Honey Girl

by Morgan Rogers

  They bicker, and Grace goes over the specifics in her head. She can’t take Meera, because the trip is set for March, and she’ll have class. Grace would love for Raj to come, but she knows how much he loves the tea room. He would never want to leave Baba Vihaan to scramble alone with Meera, even for a few days.

  That leaves Ximena and Agnes. She knows Ximena will commiserate while they’re forced to Travel While Black, and Agnes won’t let her stay in her head the whole time. What happens in Vegas will be experienced fully, and not sidelined by all the stress of completing her doctorate program. She’ll set foot in Vegas with her mission completed, her success achieved.

  “Thank you,” she says, when she finally finds her voice. “I can’t wait.”

  Colonel raises his eyebrows. “Well, you have plenty to keep you busy until then,” he says pointedly. “One last semester. Stick to your plan. Don’t let the promise of a trip derail you. You have big things to accomplish.”

  Your plan, he says.

  “I know,” she tells them. “I’ll stick to the plan. I always do.”

  August 26, 2020

  The night before Grace’s birthday, she goes with Yuki to the radio station. She sits in the second swivel chair and watches Yuki bring creatures to life with her slow, melodic voice.

  Tonight, the show is about selkies. She listens to Yuki talk about seals becoming trapped in human flesh and their skins being hidden from them, leaving them imprisoned with men.

  “Sometimes people feel ownership over the things that make us us,” Yuki says into the mic. “Sometimes the things that are familiar to us and feel safe to us, remnants of our childhood and old lives, are locked away by someone who wants us to be different and look different and follow their rules. Sometimes lonely creatures are not of their own making.”

  Grace leaves the room, her nails digging into her palms. Sometimes the stories feel too familiar, too lived. Sometimes Grace does not want to relate to a monster in a story.

  She sits in the hallway, earbuds in so she does not hear Yuki wrapping up the show. Grace is engaged in a debilitating round of Candy Crush when a shadow falls over her. She looks up, and Blue is looking down, big headphones wrapped around her neck.

  “You good?” she asks. “Yuki got an idea for another episode, so she might be a few minutes. You know how she gets.”

  Grace nods. Yuki gets single-minded and quiet and snappish when she has an idea, barely blinking and frustrated with anyone who interrupts her thoughts.

  Blue flops down next to Grace, smelling like cigarette smoke and bubblegum and hair grease. “What’s up with you?” she asks. “Usually you’re in there making googly eyes at your girl.”

  Grace laughs. The sound echoes in the empty hallway. “I’m not that bad,” she says. “I don’t know. I’ve been having this existential crisis about my place in the world and what I’m supposed to be doing with my life and who I even am.” She scrunches her nose. “Really inconvenient.”

  “Oof.” Blue bumps Grace’s shoulder. “Big mood.”

  Surprised, Grace turns to look at her. Tonight, she has her braids twisted up into two space buns, and she blinks back at Grace with bright yellow eyeshadow and gold hoops that say Bitch across the middle.

  “Really, though?” she asks. “Sometimes it feels like I’m too old for this. I’m about to turn twenty-nine. Like, while I was busy getting a PhD everyone else was figuring all this stuff out. I feel so behind.”

  “You give other people too much credit, okay?” Blue says. “Everyone’s just pretending they have it together, because they don’t realize everyone else is pretending to have it together. None of our dumbasses actually have it together.” She frowns. “Maybe people with generational wealth and access to resources that allow them to prosper in the middle to upper class? But that’s it. Just them.”

  “Very specific,” Grace murmurs.

  Blue smiles. “This is late stage capitalism, man. We have debt and will never be able to retire. Yaaaaay.”

  The studio door opens, and Yuki looks down at them. “My ‘capitalism is a plague’ radar was going off,” she says. “Figured I’d come join the fun.”

  Blue gets up. “Your space girl just needed a pep talk. Be nice to her.”

  “I’m always nice to her,” Yuki complains. “You catching the bus, Blue? We can wait with you.”

  Blue’s already shoving her backpack over her shoulder. “Got a ride,” she says. “And when we get back to my place, I got a riiiiide.”

