Grace Barron tipped her head and studied her. "Why are you scolding me all of a sudden?"
"I'm not scolding you." Oakley Ponciano pressed her lips together, searched for the right phrasing, and toyed with her fingers. "I'm… complimenting you. Saying you're cute."
She had truly never met anyone quite like Grace.
Most people, as they drift further into adulthood, develop a habit of skimming over the small edges of life, telling themselves it's nothing, that details don't matter. They cut corners without noticing they're cutting them. Grace was the opposite—serious and precise with every little thing, like a person who insists on smoothing the corner of a page even if no one else will ever see it. That kind of simplicity—unsullied by cynicism—was disarming. And, yes, so very endearing.
Grace's smile lifted at the tips; her brows arched, a laugh living there. Her thumb slipped, and she swiped past another image without meaning to.
Oakley cocked her head, curious. "Is that a group photo?"
On the screen, forty—maybe fifty—students crowded the stone steps that met the edge of the school field, a packed mosaic of faces. From a distance they blurred into one bristling, indistinct cluster—names and features impossible to pry apart.
"Yeah," Grace said, pinching to zoom. "Our graduation picture."
She'd been browsing her old social-media album earlier—nostalgia, the harmless kind—and saved it on a whim.
Oakley leaned in. Every kid was standing ramrod straight in black-and-white uniforms. The cut was oversized and boxy—stubbornly shapeless, as if designed by committee. From a distance it looked like a huddle of small penguins. Oakley couldn't help it—the thought bloomed and wouldn't leave: how do schools everywhere manage to make uniforms so spectacularly unflattering? Maybe that was the strategy: dress them out of vanity so they'd stop preening and study.
Grace was taller than most; Oakley's eye found her at once.
She glanced from photo-Grace to the living woman beside her, frowning in a puzzled way that made Grace laugh.
"What?" Grace asked, meeting the appraising, factory-inspector stare and not quite knowing what crime she'd committed.
"You keep saying you weren't pretty back then. How am I supposed to see a difference?" Oakley wasn't trying to soothe her. The camera didn't lie: tall, slim, pale, features cut clean. Even drowning in an ugly uniform and wearing the simplest of hair, Grace drew the eye. The word "plain" had never once touched that face.
Oakley swore she wasn't stacking the deck with affection.
"That was after the braces came off," Grace said.
Graduation had already eased past the worst of it: no more wire across the smile; her hair had grown out enough to soften the angles.
"Anyway, you've got good bones." Oakley braced her chin in her palm, tilted her head, and studied her with maddening care. "I'm especially partial to your left side."
"Why?" Grace's brow knit. "Is there something wrong with the right?"
"No, no." Oakley wagged a finger. "Your face is nicely symmetrical. It's just… I love that tiny beauty mark under your left eye."
It was the dot that brings the whole picture to life—the finishing touch that threaded a glimmer of mischief through Grace's naturally cool reserve. When she looked closely at you, that mark drew the eye and made her gaze feel intimate in a way that felt a little dangerous.
Especially at close range, whenever Grace turned those eyes on her, Oakley's heartbeat remembered how to run. Because of that speck of ink and light, Grace's way of looking at someone became something else entirely.
Most of the time Grace was only… looking. Oakley, however, kept feeling flirted with.
"Is that so?" Grace murmured. Mirrors, for her, had always been functional; she rarely lingered on them long enough to have opinions.
"It is. You know, people actually dot one on with makeup now." Oakley's focus drifted, snared by Grace's hair. "Honestly? You'd look gorgeous if you colored it a black-tea brown. It's understated, but alive. It gives a quiet elegance, a little lift. Good for work too—fresh without shouting."
"Black tea… brown?" Names of shades slid right off Grace; she couldn't have told you the difference between chestnut and espresso if it saved her life.
It struck her then: all these years, she'd barely looked at herself, not really. She entered clothing stores only when necessity poked her in the shoulder. She walked into a salon not for a new self but because her hair got in the way. The only ritual she fussed over was skin care—not out of vanity, but because tight, neglected skin felt like wearing a shirt one size too small.
"Mhm." Oakley nodded—and froze mid-nod.
There were thin red threads in Grace's eyes now, fatigue pooling behind them; weariness clung to her in a way that made her look like a bamboo stalk in a hard wind, upright but fragile.
Oakley glanced at the clock. Midnight had slipped in without knocking.
Grace had worked all day and then spent half the night kneading Oakley's shoulders. She had to be wrung out.
"All right." Oakley pressed the phone gently from Grace's hands. "Look at you. You're falling asleep on your feet. Bed."
"Okay." Grace set the phone on the nightstand. "Lights?"
"Lights," Oakley said, lying down first.
A soft click, and the room dissolved into darkness.
They slid into the same pocket of warmth beneath the duvet and let silence fill the shape of two bodies there.
Oakley found, inconveniently, that sleep had left the building. She'd been heavy-lidded after finishing work, but now her mind was a restless tide. Every small thing Grace had done, every quiet thing she had said, drifted back to Oakley one by one, sweet and precise as beads on a string. Each detail, absurdly, was adorable.
