Page 122 of Breakup Buddies
And Grace had to agree.
Later that night, after everyone had gone — Helen was staying with Connie, mercifully, instead of Aunt Sylvia — the house had gone still except for the whir of the ceiling fan and the hum ofcrickets outside. Grace stood by the sliding doors, looking out at the pool. The reflection of the lights shimmered across the surface like melted gold.
Icarus was asleep in his new cat bed. Sheila had claimed the highest shelf in the office. Boxes were stacked by the hallway, waiting for another day.
Grace felt it all press in on her — the stillness, the fullness, the miracle of ordinary peace. The faint sound of Phyllis’s song drifted again through the night. “Snowed in with you, nothing else to do, but love you till the morning comes.”
Behind her came a sleepy voice. “Baby? You coming to bed?”
Grace turned. Alix was standing in the bedroom doorway, wearing a Roxxxy T-shirt, hair mussed from humidity, face turned toward the glow of the lamp. The heirloom blanket was artfully tossed over the end of the bed.
Grace crossed the room and let Alix tug her down into the sheets, into warmth and tangled limbs and everything that felt like home.
For a while they just lay there, the air humming with crickets and far-off laughter from down the street.
“I used to think this kind of happiness was something that happened to other people,” Grace whispered.
Alix brushed her fingers along Grace’s jaw. “And now?”
Grace smiled, tears pricking the corners of her eyes. “Now I think I was just waiting for you.”
Alix exhaled a laugh that broke halfway into a sob. “Was it worth the wait?”
Grace touched Alix’s cheek with her fingertips, a gentle, grounding touch. “Of course, baby. Was I?” Grace asked.
Alix leaned in, her voice low, steady, full of everything she’d once been too scared to hope for. “You’re it, Grace. My home, my heart, my future. All of it.”
Grace kissed her, slow and certain. “Good. Because I’m not going anywhere.”
Alix’s fingers slid into her hair, deepening the kiss until it became something wordless — heat and promise tangled together. Hands roamed, slipping beneath waistbands, and eventually their clothes were flung across the room. The rhythm of them matched the hum of the night, a slow tide rising and breaking in perfect sync. She’d never get enough of this, of Alix’s hands and mouth and body. Grace gasped against Alix’s skin, biting at the floral tattoo on her shoulder, the air thick with everything they didn’t need to say.
Outside, the pool lights shimmered across the water, pale blue and silver.
And for the rest of her life, Grace would remember that night. The night she realized that home wasn’t a place she’d found. It was the person she’d chosen. And this was how their forever began.
