Two days felt stingy. Grace Barron wanted more—hours she could stack carefully between her palms and spend with Oakley Ponciano without glancing at clocks. So she redrafted her entire schedule, dragging what came after into the now, cramming, compressing, making room.
To pull it off, she shifted into a sterner gear at work. Grace was never a chatterbox; now her quiet hardened at the edges. The door to her office might as well have read: Do Not Disturb.
At lunch, a trio of women slipped out, passed that door, and carried its weather with them to a nearby noodle bar. The one with the blunt bob cupped her cheeks and sighed, "Her office doesn't exist in the same climate as ours."
"Right? It's like a tunnel to the South Pole," said the high ponytail, peeling a napkin to polish an already immaculate tabletop.
It was odd. Grace didn't yell, not really; even her temper arrived as a frost rather than a flame. Unlike Mr. Lee next door, who'd been bottle-fed dynamite and detonated over anything.
But when it came to the question of most intimidating person at the firm, a hush fell and heads tilted toward Grace as if guided by a compass.
The tall one in a lilac blouse—C—let out a dry little hum. "Poor Antarctic creature, having to punch a timecard in human society."
There was vinegar in her voice. C had once chased Grace, loudly, stubbornly, after everyone warned her it was like courting a glacier. She'd thrown everything she had at it, and the ice had not so much as cracked. The rejections had become office legend—told with jeweled schadenfreude.
The bob-cut woman cleared her throat. "Do you think she'll be single forever? Like, forever forever?"
C's mouth twisted. "If she isn't, no one is."
Resentment still clung to her like cologne. True indifference doesn't rehearse speeches.
Ponytail leaned in, conspiratorial. "Except—I heard she's seeing someone."
Two sets of eyes snapped to her.
"Seriously? Is that reliable? Isn't she the 'emotionally inert' type?" Bob-cut chewed on the gossip with open delight. Grace's statements about not dating had always sounded less like an excuse and more like a theorem.
Ponytail faltered. "Maybe I misheard. I… think someone mentioned it."
C folded her arms. "If she does have a partner, I pity them."
Two pairs of glasses rose on two noses.
"I mean, yeah," said bob-cut. "Date someone wildly successful and your bank account might smile, but the rest? Good luck."
C clicked her tongue. "Imagine the boredom. Grace would be allergic to fireworks."
Ponytail glanced up as steaming bowls arrived. "What kind of woman could live with that?"
C shrugged. "A saintly homemaker who never asks for anything. No needs, no opinions, no demands for emotional labor. Because a normal person needs tenderness sometimes. Grace? She can't give that."
The names slipped to the informal—no "Ms. Barron"—because resentment, like steam, needs a vent.
"True," the other two murmured.
Back at the office, Grace sneezed out of nowhere.
Weird. A cold? She didn't feel cold.
She shook it off and kept typing.
After lunch, Oakley washed her hair, dried it into a simple shape, added a quick daytime face, and drove to the new mall to meet Natalie Pierce—partly to chat, partly to look at clothes.
Her closet was already a garden of colors and cuts. That wasn't the point. Before a trip, old things looked suddenly wrong-footed, a half step out of rhythm.
They pulled in almost at once, spotted each other, and waved—two pins dropped on the same map.
Natalie looked as she always did: a distant ridge wrapped in gauze-cloud, elegant, elusive, a person you could look at and still fail to catch.
"Natalie!" Oakley ran the last steps and looped an arm through hers.
"What timing," Natalie said, amused. "I was just reaching for my phone."
"Shared brain cell," Oakley grinned, steering them into a boutique hung with early spring. "Let me see what the season's up to."
Something in her voice was light as bells. Natalie studied her profile and smiled. "You look… luminous."
"Do I?" Oakley tugged a jacket free. "Guess the fortune-teller was right—marriage reversed my luck."
"That's because you married well," Natalie said. "If she were unreliable, your days wouldn't shine like this."
Oakley glowed at the praise. "Right? I've never met anyone like her."
"So you've fallen," Natalie said gently.
Oakley might have dodged once upon a time; now she didn't bother. "We're married. Falling or not doesn't change the calendar, does it?"
Ninety percent of her, she felt, had already signed over its name.
