“Are you going to explain yourself now?” she asks. “Why didn’t you tell me you were coming to New York? Plus, another tea room opening on the East Coast? I mean, what gives? How did you get Meera to keep this from me? Usually she can’t hold water.”
Raj runs his hands over his face, peeking through his fingers. “You’re asking me so many things right now, and I’m way too sober.”
“Well, answer one,” she presses. “Answer half of one. Why do you need to be drunk to answer my questions?”
“Because,” he says, “I’m jet-lagged as fuck, and I haven’t texted Meera or any of our friends yet to tell them I made it here. I need to be drunk for that, too. Where are our shots?”
“Relax,” she says. “So, was this, like, meant to be a surprise? You coming here? God, Meera must be pissed. You know she’s wanted to come to New York for forever.”
Raj shrugs. The bar’s poor lighting emphasizes the circles under his eyes, the lines in his face, etched in deep. “She’s giving me the silent treatment,” he admits. “Like it’s my fault she’s taking that summer class. What’s it in again?”
“Neuroethics,” Grace says. “I told her it seemed a bit much, but she’s—”
“Stubborn,” they say together.
“Plus, she has to cover the shop with Baba while I’m gone. She knows all of this, she’s just being difficult.” He sighs. “She knows how much I have to deal with, so I don’t know why she can’t just—”
“Hey,” Grace cuts in, leaning back as four tequila shots appear on their table. “She’s your sister. You know she has your back. Take a shot, please. You’re stressing me out.”
He does, taking them one after the other. He grimaces and turns toward the bar. “What do we want next? I’m trying to leave this astral plane.”
Grace grabs his hand when he signals for more. “Okay, let’s chat a little before we get blackout drunk, okay? You had your shots, now spill.”
In the moment, Raj looks way older than thirty-three. He looks tired and worn-out. Grace wonders how she forgot that other people could wither away from stress and anxiety and the weight of the world, too.
“Hardball, huh?” he asks. “Okay, well I’m here. Surprise. I told everyone, but I didn’t know if I could make it happen until the last minute, so I asked them to keep their mouths shut. I’m honestly shocked they all did.”
“Okay,” Grace says. “So, it was a surprise. I’m surprised. Tell me about the other tea room.” She leans back, squinting. “Why aren’t you more excited about this?”
He crosses his arms. “It’s nothing. I’m just a terrible son, I hate my life and I’m sacrificing my millennial dream of hitting the lotto and fucking off to travel the world in order to run my father’s tea room.” Four more glasses are set on the table. Raj downs one almost viciously. “Maybe I’ll even run two now. Fucking congrats to me.”
Grace blinks. “Okay,” she says carefully. “That’s a lot to unpack, but I see now why you wanted alcohol to do it.”
Raj gives a bitter smile. “Maybe you were onto something, Gracie,” he says softly, eyes hooded. “Maybe there’s something to running off when things get too hard.”
“Ouch.” She takes another shot, and both the words and tequila sting. “Tell me how you really feel.”
“You asked. Maybe I should fuck off to a new city and leave my friends to deal with all their shit, too. Ughhh.” He rubs his eyes hard and stares into an empty glass. “That tequila is gonna hit so hard.”
“You’re drinking too fast,” Grace says. “Also, are you, like, mad at me, or does drinking just make you point out my less than stellar coping mechanisms?”
Raj shakes his hair out of his eyes. “Mad? I’m not mad at you. Maybe I envy you. Did you ever think of that?”
She glares. “Do I even want to know what that means?”
“Did I ever tell you what I wanted to study?” he asks abruptly. “Did I ever tell you that?”
Grace is starting to get a headache. The bar starts to feel warm and too bright and too loud. “You have a business degree,” she says indulgently. “Maybe no more shots for you.”
He nods and wobbles in his chair. “That’s what I did study,” he says. “But not what I wanted to study.”
Grace waits.
“Medicine,” Raj says. He stares at her. He looks like the man who was wary of her when she first started working at the tea room. The one that hovered as she learned the different types of tea leaves and how to steep them and how to win over Meera. He looks less like the brother she has come to know, the one who is protective and safe and giving.