  Yuki gags. Grace covers her face with her hands. “Get out,” Yuki says. “Get out!”

  “Don’t forget to shut everything down!” Blue yells, cackling as she sprints down the hall.

  “Ugh.” Yuki gags again.

  Grace looks up. “All done?” she asks.

  Yuki nods. “It’s after midnight. Happy birthday, Honey Girl,” she says. She holds her hand out. “Come on. I want to take you home.”

  At the apartment, she lays Grace out on the bed. She kisses her mouth, and her neck, and her breasts, and the flat expanse of her stomach. She leaves her own matching bruise on Grace’s narrow hips and smiles in the dim light at the shuddering noises Grace makes.

  “You’re so sweet,” Yuki croons. “Just like honey.”

  She threads their fingers together. “Are you sweet everywhere, Grace Porter?”

  It is their first time this close, this laid bare. It is the first time Grace sees all of the pink creases and soft skin and gentle curves that make up Yuki Yamamoto. It is the first time Yuki sees Grace golden from head to toe, with gold-dusted goose bumps and sun-colored hair prickling on her thighs.

  Grace shakes apart at the feeling of Yuki’s tongue on her, in her. She arches off the bed, pulled back down to earth by Yuki’s fingers. She keeps hold of Grace, so she does not float away.

  “Yuki,” she whispers, eyes pressed shut. “Yuki, fuck.”

  Yuki looks up. Her eyes are dark, and her lips glisten. She is a monster, a siren, pulling Grace down and down and down. There is salt and burning sea in Grace’s lungs. She does not want to come up for air.

  Yuki eats her out while Grace comes, shuddering and clenching her thighs around the head of the girl between them. She kisses up Grace’s heaving belly, her sweat-slick chest. She kisses Grace’s fluttering eyelashes. She pushes back the honey-gold curls so they splay on the sheets like treasure.

  “Good?” she asks, mouth swollen.

  Grace closes her eyes and nods. Tears streak down the sides of her face as she squirms with oversensitivity as Yuki’s fingers keep stroking her.

  “Good,” she gasps out. “You’re so good, Yuki Yamamoto.”

  It is her birthday, and the summer’s end nears. Grace holds on to her good thing with clutched fingers and an aching heart. She holds on for dear life, and she realizes she does not want to let go.

  * * *

  Grace wakes up to a phone full of missed calls and texts. There are voice mails from Sharone and Colonel and Mom. She scrolls through everything sleepily, sending a bleary selfie to the group chat with all her friends back home.

  “You should not be allowed to look like that as soon as you wake up,” Yuki murmurs, digging her chin into Grace’s shoulder. Yuki is bed-mussed and mellow, hair still tussled from the fingers that twisted and pulled at it.

  Grace feels heat in her belly at the reminder. She feels heat in her face, and though her brown skin doesn’t blush, she still knows it’s written all over her.

  “Grace Porter,” Yuki teases, laughing quietly as Grace hides under a pillow. “Are you shy? You didn’t seem like it when I had my—”

  “Okay,” Grace interrupts. “It’s my birthday. No jokes. I’m banning jokes.”

  Yuki grins at her. “Fine.” She kisses Grace’s neck. There is nothing hesitant, no pause. They have seen the other at their barest, most vulnerable. They have
left their soft parts unguarded and raw. “Happy birthday,” she says softly. “I think there’s probably a surprise waiting for you in the kitchen once you’re up.”

  “A surprise?” Grace smooths out Yuki’s hair. She presses gentle fingers to the wine-purpling bruises on her jaw and the tender skin on her neck. Grace really did a number on her. “From your roommates?”

  Yuki stretches, and Grace takes it all in. The way Yuki is dimpled and squishy and sharp and thorned all at once. “You’ve been here all summer,” Yuki says, rolling out of bed. Her shirt barely touches her thighs. “They’re not just my roommates. They’re your friends.”

  “Oh,” Grace whispers, though it shouldn’t surprise her. She may be lonely, feel lonely, wanting to take the world on by herself, but she has never really been alone. She is still trying to absorb that. “Yeah. My friends.”

  Yuki holds her hand out. “Come on. I want cake for breakfast.”

