Archive of Our Own

July 18, 2028.

The concert venue is House of Blues, San Diego. 

Resting at the heart of Downtown San Diego, nestled near the edge of Gaslamp and the Convention Center, House of Blues is an impressive concert venue with enough historical and musical significance to warrant little doubt about attending a concert there. Compared to the other venues that moderately-popular-to-properly-famous music stars usually set up shows at in San Diego, House of Blues is probably one of the best ones. It’s clean and cool and maybe it’s a little cramped sometimes, but if it’s not cramped, it’s not a concert. 

Grace is particular about where he spends his time. 

Being that he’s a lot older than he used to be, Grace does not go to many proper concerts these days. Live entertainment is a bit too alive for him. House of Blues is a respectable enough establishment, as established, but Grace is slightly out of place here, if only in age.

But tonight, House of Blues has something no place else has.

He descends the stairs of the venue with determination, passing murals of fire and demons, feeling anticipation build in his gut, and makes it to the main floor. The lights are still on, and the stage is still empty aside from the instruments, mics, and some of the tour crew milling about getting everything ready.

He’s got early entry VIP tickets, so there are only so many others inside with him when he gets let in. A position right at the barricade beckons for him. He does not take it. Instead, he finds the stairs leading up to the balcony, overlooking the stage. 

He orders a drink from the bar — tequila on the rocks, he needs it — and then claims a seat at a table just by the balcony where he’s got a clear view of the stage from above. 

It’s ridiculous that he’s here. It’s been years since he’s been to anything like this. He never thought he’d be back. But he was going to end up here one way or another.

Since before the tour dates even announced on Eva’s website, since before San Diego was even a confirmed stop, Grace had already made up his mind. House of Blues San Diego or hell itself, he would come to see Eva perform.

It’s ridiculous that he’s here. But it’s Eva’s concert. 

Of course he’s here.

Spring 2018 

It was the Year of Our Lord 2018, when Eva and Grace first met, walking home from school much later than everybody else. Eva was still nothing — not famous, not rich, not happy — and Grace was only young. 

She had been smoking substances Grace didn’t even know the street names for yet in that hollowed out bush by the 7-Eleven and had just sobered up enough to get her legs to work and walk, and Grace had been stalling his own walk home under the naïve hope that his mother cared enough to pick him up today instead of sleeping in.

They were walking on opposite sides of the street but at the same pace, and Grace was easy to please, so it endeared him. He’d not yet known Eva’s name, only her face, but it felt like the redheaded girl was spelling it out for him in her half-saunter, half-stride, the obvious way her blue eyes snuck looks at Grace when she thought the blond wasn’t paying attention. 

Eva wore tight black clothes when tight black clothes were just beginning to trend again. She was always ahead of the curve. Her hair was a light shade of red, short and windswept, and she was young with a mischievous grin, so of course, Grace, who had a bit of a reputation for being a bookish little thing, was intrigued

This was not the first time Grace had ever seen Eva — he’d caught glimpses and stolen glances of the redhead here and there, any time he passed by where she and her cool friends hung out before and after school, and of course, he’s seen the video, the one of her on MDMA, loopy and dazed in the yard of some house party, near passing out from vomiting, the one where crowds of other teens called her name with laughter, Eva. Eva, wake up. Eva's a mess. Oh my God, is that Eva? What’s she doing? — but this was the first time she ever seemed to see him back. The first time she noticed him.

She was cool. Too cool for Grace. But Grace was sick of being lame.

And anyway, Grace knew of her, and all that he knew charmed him. 

He wasn’t sure what Eva saw in him back then, wasn’t sure what about his awkward stature, awkward clothes, and wild hair made the impression that he was someone worth having a conversation with, but something about him that day must’ve been different, because something possessed — because that’s what it was: a possession — the cool, self-assured girl to heedlessly cross the street just to talk to him. Of all people.

Grace held his breath as she crossed over.

Eva’s eyes were bright and expressive, but her eyelids looked heavy as she crossed the moderately busy road. Her calm, unintentionally intimidating grin almost made Grace doubt his own concerns for her safety. She walked across the street to Grace, careless for passing cars, and for a moment, Grace fully believed in her inability to get hit by them.

There was a reassurance to the girl, a confidence that could rival God. No cars would dare touch her. 

Grace felt safe in her risk.

Anyway. 