Grace had called her cute earlier. Oakley, grinning into the dark, thought the truth ran the other way.
Morning.
When Grace woke, Oakley was exactly as she'd left her: asleep, lashes casting fine shadows, nose fine and sure, cheek soft as the inside of a peach. The kind of face you never tire of looking at, because it kept offering you something new and tender each time.
Grace slipped from the bed without disturbing a single fold of sheet. She lifted the duvet edge like one might lift a page in a book. She slid her feet into slippers with care that verged on reverent; every motion was an apology for making one at all.
She eased the door shut behind her and crossed the hallway to her own room.
In the dressing area, she chose two pieces and dressed, tugging cuffs and collar until they obeyed. Then, remembering Oakley's throwaway praise for her left side, she bent closer to the mirror. The beauty mark. She found it. Looked at it for a long time. A slow, private smile arrived. Pretty? Maybe… yes.
She shut a cabinet, pulled her hair out from the jacket collar, gathered a folder and her tablet, then stepped into the hall.
The door clicked. She turned—and nearly walked into Iris Rowan.
"Grace—" Iris had the greeting loaded and almost fired.
Grace lifted a finger to her lips before the second syllable could escape. A gentle imperative, but an imperative nonetheless. "Shh. Oakley's still sleeping."
Iris closed her mouth and nodded, chastened and a little dazed.
Grace didn't linger. She moved for the stairs; Iris fell in step, quiet as a shadow.
Only when they reached the living room and Grace set her things on the coffee table did Iris sidle closer. "So… that situation of mine? Are we… okay?"
She hadn't slept much for worrying, doom-scrolling herself into a stupor around three or four in the morning. Even then, the sleep she caught was thin and shredded. At dawn she'd sprinted back online and found—thank God—the tide turning. Public sentiment was drifting in her favor.
Vivian Louis had a bigger name and more fans, yes. But her behavior had been ugly—no polite way to soften it. Her PR team had pushed out a statement trying to tilt the narrative: Iris wasn't exactly a saint either, and so on. It rang hollow to anyone not already committed to defending her. Fans doubled down, and their blind loyalty only provoked the rest of the internet to push back harder.
To the average onlooker, Vivian had stepped over a line. If your ex's current partner came at you from a high horse with a needle in their voice, who wouldn't flare? Some said if it had been them, they would've gone further than Iris had. As for the slaps—well, they called them light enough to leave pride bruised and little else.
"For now, that's what it looks like," Grace said, moving to the coffee machine. She poured beans into the grinder. "But stay alert. Your agent's going to reach out, pick you up, walk you through the next steps."
"Okay." Iris was so grateful it made her smaller; obedience became her whole strategy. For once, she didn't dare improvise.
Grace thought a moment and added, "Right or wrong aside, you went too far. The company will have to respond to that. There'll be consequences. Don't repeat this. Ever."
"Understood." Iris nodded hard, grateful and chastened at once.
"Coffee?" Grace held the tin in one hand, the question in the other.
"Please." A beat, then, softly: "Thank you, Grace."
"You're welcome."
She brewed two cups, handed one to Iris, and took her own to the floor-to-ceiling window. Winter had its hand on the city's shoulder; Skylark was already wearing that cold, dim shawl that makes everyone walk faster.
Only now did it dawn on Grace how much time had passed since she'd first added Oakley on apptalk. Back then, Skylark still sweated even in fall; the heat lingered like a guest who wouldn't take the hint. Now the city had changed clothes. A boy at dusk had turned into an old man by morning.
Coffee, then a quick breakfast. Grace gathered herself and left for the office—today for clearing the deck, tomorrow for a business trip.
When Oakley finally woke, Iris had already been whisked away. The apartment lay in a kind of generous hush.
She remembered she was heading to see Natalie Pierce today. She washed up, dressed, and stepped into the hall—then stopped at Grace's door, struck by a small, unhelpful impulse.
She opened it and leaned in. The bed was neat, the room a square of order. Remembering Grace's "There might be a mouse in there" from last night, she laughed out loud at herself.
Her memory, apparently, had the staying power of mist.
Just like that, every unkind thing Grace had said—the ones that stung because they mattered—had drifted clear again. Not forgotten, precisely; simply… unhooked. Not worth getting caught on.
Deep down, she wasn't the brooding type. She wanted to be, sometimes. But the truth of her was bright and quickly-moving.
She headed out, stopped at a café for two warm croissants and a bowl of oatmeal, and, after paying, drove straight to Natalie's.
By the time she arrived, boxes were stacked in modest towers by the shop's glass door. Natalie stood among them with a small notebook and a pen, the kind of calm efficiency that made a person feel that, yes, things would get done. She might have been counting stock. She might have been balancing the ledger.
When she saw Oakley, Natalie lifted her head and smiled. "You made it!"
"I did." Oakley glanced at the pavement, then back up. "Do we carry these in now?"