Grace Barron hadn't even found a reply before Oakley Ponciano loosened her hand from the back of Grace's neck.
With her palms tucked behind her, Oakley turned to the side counter, shoved her sleeves to her elbows, and, with ceremonial decisiveness, scooped the fish-that-died-with-its-eyes-open into the trash. "I'll clean up with you."
The kitchen was a battlefield—far beyond what one person could reasonably restore. It would take time, patience, and perhaps a minor miracle.
Grace shook her head. "No. You cooked all evening—you're wiped. I'll handle it."
Yes, the dishes had largely perished in action. Still, Oakley had poured herself into the effort. Grace imagined the fatigue settling in those quick hands.
Oakley frowned at her. "You don't get tired at work?"
Grace blinked. "I guess… not that much?"
"Please." Oakley shot her a look. "You walked in looking two minutes from collapse."
Oakley had a way of being blunt that should have stung, and once—after everything—she'd tried to soften that edge. But with Grace, some old self returned, irrepressible and bright. Strange, and a little miraculous.
Skipping the argument, Oakley fed plates into the dishwasher and turned back to wipe the counters.
Grace watched her—competent, if not exactly streamlined—and replayed the question. Tired? At the office, yes. There she'd wanted nothing but the release of quitting time, the promise of horizontal. But now that she was home, something unknotted. The taut chord inside her eased, and with it, most of the weariness.
Together they restored the wrecked kitchen to order. After, Oakley opened the fridge, glanced back. "I bought a lot of fruit today. What are you in the mood for? I can put together a fruit plate for the movie."
Grace stepped over. Half a cantaloupe waited under wrap; a box of strawberries gleamed; a few oranges and several apples nested on the shelf. Under the warm kitchen light the colors looked freshly picked.
"Let's finish the cantaloupe," Grace said, plucking out the leftover half and handing it to Oakley. "Once it's cut, it turns on you fast."
"Deal." Oakley wavered, then grabbed the strawberries too. "But I want these as well."
She was the kind of person who wanted everything on the menu. The sort who built a bubble tea like a parade float—two extra toppings or the day didn't count.
Grace watched her cradle the red-bright carton. "You really love strawberries?"
At the sight of them, Oakley's eyes went starry. Other fruits did not receive such worship.
"Obviously," Oakley said, wiggling the box. "They're the best fruit in the world. At least in mine. Though strawberry-flavored things? Hard pass. I bought a strawberry chocolate out of curiosity once—one bite and I nearly saw the afterlife."
Curiosity kills the cat; Oakley was an entire clowder. She lived to try new things and was regularly ambushed by them. If you summarized her life, it was: walking boldly into rakes.
She often suspected that when God assembled her, He forgot to add a little extra brain-water at the end.
Grace pressed the faucet down and clear water rushed into the basin. The strawberries rose, buoyed by the current, and circled the stream like little planets—impossibly cute.
"What chocolate do you like, then?" Grace asked.
Oakley's mind filled with glossy bars and crinkled wrappers. "Dark. But not punishing. Seventy-five percent is perfect—just enough bitterness to be interesting, everything in proportion."
Grace nodded. "That's a good place to live."
They were often far apart in their ways, and then, suddenly, not.
Oakley drained the basket, tumbled the strawberries onto a plate. "You?"
"I'll eat it," Grace said. "I also love fresh cream truffles."
The smoothness, the hush of it.
"Oh, those. Me too."
A single overlap lit Oakley like a match.
She turned to the cantaloupe and the knife. Where vegetables and meat made her clumsy, fruit turned her deft—quick little cuts, sure hands. She could carve a hundred tricks when she wanted. Tonight she didn't; she pared the rind and cut clean cubes, neat and plentiful.
For a moment, Grace had the oddest sensation that this house belonged to Oakley and she herself was only a guest—someone invited to sit and stay.
They carried their plates down the hall to the screening room.
Only then did Grace realize she hadn't stepped into this room since she'd moved in. There hadn't been time, and when there was, there hadn't been her.
When she'd hired the designer, she'd said one word: comfort. The result was warm and quietly elegant—soft light, a camel-colored sofa, white walls carrying a few measured prints. The sort of space that asks you to exhale.