They didn’t go to the same middle school — Eva went to St. Mary's Middle, a couple miles or so down the road — but she said she recognized Grace from the Instagrams of her friends that went to Grace’s school, Grover Cleveland Middle. Grace knew this was a lie, because he didn’t have an Instagram or friends at Grover Cleveland, or friends anywhere for that matter, and with his nerdy, anxious, gay mess of a reputation, he was sure that anybody who even had pictures of him would have refrained from ever posting them for fear of being associated with him and becoming ostracized. 

So Eva didn’t know who he was, but she lied to make Grace feel better. So Eva didn’t know who he was, but that was fine, because now she did. So Eva didn’t know who he was, and honestly, that was probably for the better. 

When they eased into a conversation, Eva asked if Grace knew about her and Grace lied and said he didn’t recognize her at all. Grace saw the relief in her sharp shoulders when she heard this and knew he’d made the right decision. 

Eva asked if Grace was in the afterschool program at Grover Cleveland, like a few of her own friends were. She asked if that was why Grace was walking home so late. Grace told the truth and said he wasn’t, said that most days, his mother forgot to pick him up, confessed that he often stalled his walk home til late in hopes that she’d remember. 

“My mom doesn’t care about me,” Grace shrugged, in that blasé, bothered-but-pretend-unbothered way all middle schoolers talked. “That’s why I’m walking home late.”

Eva hummed and said, “Fuck parents.”

They were heading the same way, Eva said. And usually she took the bus, but today there was a delay, and she could not stand to wait. Grace asked if she felt restless a lot. Eva showed him her hands. They shook like heavy machinery. 

Halfway through their walk, it began to drizzle. At the corner store down the hill from Grace’s house, Grace entered and Eva followed him in. Grace bought himself an umbrella in this hideous, yellow shade, because that was all that was left, and they shared the umbrella as they continued walking. This act of kindness felt significant, even then, and would only grow in significance in their memories, their recollections, as the years wore on. 

From then on, they were inseparable.

They became friends. They became more than friends. 

When Eva started releasing music, Grace was her biggest fan. When Grace began writing poetry, Eva was his only muse. Because Eva was larger than life. Eva was untouchable. Eva was indestructible, immortal, all-encompassing. She could walk across a busy road with the confidence of a teen who knew she’d come out the other side unscathed. She could do anything. 

So yes, Eva was high all the time, and even when she wasn’t, she was. But Eva was bigger than everything she inhaled, snorted, gummed, ingested, threw up. 

Grace did not fear for her life. Life surely feared her.

And then the summer before senior year, c. 2022, she disappeared.

In her absence, Grace found James. 

Summer, 2022.

The summer Eva went missing, Grace hung out in front of the fish store up by Fifth Avenue with a new friend.

The sun had just set, but the beat of the rays left the pavement still-warm, and the humidity of the night did little to ease Grace’s frustrations with the weather.

Every winter, Grace complained about the cold and loudly yearned for beach days and carnival season, and yet during summer evenings like this, he was always the first to express his displeasure with the heat. Sometimes, Grace feared that satisfaction was a pit that he’d been digging hoping to make room for more, and that it would turn out that there was never going to be more. He feared that all those years of digging would catch up to him. It would never fill, and then he’d just be left with a hole. Was that an act of hope? Whatever.

A traitorous thing— hope. 

Eva had been gone for three weeks, but who was counting, really? Surely nobody. 

Not the clueless bettas in their poorly maintained sorority tanks, not the janitor fish sucking up their own shit in the hundred-gallon with the baby koi, not the boy next to Grace, who the blond had let try the tobacco Eva had rolled and forgot about in his room, who cringed at the taste, who decided the taste and clicks of e-cigarettes were superior.

Actually— never mind.

Grace was sure his new friend — James — was counting, too, though not in the same way that he was, agonizing every second she was away, worrying himself sick with questions and concerns, saddened and frustrated by the lack of communication, the lack of answers. 

It was like James wanted to prolong her being gone, and every day that the redhead was out of the picture was a victory.

Utterances of her name felt like curses around James. 

A sour look would cross the dark-haired boy’s deep-brown-nearly-black eyes and his roman nose would stick up in the air before scrunching. Nothing about the attitude looked particularly good on paper, Grace knew, but watching the muscular teen and physically being next to him as he expressed his displeasure and jealousy in such an obvious manner made Grace feel wanted, captivated; captivated enough to allow it. 

James, like Eva, was confident. He was just a bit of an asshole about it, but there was a charm in that too, Grace thought. He liked confident people. Often, confident people just happened to be careless as well.

But James was proud and hated lots of things. 