  There is, in fact, cake. Dhorian and Sani present it to her as she sits at the head of their coffee table, and Fletcher sings an off-pitch version of “Happy Birthday.” It’s not the Stevie Wonder version, and Grace doesn’t even call him out on it.

  “You guys didn’t have to,” she says, taking a bite. It’s French vanilla with cream cheese frosting, and it tastes so sweet on her tongue. There is a lick of frosting at the corner of Yuki’s mouth, and Grace kisses it away. That tastes sweet, too.

  Sani frowns. “Of course we did,” he says. “It’s your birthday.”

  “Your twenty-ninth birthday,” Dhorian adds. “It’s a milestone. Last year before you’re officially old.”

  Grace stares down at the cake. The blue and purple icing that makes up a night sky. The little astronaut set delicately on top. She is twenty-nine years old today, in a new city with new faces. Later, she will call the old ones, and they will all start to mesh. They will just be her friends, and there will be no distinction.

  “A milestone,” she repeats, picking up the little plastic astronaut. “I made it, huh?”

  “You made it,” Yuki confirms. “You can do whatever the fuck you want.”

  “I want more cake,” Grace says decisively.

  There is more cake. Fletcher sets up the game system, and then there is an impromptu Mario Kart tournament. There is wine, even though it’s late morning, and shouting, and even more cake. Grace finds herself sipping a glass, situated on the floor and pressed back against Yuki’s legs.

  “Why are you so bad at this game?” Grace asks when Dhorian wins again. He’s in his scrubs, ready to leave for a shift soon. He’s beaten Yuki on this course three times in a row. “Shouldn’t you be trying to impress me?”

  “I don’t have to impress you,” Yuki says, clicking Replay. “You already married me.”

  Grace smiles down at her phone. Everyone has been texting her all day, full of exclamation marks and emojis. Raj and Meera sent a video of Baba Vihaan wishing her a happy birthday, and Ximena and Agnes sent a picture of them in her bed, little party hat stickers edited onto the photo.

  Grace checks her email. There is the normal onslaught of brand-sponsored birthday wishes, and she keeps the ones that Yuki can use as retail therapy later. She swipes more of them into the trash, the movement almost therapeutic.

  She swipes left and freezes. This one isn’t trash.

  Professor MacMillan.

  Dear Dr. Porter,

  I hope your summer has been well. I come bearing news regarding our last conversation.

  “Shit,” Grace mutters. She pushes herself up, phone gripped tightly in her hand as she makes her way down the hall.

  “Everything okay?” Yuki asks. Grace hears her familiar footsteps thumping behind her.

  “Fine,” she murmurs absently, fear and anticipation battling in her. “I just got an email from my advisor.”

  “And you have to read it right now?”

  “Yes,” Grace says. “She said it’s regarding our last conversation. The one where we talked about jobs. Where we talked about the job I was supposed to have when I graduated.”

  Yuki shuts her bedroom door behind them. “I thought you didn’t even want that job. They were total assholes to you. Isn’t that why you walked out?”

  Grace takes a deep breath. “That’s not the point. The point is that I was groomed for it. Professor MacMillan basically said it was guaranteed for me as her mentee. It was the next checkpoint in my plan, and I didn’t get it. I should have gotten it.”

  “So, you wanted it even though you didn’t actually want it?” Yuki squints at her. “Grace, that doesn’t make any sense. Fuck that company.”

  Grace opens the email. “You don’t get it,” she says. “It completely derailed everything I’d been working for, and it wasn’t fair—”

  “You got a doctorate in astronomy and it all hinges on one job?”

  “You’re not listening—”

  “I’m just trying to understand—”

  “Yuki,” Grace says firmly. “Let me read this email.”

  Yuki walks over to the bed, situating herself hip to shoulder with Grace. “Go ahead and read it. Let’s see what she has to say.”

  As your mentor, it weighed heavily on my mind that the opportunity I facilitated did not have the expected outcome. Like I said in my office, you are a great astronomer, Grace, capable of great things.