“I wanted to study medicine. Mama told me—” He inhales deeply. “She said Baba would understand in time. It was my dream, you know? Become a doctor, make my family proud, tell Baba he would never have to worry about that fucking tea shop again because I was going to take care of him. I’m the oldest, right? I have to take care of my family.”
Grace carefully places her hands across the table, close but not touching.
“You remember how fast Mama got sick,” he says, eyes distant. Raj Bhamra, both here and in the past. “It was like one day she was here, and the next we were barricaded in that house for two weeks.”
“Raj—” she starts.
“I never told anyone,” he admits. “Never said I was a coward who couldn’t look his baba straight in the eye, because I wasn’t sure I could keep the resentment off my face. Resentment, Gracie.” He grabs her hands too tight, like he’s anchoring himself. She lets him. “I resented him. Because I knew I couldn’t tell him I wanted to be a doctor when that fucking tea room was the only thing keeping him going. It was the only thing keeping him going, with us, after she died. You remember.”
She remembers. She remembers the stillness. She remembers how sometimes Baba Vihaan wouldn’t come out of his office at all, the whole day. It would just be Grace and Raj, struggling to keep up appearances so Meera wouldn’t burst into tears. So she wouldn’t start sobbing at the register over someone’s cup and have to apologize—Sorry, my mama just died. Here’s your ginger root tea.
“I hate that tea room,” Raj confesses. He smiles at Grace. “You should see how horrified you look right now.” He takes another shot and gags. “Fuck, that burns.”
“I didn’t know that,” she says quietly. “I thought—I guess I never thought about it. I just always knew the tea room was Baba Vihaan’s and one day it would be yours. I thought that’s what you wanted.”
“Nobody wants to inherit a tea room. But who else is gonna do it? Meera?”
Grace presses her lips together, quiet.
“The worst part is if I told her, she would. If I said, ‘Hey, M, I really, really don’t wanna run this place,’ she’d stop studying psychology. She’d fast-track a business degree, and she’d do it. And I’d win big brother of the year, right?”
“But it’s not fair—” Grace says, and he slams his glass down hard enough that it rattles.
“That’s the point,” he says. “It’s not fair, but that’s what people have to do. It’s life. Sometimes you don’t want to run a goddamn tea room, and in the end maybe you have to run two. We all have responsibilities, and we don’t just get to drop everything when they blow up in our faces.”
“Hey,” she snaps. “This isn’t my fault, okay? You don’t get to take your shit out on me. It’s not like I have it fucking easy—”
“How long are you going to do this?” he asks, eyes flashing with rare anger and upset. “You decided to study astronomy. You decided to get a fucking doctorate. You knew it would be hard, and now that it is, you want to leave us all behind and run away with some girl you don’t even know.”
Grace jerks back. The words come like a tangible slap across the face. “Okay,” she says, and it is a trembling, shaking breath. “Okay.”
“Shit,” Raj murmurs
. “Shit, I didn’t mean that.”
She takes a shot. It burns in her chest, but no more than the burn behind her eyes or on her cheeks, incensed at what he apparently thinks of her.
Raj grabs her hands again. Soft this time. Gentle this time. She can’t look at him.
“Gracie,” he says. “This tequila is hitting at the absolute worst time. Listen. I’m an ass. I’m jealous and upset, but I didn’t mean that. Okay?”
“Okay,” Grace says carefully. “Then, what did you mean?” She snatches her hands away and puts them in her lap. Humiliation burns in her gut, and she finds herself digging painful grooves across her knuckles. “Is that why you’re so upset? Because I had the chance to study medicine like you wanted, and I didn’t? Because I left the tea room, and put my own dream on hold? Because I don’t know what I want or who I am or where the fuck I’m supposed to be? Because I’m realizing I don’t fucking fit?”