He hated loud cars and working at The Melt at Del Mar and money that wasn’t in a card. He hated small-talk with strangers and things unrelated to STEM and the smell of weed (which did not mean he didn’t smoke, only that he did not smoke bud). He hated television and public displays of affection and himself, for not liking girls. He hated jorts and most poetry and when Grace’s hair was a mess and, even though he’d never met the girl, James hated, hated, hated Eva Stratt.

And James was very vocal about the things he disliked. 

Any time Eva was brought up, and sometimes unprompted, James would say shit like, “She sounds like a fucking personality,” or “I can’t believe you’d hang out with someone like that,” or “I don’t know what you see in her.”

He was never impressed by Eva, even when Grace was showing him the videos of the redhead shredding guitar or going crazy on drums during local shows. Those musical feats which impressed other teens their age never got a good reaction out of James.

He would always just scoff and say, “What, like it’ll get her anywhere?”

Sometimes, in Eva’s absence, Grace humored James’s nastiness and agreed, but when James would leave, the guilt would return.

“My girlfriend,” Grace had confessed to James, the first time they got to talking, in Babycakes café on the promenade of Imperial Beach, “has been gone for a week, and she will not contact me.”

“Your girlfriend,” James had repeated, matter-of-factly with a daringly outspoken tongue that promised to silence for no one, “might be your ex, and your ex might be sending signals.”

They had been sharing a large cupcake with plastic spoons. It hadn’t really bothered Grace, the bluntness to James’s words, the casual cruelty in his flattened tone.

Grace could tell, even then, as early into their friendship as it was, that James’s brash outspokenness had been as natural to the dark-haired teen as breathing, as intrinsic to him as childhood, and it was one of the things Grace just had to get over if he wanted to be James’s friend.

That was all companionship really was to Grace, anyway— a mutual tolerance for each other’s flaws.

Grace’s lips had fallen downwards into a frown. “The point is that she’s not sending me anything. She’s MIA.”

“You knew her better than I ever would have,” James had shrugged, unconvinced and condescending and pitying. 

“Know,” Grace had corrected— not unkindly or defensively. Just matter-of-factly. As if making his affection for Eva known was as intrinsic to him as childhood. As if he truly still fully believed Eva would come back. “I know her better than you do.”

James had only hummed in displeasure.

Anyway.

Back to the fish store.

It had been three weeks since Eva disappeared, been two weeks since that conversation at Imperial Beach, been one minute since James bumped his shoulder against Grace’s and told him, “Hey, I’ve got a question.”

He always did this. Announce his having a question before actually saying the question. Grace didn’t know whether it annoyed him or endeared him.

Grace nodded at James to continue, and so he asked, “Are you still into that ginger girl?”

Grace pulled his knees close to his chest. 

“I guess.”

“Okay.” If James noticed that he was upset, he did not react. “Just checking.”

Asshole.

Grace guessed that because James was handsome and smart, no one ever told him off for being so rude and upfront. Grace guessed that on the rare occasion that someone might have, the confidence that the taller teen was born into made it easy for him to disregard outsider criticism.

James was an asshole, but Grace kept coming back to him.

This was how the blond knew that he’d begun to care for James, despite the previously assumed fact that he was some sort of a replacement for Eva. He was decidedly not, because Grace could hardly think of a good enough reason for a replacement to be much more difficult than the real thing and still be someone he wanted to hang around with. 

So James was not Eva. He might have been worse than Eva, if only in attitude. But Grace cared for him in a different way than he cared for Eva. 

Grace missed Eva more than words could say, don’t get him wrong, but he thought that if when she did come back, he wouldn’t push James to leave either. Perhaps that attested to Grace’s care for James, or maybe the compromised nature of his affection.

Anyway, Grace was mad at Eva right then. It was looking less and less like she had died and more and more like she’d just discarded Grace. Not that Grace would have preferred her to be dead than be disinterested. But still. Ouch. Three years together and not even an "I'm breaking up with you"?

Maybe that was why Grace was playing this game of moth and fire with James. Maybe this was some sort of revenge. Though Grace doubted that if Eva had truly abandoned him, knowing that he was hanging out with someone new would elicit the reaction he wanted.

Inexplicably, despite James’s negative reaction being predictable, Grace admitted, “My calls go straight to voicemail now.”

James laughed, meanly, and then quickly composed himself, as if the shame took a bit longer to register. Grace could not offend himself with James’s reaction, but he was a little disappointed.

“Sorry.” James’s apology was insincere. “I didn’t mean to laugh. But what’s that mean? Does that mean she blocked you?”

Probably. Grace held onto the hope that it didn’t.

“It means her phone’s probably dead. I have been blowing it up. Maybe it was low when she….” Grace trailed off. 

