You know. Good, too, or whatever.” She grits her teeth and stares at her ceiling. No stars. Nothing to count and keep yourself grounded with. “It’s just that we’re married, and I’m selfish. I’ve had enough therapy that I can admit to that.” She looks down and gives Grace a small smile. “I want to take care of you, Grace Porter.”

  “You do,” Grace says. Her fingers curl into the covers. “My friends know that. Everyone knows that.”

  “And I want you to take care of me, too,” Yuki adds, like a challenge. “Isn’t that what married people do? I mean, you have people that fly across the country just to make sure you’re okay, and maybe I feel—”

  “You feel what?”

  “Lonely right in front of you.” Yuki’s laugh is dry. “I went to Las Vegas and got married in the middle of the desert to you. And I know this is—coming here is a break, a breather for you. I get that. But I want to—I don’t know, feel like a home for you, too. One day. Maybe.”

  She’s breathing heavy by the end of it, chest heaving with the weight of what she’s just said.

  “Yuki,” Grace says. That’s all that comes. Yuki, she thinks. I’m right here.

  “Please don’t,” she says quietly. “I feel stupid, and you know as an Aquarius I can’t deal with that like a regular human being.”

  “Stop joking,” Grace says. I’m right here, she says, in the silence. Don’t yo
u see me? Don’t you hear me? Didn’t you say lonely creatures recognize other lonely creatures? “I didn’t just come here for myself. I came here because I wanted to meet you and know you and—” She takes a deep breath. “I’m listening to you. I see you.”

  “I don’t want you to,” Yuki argues, “because this is ridiculous, and I don’t even know why I said it.” She flops on the bed. She is not a hazy champagne-bubble dream. She is real person, a girl, a mess just like Grace. “I’m sorry.”

  “Please don’t apologize.” Grace’s hand hovers over her warm body. The creases and curves and bends.

  Yuki lets out a breath. “Aren’t you supposed to be getting changed? This is New York, but I still think people will judge you for going to a bar in your pajamas.”

  She looks down at her flannel pants and her NASA tank. “Be honest, would this be the craziest outfit I’d see tonight?”

  Yuki’s mouth widens with a smile she tries to force back. “Probably not,” she admits. “You could say you’re making a political statement.”

  “I could.” Her hand makes contact with Yuki’s. “Come with me. I want you to meet Raj.”

  Yuki shakes her head. “I have plans to lie in the dark and try to disappear from earth,” she says. “Very busy, very booked.” She moves slowly, very slowly toward Grace and holds her pinky out. “You won’t disappear on me now that I’ve revealed this terrible side of me, will you? Pinky promise.”

  “Yuki—”

  “It was in our vows,” she says somberly. “I wrote it in. I have the right to invoke the pinky promise at any time.”

  “I promise,” Grace says, wondering how she can find a way to keep it. She hooks their pinkies together and wonders if the universe will allow her to keep both: the galaxies and this girl born of their glittering dust. “Pinky promise.”

  * * *

  Grace finds a bar with cheap drinks and low music and a table for two. They order shots and stare each other down.