“No,” he breathes out. The room is so hot, and it starts to spin. “I shouldn’t have—”
“Because it’s not just hard, Raj. That job, the one my mentor told me had my name written all over it? They questioned every piece of my research. They insinuated that it was Professor MacMillan who had done the work and graciously allowed my name to be included. One of them wondered if my professional memberships with the Black STEM Group and Black LGBTQ Science were advocating division, and they made sure to mention division was not a part of their culture.” She closes her eyes, trying to get a handle on her emotions. “I’ve spent months fielding rejections, Raj, for all the various reasons that they deem wrong with me. I don’t expect to just be handed things, but why the hell not? I spent eleven years doing nothing else but chasing this. Sacrificing so much and running myself into the ground for this. Why shouldn’t it be handed to me now? Why should I have to fight? Haven’t I proved myself enough?”
Her tongue tastes sour from the tequila. “So,” she spits out. “What did you mean?”
He scrubs his hands through his hair. “I wasn’t trying to be the bad guy here.”
“Is that your explanation?”
“No, Porter,” he snaps. “It isn’t. My point is that this was never about you. You buried yourself in your work and your research just to prove Colonel wrong. Everything else, everyone else, came second to that. So, I’m sorry you didn’t get the job. I’m sorry they don’t see you for all the work you’ve done, because it’s good work. You’re a good goddam astronomer, just like you wanted to be, and it fucking sucks that it’s so hard. But, was it worth it? Was it the big fuck-you you wanted it to be? Or not, since everything else has always been less of a priority than breaking your back to prove you’re the best?”
It seems so absurd, but when you’ve known people so long, you know how to love them, and you know how to hurt them. You know all the soft spots where your claws dig in and press.
“Or was the fuck-you running off with a stranger you drunk-married in Vegas? You left us behind like we don’t have our own things that are hard. Like we haven’t spent years holding each other up, because that’s what we do. I can’t help you, I can’t support you, and you can’t support me, when you just leave.” He swallows hard, looking away. “Why do you always think you have to get through everything alone? It doesn’t have to be hard alone.”
Grace grits her teeth so hard, her jaw starts to ache. They shouldn’t be drinking. In the morning, or even in a few hours after he’s gotten sick, Raj will apologize. He’ll call Grace little sister, and they’ll hug it out. Now, though, he’s drunk, and his claws dig deep at the soft parts she forgot she had to protect. His words reveal a truth she’s tried hard to bury: Grace Porter is not as strong as she thought she was, and instead is the lonely, terrified creature she has yet to embrace.
“This is the fuck-you,” she says, throwing her next shot at Raj.
Tequila drips down his face and shirt. It seeps into his hair and his eyes, and she knows it must burn. He waves away someone when they come over to check if things are okay.
This is me, says the monster from the deep. Here I am.
They’re silent. She stares hard at the table, her fingernail digging into the grout.
“Well,” he says finally. “Since we’re drunk and getting things off our chests—is there anything else you’d like to share with the class?”
She can’t help it—she laughs. These tight giggles that offset the way she wants to cry. They laugh, and they’re going to feel this, all of this, in the morning.
“I miss you,” Grace says once they quiet down again. “I miss you and Meera and Ximena and Agnes so much, I can hardly stand it. I’m not alone here, but I am lonely. I don’t know how to be this Grace Porter that isn’t chasing something. I don’t know how to deal with my big, grand plan falling apart.”
Raj listens.
She takes a deep breath.
“I don’t know why I started studying astronomy,” she says quietly. The room sways. “Jesus—maybe it was a fuck-you to Colonel. Maybe I wanted to show him I could do something for me and still be the best. That first year after switching my major, everything just clicked. I was so certain it was what I wanted to do for the rest of my life. And now I have to figure out how to make that happen, and it fucking sucks, okay?”
“I’m sorry,” he murmurs. “I didn’t mean to—to diminish your shit just to talk about my shit. If I could, I’d make it better. I’d fix it.”
“I know.” She blinks down at her hands. “I have no idea how to fix it or make it better. I don’t know exactly what I want anymore. I just know that it includes Yuki. So, I’m here, and I’m trying not to think about the rest of it yet.”