Disappeared, he meant to say. Or maybe, left me.

There was a pause, but not a silence. A pause in their conversation, but the world around them continued to speak, the language of gusts of wind rustling leaves and the impatient honks of rushing drivers. Cars stopped and passed by in traffic lines, zombified drug addicts shuffled on past, leaving mutterings about God and spirituality behind them, the crazed murmurs of rock-bottom hitters.

Finally, James shook his head and clicked his tongue.

“God, you’re fucking delusional, Grace.”

He did not say this with a meanness. He said this with pity, disguised as meanness. Grace knew the difference between James and his vulnerabilities, the difference between a snarled lip and a repressed frown. 

But somehow, pity was worse, and only then did Grace begin to regret having informed the sturdier boy of this development.

James leaned back, getting even more comfortable on the pavement, and he asked, lackadaisical, “How sure are you that your girlfriend is still your girlfriend?”

Grace did not answer.

James softened his gaze. “I just want the best for you.”

“I know, you’re right,” Grace sighed.

“So, what are you gonna do now?”

“Well," Grace sighed. "It seems like I’m single. Do you think we could find out what that means?” 

James blinked. He pocketed his vape, took out the keys to his parked Nissan Altima in the process, and stood up.

Fall, 2022.

Grace was just beginning to forget about Eva when she climbed through the open window. 

Admittedly, the humidity of the night had not been the only reason for the openness of Grace’s room; a beckoning rectangle right above his desk, right beside his bed, just large enough for a reckoning in the shape of a teenage girl to crawl through.

Admittedly, his windows had been open all summer, since the night after junior year ended, when Eva promised to call and make plans but never did, when Eva promised to be around more but then disappeared. 

She had been gone for roughly three months.

Grace had just begun to cut his losses and accept the fact that she had left him, was not coming back, and had decided that their friendship and relationship over the past five years was not memorable at all, when suddenly, Eva was climbing in through his open window like she had a million times before.

Right beside his bed, right above his desk, right next to him. There and substantial and present, coming in as if she’d never come out.

And her silhouette looked so clear, haloed by the light of the  moon, that Grace almost thought her specter was God. 

Grace gave her a gentle hug, adamantly resisting the urge to tackle her in one instead, and asked the nape of her neck where she’d been, softly so as not to frighten her, though the blond knew she did not frighten easily. The soft voice more so consoled himself.

She said to him, “I’ll tell you all about it later,” but the tiredness evidenced by the dryness of her throat made Grace doubt that. 

He watched her struggle stepping from the outside to the in, tracking mud onto the windowsill with her clunky combat boots. Grace wanted to bury himself in it, the mud. Eva buried herself in his blankets. 

She slept in his bed that night, curled up between the blond’s feet like a cat and kicking off the pillows to the floor like one, too. 

In the morning, she told Grace she spent the summer in a residential youth rehabilitation program, which was why she couldn’t call. It was not the first time Grace had ever heard of a rehab center for minors — it was hard to avoid knowing about those kinds of places when half of his friends since meeting Eva had OD’d at least once — and it was not the first time Grace wondered what really went on inside of there. Every time Eva came back, she seemed different. 

Grace did not ask the slender teen about what landed her in Residential — whether she was busted for smoking something laced like Reya did when she was fourteen and the authorities finally involved themselves or if he had taken a trip to the children’s hospital beforehand like Ruby did the first time she tried to kill herself and they found opiates in her drug test — but the ginger was rolling her own cigarettes when Grace asked, “Did you miss me,”  which was a close enough question to the one he really wanted to ask.

“It’s all I ever did,” Eva answered, and she kissed Grace, and that was that. 

When Eva left in the silence of the morning, she called Grace on her walk home. They talked about new music/poetry they came up with over the summer, and Grace knew then that she would not be leaving again any time soon.

He closed his eyes to immerse himself in the sweet rasp of Eva’s voice, the resonance of her laugh through the phone speakers. And Grace did not tell her — he could not admit it — but he’d missed her more than he’d ever missed anything that had ever left him, more than anything he’d ever lost, and he felt stupid for ever doubting she'd return. 

Granted, all signs of her absence during the summer pointed towards her abandoning him with no second thought or ounce of guilt, but still. Grace should have known she wouldn’t have done that. And he did. But he still doubted. 

He tried to confess his guilt on the phone call, tried to say, “I’m sorry I tried to forget about you when you were away,” but she interrupted before he could say anything substantial. 

“It doesn’t matter,” she pardoned, and Grace could hear the strain in her voice, so he did not press on with his apology. 