Grace dimmed the lights. A mellow glow spread across corners and frames.
"By the way," she said as they crossed the threshold, "tomorrow we'll have to get up early. Around seven."
"So early." Oakley, who normally woke when the sun reached for the backs of her knees, grimaced. Discipline, with her, arrived only on special occasions and left without leaving a note.
"Set an alarm," Grace said, then amended, "unless you don't want to. I'll wake you."
"Okay." Oakley flashed an okay with her fingers.
Grace crouched, switched on the projector, and queued up a film called Daylight—an acclaimed romance, famous for its visuals.
The light and shadow work sang, people said. The color was orchestral. The story was simple and, in that simplicity, true—everyday detail laid bare until it glowed.
The opening rolled. They settled into the sofa, shoulder to shoulder.
Grace cut the lights and the room fell into a hush of moving color.
Oakley usually fled from films that felt too quiet, the ones that seemed to evaporate as you watched them. "Didn't expect you to like this type."
Grace had always seemed allergic to the topic of love; Oakley had assumed it extended to what she watched.
Maybe she'd been wrong. Maybe Grace didn't dislike love; maybe she was the opposite—an idealist bruised by impact.
"I'm omnivorous, mostly," Grace said. "I'll try anything. But I do lean toward slow and close to life."
When she'd been new to the world, she'd preferred velocity—big arcs, loud turns. The patient ones bored her, felt like a long walk to nowhere. Then work had grown loud enough to crowd out living, and those gentle films began to look like reminders: be a person, now, here.
"You?" Grace asked.
Oakley rummaged in her mind. "I watch… the gripping ones."
"Such as?"
She pinched her chin, mock-statuesque. "For instance, the kind that open with a corpse."
Grace laughed. "Starts with a death and spends the runtime finding the killer, right?"
She liked those too, once. Liked them so much she could see the seams. After enough years, she could watch ten minutes and map the rest by muscle memory.
Oakley speared a square of cantaloupe. "Exactly. The more stimulation the better—gets my neurons to stop lounging."
She wasn't exaggerating. Unless the film was extraordinary, her attention wandered like a kite. She'd once fallen asleep during an art film with Amelia in a theater—woke to the lights and her own mortification.
"So, mysteries," Grace said. "Makes sense."
"I figured a girl like you would be into arthouse," Grace added.
Oakley snorted. "That's a stereotype."
Perhaps that was the charm—the dissonance. She looked like a dainty sweet thing, and inside she was anything but simple.
In some ways they were opposites, and in others they shared a seam.
Oakley chewed, frowned thoughtfully. "I suddenly get why some guys who approach me lose interest after a while. They think I don't do laundry, don't cook, my mouth is sharp and my energy is—loud. And the ones who try to 'dad' me? I hand them a numbered list and send them home."
Not just men. Even a few women had looked at her that way—during her brief, ill-fated posting on a dating board, a girl who hadn't read the prompt messaged, assumed, and asked: "Are you the 'T'?"
Oakley had been rendered speechless in five languages.
Grace wheezed at Oakley calling herself "masculine." "They're the fragile ones. Insecure. Can't hold you."
Oakley finished her fruit and lifted her brows. "In hindsight, good. I don't like being held by the throat."
She was a mirror—soft with the soft, flinty with the cruel. Who she became depended on who stood across from her.
Which, okay, did sound a little "masculine." And compared to Grace, she was wildfire to Grace's dark, fertile soil.
She tapped Grace's arm. "Hey. You don't think I'm… too masculine, do you?"
Grace turned to look at her. There were contradictions braided through Oakley's presence—brightness and bite, play and steel—and somehow they made harmony. No label could catch a living person; tags were for boxes, not hearts.
She met Oakley's eyes, then looked back at the subtitles. "It's not 'masculine.' It's direct."
A beat, then, almost to herself, "It's interesting."
Oakley's body loosened; the answer fit. Maybe that was why Grace grew easier to look at—the more Oakley listened, the more she liked what she heard.
Oakley rolled her eyes, teasing. "You keep saying interesting, interesting. Where, exactly, is the interesting? Explain."
Grace watched the text drift up the screen. "It means you're rare."
And she meant it. In all her years, she had never met a girl quite like Oakley Ponciano.