Raj laughs softly. “She seemed a little vicious.”
“She is!” Grace exclaims. “She’s vicious and a little mean and kind and weird and patient and I—I got married to her. I want her, I know that. I just don’t know how to keep her and the rest of it. Eventually I’ll figure out where I need to be, and I don’t know how she fits into that. But I want her to fit. I want to keep her. I want to have one thing that’s just easy. That I don’t have to fight for.”
Raj holds his glass up. “Then we’ll drink to it,” he says. “To deserving things that are easy.”
They clink their glasses together like it is an intention. Grace closes her eyes and wishes for it like kids wish on stars.
Cheers.
* * *
Yuki wakes her up with toothpaste kisses all over her face.
Grace’s mouth tastes like cotton, tongue thick and swollen and a little sore. She blinks awake, and a sleepy Yuki hovers over her, black fringe in her eyes, metal piercings glinting, eyebrows raised.
“You cling like an octopus when you’re drunk,” she says. “And you smell like tequila, get up.”
Grace buries her face in the covers. “I don’t even remember getting home.”
Yuki narrows her eyes. “I had to come pick you up,” she says. “You and your brother owe me big-time. Why did you get that drunk?”
Grace sighs, the night coming back in pieces. “Sibling bonding.”
“Never been happier to be an only child. Now, get up.” Yuki shoves her lightly. “I’ll make you something to eat if you drink some water and take some painkillers.”
She moves to get off the bed, and Grace grabs her wrists and feels the small, delicate bones there. “Thank you,” she murmurs. “For taking care of me and getting me home.”
Yuki ducks her head. A rose flush blooms on her cheeks. “Anytime, Grace Porter.”
Grace follows her into the living room to find Raj buried under the covers on the small couch. All of Yuki’s roommates seem to be asleep or out, so Grace doesn’t feel subconscious pulling her hoodie up and hiding.
“Big brother,” she says, shaking him. “If you don’t get up, I’m telling Meera you can’t hold your liquor.”
An arm shoots
out from under a thin blanket. It grabs Grace’s hand and squeezes.
“You wouldn’t dare,” he wheezes. “I’ll tell her about that time you smoked bad weed and spent the rest of the night trying to tightrope around the toilet seat.”
She shrieks and jumps on top of him, ignoring the way her stomach lurches. “You swore we would never speak of that again,” she hisses. “I’ll tell her about the night you finally got the nerve to ask Ximena out, but you were so drunk you ended up giving your whole speech to a mannequin instead.”
A sharp elbow knocks into her chest. “What about the time you accidentally took molly because the girl who offered it was so nice?” he counters. “You thought it was ibuprofen, and ended up getting stitches because you fell off a four-inch curb.”
He emerges from the blankets. Wild morning hair and bleary eyes glare at her. Grace says, “Like you would ever turn down a politely given pain reliever. Working in the lab gave me back pain, I thought it was obvious!” She shoves him, and he lets out a small oof. “Remember when you showed up to work drunk and Baba Vihaan thought you had a fever from how bad you were sweating?”
“I’m a lightweight,” he says. “Is it a crime? Is it an offense against humanity?”
“Wow,” Yuki says, and they turn. She looks unimpressed. “Is this what it’s like having a sibling?”
Grace collapses on top of Raj, ignoring his long, pained groan. “No judging,” she says. “I’m weak and hungover. Can’t take it.”
Yuki rolls her eyes and makes her way to the kitchen. She’s changed into a long T-shirt that says Some Girls Eat Girls. Grace feels unstoppered adoration flow through her.
“Do you two hungover people want breakfast?” she asks. “We have—” She peers into the fridge. “Rice and leftover pizza, but I’d put my money on the rice. I can make toast, too.”
“Riiiice,” Raj moans. He holds one hand over the top of the couch. “High five for the staple dish of the Asian diaspora.”
Yuki snorts, but she gives him a corny, terrible air high five, and Grace watches in wonder as her ears and neck flush pink, before she turns back around. “I always burn toast,” Yuki says. “So, look forward to that.”
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