They skipped school.

They ignored each other’s wandering gazes. 

They caught up in the night. 

That’s when she'd appear, sneaking Grace out through the window, taking him to all her hole-in-the-wall raves and bookstores and urbanist nature sceneries deemed good enough spots to smoke at until they would settle on the roof of the public park restroom by Grace’s house to savor their last hours before sunlight. 

They went to shows, the shitty kind where admission to someone’s damp basement was ten dollars and other high-energy stoners filled the space with key bumps and sweat and smoke. Sometimes, Eva performed in them, running around the stage with a fucked up bass guitar or banging on someone else’s keyboard. Sometimes, she sang about Grace onstage, and sometimes Grace wrote poetry about how this made him feel.

They reacquainted themselves with each other’s presence easily; eyes fixed on the city horizon, early risers and roadtrippers on the side streets, the practiced way Eva would roll a cigarette or a joint, the taste of rust and gasoline on her quick tongue when he kissed Grace after gumming coke— this was always how they operated, like machines, against each other. Warm with use and mechanical. 

Grace did not tell Eva about the friends he’d made in her absence, in part due to the insecurity he felt knowing he needed to find distractions to keep himself from missing her too much, in part due to the fact that she didn’t seem to care at all about the unfamiliar contact names that lit Grace’s phone up with texts and phone calls, the new polaroids stuck up on his cork board, or the sharper way in which he laughed, mimicking the meaner laughs of his newer companionships. 

Eva continued to not tell Grace about Residential, which didn’t keep the blond from wondering, but Grace still didn’t ask for fear that it would make that summer more real, more painstaking to carry. 

These were not the secrets they kept. These were not secrets at all. Simply, they were experiences. They just had to be there— and they weren’t. 

They called it even and smoked and kissed and missed each other sorely. Eva wrote songs about Grace. Grace wrote poems about Eva. But there was distance. The summer had put a wall between them. 

Eva wondered about the John Hancock “James was here” written proudly on Grace’s chalkboard. Grace wondered about all things Residential. But they never asked each other about it.

And so the wall between them grew. 

July 18, 2028.

The venue fills quickly after the doors open to the general audience. It’s a sight Grace used to be familiar with, watching the floor space disappear in a rush of bodies running towards the barricade— Eva had dragged him to enough concerts when they were younger.

He’s a bit glad he’s no longer in the springtime of youth. He thinks he’s maybe a bit too old now to be impolitely excuse-me-I’ve-got-to-get-past-you-to-get-to-my-friend-please-ing his way to front row. 

So, Grace sits with his anticipation and a frozen margarita as bodies bump into each other around him, as the standing area below the balcony pulses with the movement of the people. The lights dim. The crowd cheers, excited and ear-splitting. And the opener comes on.

Spring, 2018. 

They were walking home together after the last day of seventh grade when Eva confessed to Grace, “I think I want to be a musician someday.”

They’d not known each other very long in the grand scheme of things by this point, but with the near-instant connection both teens had with each other, it felt like they’d known each other all their lives.

Anyway, an interest in music, Grace knew, was something that followed Eva from her childhood, even outside of America. British invasion, classic rock, house, blues, funk, techno, electronic pop.

Her room, which Grace had never been to but saw often in the backgrounds of Eva’s silly selfies, was decorated with music posters, same as in the few pictures Eva showed Grace of her childhood home back in Hamburg.

So, obviously, Eva was always cool. 

But, again, anyway. 

“I think I want to be a musician someday.” Said uncertainly. Said with carefully kept-blank blue eyes, a nervous tell. Said with the implication of a question at the end: Do you believe in me? Do you think I could be?

Grace imagined Eva on a poster. Red hair, blue eyes, striking freckles, lean and sharp in those trendy, dark clothes, a scandalous amount of skin showing. He imagined the poster on his own wall, right by his chalkboard where Eva had scrawled in paint marker, “Eva ♡.”

He liked the image of it. 

“You should take a music elective, then,” Grace suggested. “I could see you being a rockstar.”

Eva frowned a bit.

“I don’t need to take a music elective,” she said.

Grace frowned in turn. “How are you going to be a musician without knowing how to make music?”

”I know how to make music.”

”Does Garageband count?” asked Grace, a bit condescendingly. 

“Grace, I know how to play instruments!” huffed Eva. 

Grace arched a genuine brow. “You do?”

”What did you think the guitars and keyboards in my room were for?!”

”I don’t know. Decoration? You have a record collection and no record player.”

”What, did you think the drum set was for decoration?” 