"Good," Natalie said. "A good marriage is a kindness the world doesn't hand out often."
She was thinking about fate—how some people were born with velvet under them, how even a "mock" match made in rebellion could turn, inexplicably, into a safe harbor. Not like her. She had learned the cost of leaning. Self-reliance wasn't a virtue; it was a survival mechanism.
"What about you?" Oakley teased. "Ready to try dating? That customer you mentioned—the one who seemed into you—"
"She is," Natalie said, cutting in without drama.
Oakley blinked. "I was right?"
"I gave her extra dumplings at winter solstice. She returned the kindness—and confessed."
"That far already?" Oakley gaped. "And then?"
"I refused."
Expected, but still a small sting of disappointment. "I thought you liked her. You said she was kind. Cute, even."
"She is kind." Natalie's smile was soft and sad. "But she's covered me in filters. In her head I'm a serene, steady, enchanting thing. I'm not. She knows too little; what she likes is a projection. Besides, with her qualities, she can find the version she's dreaming of."
Her lashes lowered, veiling an emotion Oakley couldn't quite read—peace, yes, and under it a fine seam of grief.
It wasn't the first time Oakley had seen that expression on Natalie's face, a grace built over ruins.
"Be honest," Oakley said at last. "What happened to you? Underneath everything, you're… pessimistic."
Natalie often looked breezy. But Oakley had always felt the breeze rose from a colder sea.
Natalie didn't answer. She never did, not when the question pressed. The silence was an old pattern, familiar enough to hurt.
Oakley exhaled. "I count you as a real friend. It sometimes feels like you don't count me as yours."
She said it without accusation. She told Natalie everything; Natalie's half of the bridge stayed misted. The distance bred doubt: What am I to you, really?
Natalie stopped and turned. "I'm sorry I made you feel that way," she said with a small smile. "It's not that I don't want to tell you. I just… don't know how to meet it yet."
Oakley swallowed the impulse to push. "Okay," she said softly, and nodded toward a shop across the way. "Come on. That one."
"Okay."
Skylark's winter froze a lot of things—hands, breath, the tempo of the street—but not time. Blink, and the travel day arrived.
They met at the airport. The flight was at eight, tight for someone leaving from the office. By the time Grace closed her laptop and threaded traffic, food was a luxury. She let it go.
Straps clicked. Oakley looked around the cabin and murmured, "I hope it's as beautiful as it looks online, not just… 'influencer angles.'"
Modern life made everything glossy, and in the gloss, truth blurred.
"It will be," Grace said. "Sabrina Myers went. She swears the photos undersell it."
"Sabrina's there?" Oakley blinked. "What a coincidence."
"She wanted to get out of Skylark. Quiet down, for a bit. She went first, liked it, told me to add it to the list."
"Will we meet her?"
Grace rested her hands on her knees. "We'll see. Depends on time."
"Don't we have four or five days now?" Oakley tilted her head, counting on her lip.
Grace smiled.
"What?" Oakley asked, puzzled.
"Let me say it another way," Grace murmured, lifting her eyes. "I don't know if four or five days will be enough for us."
Oakley looked at her and couldn't stop the little curve at the corner of her mouth.
So that was it. Grace worried about time because she liked the two-person world they made.
"Okay," Oakley said. "We'll see."
At ten-thirty they landed—late, rain soft as silk trailing down in the glow of streetlamps. They ordered takeout, showered, let the night close around them.
When Grace stepped out of the bathroom, she thumbed a message to someone she'd coordinated with. The send had barely chimed when Oakley's voice rose behind her: "What are you doing?"
Grace started, pocketed the phone. "Nothing."
"Really?" Oakley narrowed her eyes, suspicious.
"Really."
"Fine." Oakley shrugged and poured herself a mug of hot water.
Maybe it was the afternoon coffee; maybe it was the hum of being elsewhere. She wasn't sleepy at all. Outside, the rain fell like ribbons and lit up in amber where the yard lamps haloed it. The beauty felt slightly unreal, like a photograph that had learned to breathe.
"Strange," Oakley murmured, cradling her cup at the window. "I used to hate rainy days. Even if I stayed in. Now I don't mind them."