  You have flourished under my tutelage and harnessed an energy and drive in this field that is unmatched. Such a talented scientist should never be made to feel small. With that said, I have reached out to the company once more and spoken directly with my colleagues there. They have agreed to a second interview, which will serve as a blank slate. I hope you will consider this opportunity to showcase the immeasurable work you have accomplished over eleven years.

  In addition, this summer I have had the pleasure of remotely collaborating with Dr. Liz Hawthorne at Ithaca College. She has advised me that they are looking to recruit a junior faculty member and wondered if I had any contacts. They are a small but formidable team in upstate New York, and under Dr. Hawthorne’s guidance, I believe you would excel in teaching the same way you excelled in my lab. I forwarded your information, so she should be in touch soon.

  As your mentor, I have your best professional interests in mind, Grace. Hopefully these opportunities are a step in the right direction. I would love to hear your thoughts on them.

  Regards,

  Professor Rebekah MacMillan

  “Holy shit,” Yuki says. “A department in New York. I mean, Ithaca is far, but it’s not as far as Portland. Do you think Fletch would let us borrow his dad’s car for the drive up?” She flops back on the bed. “And the nerve of that company giving you a blank slate. They are the ones that need a blank slate. They—” She cuts herself off. “Okay, you’re not saying anything.”

  “I wonder what she said to them,” Grace says, staring at the screen. “I mean, I was not nice about leaving. Why would they have agreed to meet me again?”

  “Does it matter?” Yuki asks warily. “You’re not actually going to meet with them again, are you?”

  “No.” What would be the point? She’s not going to give them the chance to make her feel small again. “But, Professor MacMillan went out of her way to set this up for me. It would also be nice to see them admit they were wrong.”

  Yuki sighs. “Nice, but probably not going to happen. You know that. What about Ithaca? I told you that you’d be good at teaching. Seems like someone else knows it, too.”

  “It’s a bad idea.”

  “Why? Because it’s not some high-tech place with shiny, new equipment?”

  Grace turns around, narrowing her eyes. “You heard what she said. They’re ‘small but formidable.’ That means they’re understaffed and underequipped and underfunded. How could I thrive there? How could I be the best without the best resources and facili
ties available to me?”

  Yuki raises her eyebrows. “You know all that from an email?”

  Grace grits her teeth. “Going there would confirm it. I’ve worked too hard to just settle. And, like, okay. Maybe I do want to go into teaching. It’s a good idea, and it makes sense for me. I want the best university, then.”

  “What does best even mean in your head?” Yuki sits up, fingers twisting in the blankets. “What is best for you, Grace Porter? The best place to prove yourself? The best place to spend the next eleven years running yourself into the ground? Or does best mean maybe teaching some snot-nosed freshmen in a place that gives you room to take care of yourself? Where you can learn and grow and even fight for more without completely burning yourself out?”

  Grace blinks. “So best means Ithaca College? Or just any school as long as it’s in New York?”

  “You know that is not what I’m saying.”

  “I don’t, actually,” Grace says, standing up. She paces the width of the room, fingers digging into her arms. “Tell me what you think best means for me after eleven years. It means—settling? Just because it’s easier?”

  Yuki sits up and meets her eyes. They are both still in their pajamas. Still morning crumpled, but Grace feels like an exposed live wire. She feels it sparking off her fingertips, too hot and too fast. Yuki says, “Since when is easier such a bad thing?”

  “I don’t understand what you’re saying,” Grace tells her. “What are you saying?”

  “I’m saying I want you to stay,” Yuki argues. “That is what I’m saying, Grace Porter. I want you to stay.”

  Grace swallows hard. “I do want to stay.”

  “Then what’s so goddamn hard about it?” Yuki stands up, all of her frustration right in front of Grace. “Isn’t that what this summer has been about? Getting to know each other? Getting to—” She clenches her jaw. “Getting to love each other?”

  Grace angrily wipes her eyes. None of this is fair; it has never been fair. “Yes. But that doesn’t change anything. The reason I talk about being the best,” she says, voice ragged, “is because that is the only way anybody will see me. I have to be the best and do the best. I have to work so hard it kills me, because anything less is just an excuse not to let me in the door. Anything less means I’m not fighting hard enough.”