“I don’t know anything about music decor,” Grace groaned. “And besides, I’ve never actually been to your room, y’know. I thought they were just there for show. I didn’t know you could play them.“

”Grace, I can play every instrument under the sun,” Eva said.

Grace stared. ”You can?”  

A determined look crossed Eva’s face.

“Yes. I’m going to be a musician, and I’ll show everybody else.” 

Fall, 2019. 

It was the first time Grace had ever smoked anything and the first time one of them made a move. 

They were both a semester deep into freshman year.

Grace was attempting to study for Integrated Math II. Eva was charging her wax pen in Grace’s room. 

Grace had never touched a drug before.

“How does it work?” he asked.

From the floor, Eva arched a brow. “How does what work?”

“The… thing.” Grace jutted his chin towards the pen, plugged into the outlet with an Android charger, blinking every so often. “The weed pen. How does it work?”

Eva smirked and shrugged. “Does it matter? It gets you high.”

“You smoke it without knowing how it works?” frowned Grace.

And Eva rolled her eyes.

“Course I know how it fucking works, idiot,” she grumbled. 

She unplugged the pen from its charger and walked over to Grace, plopping herself to the timid blond’s side, and then she raised the pen to show to Grace. It was black, sleek, and cylindrical, like an actual pen, but at one end, instead of a ballpoint tip, there sat a flat tip perfect for lips to wrap snugly around and a small glass cart of wax, and on the other end, it had a little light and a charging port.

Eva tapped at the glass. It was still half full of wax. The wax was yellow, like the umbrella they'd shared last year.

“That’s the wax. It’s weed, in concentrated form. That’s the thing that gets you high.”

“I know what weed is, asshole.”

“Of course you do,” smirked Eva. “Anyway. This pen isn’t a dispo, so when—“

“Dispo?”

“Disposable. Dispos, when you finish smoking them—“

“When the wax runs out?”

“Yes, that’s when the wax runs out— When you finish smoking them, you can throw the whole thing away. This pen isn’ta dispo, so once you finish with the wax, you can just—“ Eva twisted the glass cartridge off, separating the cartridge of wax from the actual pen “—replace the cart with another. Do you follow?”

“Mhm.”

Eva put the cart back on the pen. She tapped the body of it. 

“Inside here, there’s a battery. The battery heats up some coil, or something.  When you take a hit, the wax melts and that’s what gets you high. And this part of it—“ Eva tapped the light, on the opposite end of the wax cartridge “—lights up.”

She put the pen to her mouth. She demonstrated. It did light up. She blew out the smoke. It smelled, for one moment, like bitter strawberries, and the next, like nothing. 

Grace frowned and asked, “Is there a point to the light other than looking pretty?”

“Tells you when it’s charged,” answered Eva. “And, it blinks.”

“Blinks?”

“Yeah. If you take a really big, really long hit, it blinks. That means the pen’s automatically cutting you off, because the coil’s getting too hot.” Eva demonstrated this as well. It took about twenty seconds before the end of the pen started blinking, and when Eva exhaled, she coughed a lot, and the plume of smoke that expelled from her was so thick, it looked like clouds. 

When she stopped coughing, her eyes had gone pink and her gaze had gone spacey. She was looser, less aware, and her smile looked dazed and lazy. 

She tapped the pen to Grace’s hand.

“W’na try, Grace?” Eva batted her russet lashes. “It doesn’t even taste bad. Just don’t cough.” 

Her eyes were tempting and shiny. So were her lips. Grace forced himself to swallow. He didn’t care about the weed. He wanted to know how Eva tasted. 

“I— I—“ want you, care for you, need to do something about this urge inside me, crave you terribly. “Can I—“ kiss you, just once, please. “Um.” 

Eva huffed an endeared laugh, sidling up closer to Grace, leaving less and less space between their bodies in such an unassuming way that Grace would have believed Eva didn’t even mean to scoot closer if not for the fact that her breath hitched every time they touched.

“No pressure, Grace.”

Grace shook his head. And then he nodded. “I want to try.”

Her smile widened. “Brilliant. Don’t worry, I’ll take care of you.”

She raised the pen to Grace’s lips. “Suck it into your mouth, and then take the pen away, and inhale the smoke into your lungs. Take a small hit. Just a small one. Little baby one. Just suck for a second.”

“Okay,” said Grace. He closed his lips around the device. 

He coughed like a bitch the first time, and the high was a little bit anxiety-inducing. While Eva rested and relaxed against him, Grace tensed into himself and tried not to feel too discomforted by the feeling of not being fully and entirely in control of his own body. Time seemed to warp around him, and everything was all out of order. 