"I like them," Grace said. "If a holiday landed on a rainy day, I'd make tea, read a little, practice some handwriting, or play a game of chess. It suits the weather. It slows the mind in the right way."
There was something charmingly old-soul about her habits.
Oakley would usually roll her eyes at talk of tea and penmanship; tonight she drank it in. "I don't know how to play," she said. "Is it fun?"
"Want to learn?" Grace asked. "There's a small chess room in this place. We could use it."
"Yes," Oakley said immediately.
Whether she learned or not was irrelevant. She wanted to be near Grace, to cling like an octopus—each suction cup finding skin.
They went.
In summer they could have taken a board out to a pavilion and played in the smell of grass. Winter said no; the little room inside said yes.
Grace set out the pieces and sat on the left; Oakley took the chair opposite.
Chess is easy until it isn't. Grace taught patiently, diagramming ideas with the pieces; Oakley fought through the fog and found a shape she could follow.
When they began for real, Grace gave odds—took her queen and a rook off the board and let Oakley have the first move.
Even so, Oakley flailed, holding a pawn like a fragile bird, frown knotting her whole face. For a first-timer, this was Everest.
Time softened her posture. She'd started upright, ceremonial, but halfway through, she gave up and sprawled on the rug, chin in her palm, a picture of defeated charm.
Grace's phone rang; she stepped out and took the call. When she returned, one look at the board and she paused.
Oakley must have thought the forest of pieces would hide a nudge. She'd "adjusted" a knight.
Grace rolled a pawn between thumb and forefinger, smiling into it, her shoulders trembling faintly. "Ms. Ponciano, do you go by a nickname in certain circles?"
"Uh?" Oakley froze, hand midair above the board, then slowly withdrew and sat up painfully straight. "What nickname?"
Grace considered the position, then slid a bishop just so and swept away a cluster of Oakley's pieces. "The Queen of Tiny Cheats."
Which said everything: she had seen every little crime, chosen to ignore them, enjoyed them, even.
Caught, Oakley put on plaintive eyes. "You noticed?"
"Hard not to." Grace toyed with a piece. "Very hard."
"Oh." Oakley bit her plush lower lip. A little defeated. "Are you mad?"
Grace shook her head, a laugh under her breath. "At what? I'm not angry. I think it's… delightful."
"Really?" Oakley propped her cheek on her hand. "Why?"
Grace frowned softly, as if listening for the right word. "I don't know. With you, there's more to smile at. So—no anger."
"I get it," Oakley said, wickedly pleased with herself. "I'm the rainbow in your weather. You'd survive without me, but with me around, you see a different sky."
Grace couldn't help it; another smile. "You're not wrong."
Oakley flicked her gaze up through her lashes. "Since I've done so much for your quality of life, shouldn't you… thank me?"
"How?" Grace asked, eyes steady on hers.
"I don't know." Oakley twirled a strand of hair around her finger, pure mischief. "That's your job."
Under the amber light, Oakley had melted against the floor by the board, body a lazy curve, eyes bright with a thousand small lights. Gorgeous was stingy; devastating was closer.
Grace stood.
Oakley's hand slipped from her jaw; she tipped her face up, curious.
Grace sat beside her.
"Hey?" Oakley blinked.
Then Grace lifted her chin with a single finger.
Warmth brushed Oakley's skin; she met Grace's eyes and swallowed.
Grace said nothing. She simply drew Oakley into her arms.
"How about this?" she asked, gaze fixed on Oakley's mouth.
"Hey—" Oakley began, and then a warm, damp kiss landed at the corner of her lips.
Heat unrolled through her, a sweet voltage from scalp to toes. Her body went softened, as if gravity had changed its opinion of her. Her heart did the same.
Grace tightened her arm until Oakley fit perfectly there. The faintest perfume rose; Oakley's head went light, her pulse a bright animal, faster, faster.
They parted at last, reluctantly, breath mingling, lips still tingling with all the words they didn't say.
Nose to nose, their breathing steadied and then didn't.
What a strange thing—how two people, perfectly able to stand alone, could come apart at the seams the moment they touched.
Grace, dazed with the sensation, thought absurdly that Oakley must have slipped some alchemy into her veins—an old-world charm that made resistance not only useless but unwanted.
She kissed her again.
And again.
As if spellbound.