“I could write a song about you,” Grace heard, from somewhere around him, and later, if he cared to recall (which he always did), he could see in his mind’s eye the perfect picture of Eva, looking right at him, with mesmerized blue eyes, with slightly parted lips, with reverence. “I have written songs about you. But I don’t think I could ever share it with the world.”

Grace, high for the first time in his life, felt himself blink. Slow, like a chameleon.

“Remind me to kiss you, after I regain control of my body,” he said, and he melted onto his bed. 

He heard Eva laugh, and the next day, after they’d slept off their highs, Grace awoke to find that he and Eva were suddenly — but not surprisingly — boyfriend and girlfriend. 

Summer, 2021.

Summer of 2021 was the summer before junior year. It was a year before Eva disappeared.

Summer of 2021, they smoked handrolled cigarettes and weed together, and Eva took a lot of benzodiazepines alone, usually after she’d taken a lot of uppers alone, because Grace was very much afraid of pills and very much afraid of cocaine.

Summer of 2021, when Grace said, “Hey, do you think maybe you should cut down on the scary drugs a little bit?” Eva’s eyes went a little bit blank, and her lips parted in a way that was almost a cringe, and she answered, after a long moment, “Yeah. Yeah, of course. For you,” and she started doing her scary drugs alone and in secret.

Summer of 2021, Eva started releasing more music online and began performing at local gigs. Grace supported her relentlessly. This was the summer Eva got her license and she could finally fully appreciate the benefits of having neglectful workaholic parents. 

Summer of 2021, Eva would steal her parents' BMW keys, drive out to Grace’s high school, park at the student lot, and wait for Grace to come out. In her dad’s car, she’d connect her laptop to the school WiFi and mix her songs while she waited. 

Summer of 2021, Eva would take Grace to all her gigs. They’d drive around San Diego looking for places to play— punk rock shows at The Ché, chill coffee shop and brewery gigs, open mics. Eva used her fake ID to get a bar up in North Park — The Vat — to hire her for weekend gigs, and they paid her about eighteen bucks an hour to play there twice a week, even letting her sing a couple original songs so long as she peppered in a healthy amount of dive bar rock. 

That summer, Eva wrote and released a cute little tune on YouTube. It gained some attention, but not enough to catapult Eva onto a platform. But it was enough to keep the dream alive.

And then, as the summer began slowly rolling into the fall, The Vat slowly stopped booking Eva for shows, and finding gigs grew more and more difficult.

That was the last summer they spent together.

July 18, 2028. 

The openers close out to the sound of a deafening roar of cheers from the crowd. 

They’re bright young things, Grace thinks as they leave to the still-raucous applause of the hyped up crowd below him, but their set went by in a blur for him. It’s difficult, to appreciate — or even just focus — on anything other than the fact that Eva is here in this building with him, and any second now, any moment now, she’ll step out from the dim backstage and into the spotlight. And Grace will see her, and there is a chance she will see Grace back. 

(This is how they feel, Grace thinks, looking at the crowd. This is how everyone is feeling about her right now. We’re all desperate for her attention. I’m one of them.) 

It could happen at any minute now. The anticipation is dizzying . For that reason, by the grace of God or by the wrath of Him, intermission passes by in what seems like minutes. 

And then—

Then finally—

Sharp-eyed, killer smile, wearing a fully transparent button-up over a black lace bra, half unbuttoned and tucked into a long black skirt.

Her hair — red, silky, long — is pushed back away from her face with a pair of shades atop her head. She’s got black leather boots on her feet and a sexy red guitar slung over her shoulders, glossy and chic and obviously familiar to her.

Grace swallows thickly.

Oh, those expert hands. That erratic confidence.

Everybody cheers for her. Everybody screams. How could they not? The room fills with the same feeling Grace felt for Eva all through their teenage years— want, worship, awe, reverence. She’s just standing up there, and everybody is… starstruck. Of course they are. It’s her.

Eva.

The lights fade red. It’s her color. It makes her hair look ink black. It makes her look striking. It always did. Even when they were just kids at The Vat, the red bar lights suited Eva best. Anyway. 

The lights fade red, and Eva stares out into the crowd, stares them into submission, and it’s all quiet, all quiet, her command of the room really is something to be witnessed, all quiet, waiting for her song.

A shaky breath. Her keyboardist plays a chord — F. 

Grace swallows thickly. 

He closes his eyes. He lets the music wash over him. He could get lost in that voice. Smooth and familiar. 

Summer, 2022.

The Summer.

Grace called Eva’s cell lots over vacation despite her radio silence, but then she never answered. And Grace wanted to come by her house to check if she was okay because it was so unlike her to leave Grace alone for too long, but then Grace realized he didn’t know Eva’s address. 

They were just young then. Only a couple years above the age when children drew maps as directions for other children to invite them to birthday parties. Only a couple years above the age of recesses and second-recesses. Only a couple years  above the age where the sun still had sunglasses and peeked out from the corners of printer paper. 

He filled the space of Eva’s absence with new vices and newer friends— friends who were dedicated to flavored vapes and whatever new mental illness was sweeping the nation. 

During moments when Grace was left to his own devices, he found himself missing Eva’s voice. The softness she reserved only for Grace. 

Eventually, Grace’s unanswered calls began going straight to her voicemail. This happened just as he began comforting himself with the ring. It stung.

He tried to rationalize it, Eva’s avoidance. The concern became dejection. The dejection became insecurity. It nearly became anger, for a moment, but Grace staved it off, like hunger. 

He took the bus to the beachside promenade and buried himself in tracked sand. He met James and called him for hours at a time, went with him to places he planned to go to with Eva. He wrote poems that were about James that were really about Eva. When James asked what he liked about “Red” anyway, he said, “She looks nice.” He did not wipe the mud Eva’s boots left on his windowsill. He cried when the summer rain washed it away.

Summer, 2022.

James’s dad was an Evangelical Christian, which meant, up until he was eighteen, James was also an Evangelical Christian. 

For the most part, the religion almost agreed with James. Tall, masculine, and handsome, James could’ve been the poster child for the teenage son of a nuclear family. He did not find it difficult to have faith. Praying to Jesus was an activity that was on the same level as playing football or laughing disruptively during classes. It was easy to like Jesus— Jesus sounded cool.

So, Evangelical Christianity nearly agreed with him, and it would have actually agreed with him… if not for the whole being gay thing. 

“The deal with it is,” James began, one night after he’d taken Grace to watch the Padres game at Petco Park Stadium. They were sitting on the curb outside of the stadium, finishing the last of their ballpark hotdogs and mostly melted ice drinks, and the sun had long set, “being gay— it’s fine, but only as long as you’re trying to fix it. It’s like Mormonism, in a way. Heavy on the forgiveness. Heavy on… traditional morals. Dad’s fucking crazy about it. Hates everybody. Thinks everyone needs to convert. I figure, well, at least it’s not, like, a cult, right..?”

Grace wrinkled his nose. He stared at James and felt a lot of things start to make sense about the boy.

“Does your dad, err, know that you’re…?” Grace trailed off.

Because this was after they’d gotten to know each other well enough for James to buy him low-level seats at a baseball game, after they’d gotten to know each other well enough for Grace to invite James into his room, well enough for both of them to know how it felt to taste the other’s tongue over the center console of James’s Nissan, well enough for both of them to know how it felt to taste lower than that.

James only stared. He had this weird, half-disgusted curl to his lips and this scrutinizing, daring squint to his eyes. 

“Know that I’m what?” he shot back, challenging, and before Grace could answer, he pushed himself off the pavement and started walking away.

 So there's this river, Grace thought, and it's in Egypt.

“Come on,” James called back. “Let’s go.” 

This confused Grace, because later that night, as James was driving him home, James left his right hand on the center console, palm facing up, an invitation, and he left it there the whole drive back, even as the streets grew narrow and the turns grew tight, even though it would have been infinitely easier and infinitely more comfortable if he’d had both hands on the wheel. 

He wants me to hold it, Grace knew. He wants me to hold it, but he won’t say it, he won’t.

Grace looked out the passenger side window and pretended not to notice. 

Fall, 2022.

Two days after Eva came back, they skipped school together, and in the morning, when everybody else was in first period, Eva and Grace were on the Blue Line trolley heading up north to Belmont Amusement Park. Grace read Petrarch on the train and imagined himself as Laura, and Eva made up bad freestyle raps over even worse GarageBand creations. 

Transferring onto the bus to get to the boardwalk fairgrounds, James called Grace, and Grace picked up, and he spoke softly, and he tried not to notice Eva pretending not to listen in.

His voice, deeper and rougher than Eva's, came out tinny through the phone: "Hey, Grace, are you gonna be busy after school?"

Grace tried to keep his voice down, even though he knew Eva could hear him even if he whispered. It was some sort of a shame response. "Err, yes."

"Oh." Disappointment, shock, surprise, bemusement. No positive emotions in James’s tone. "Huh? Doing what?"

"I'm on my way to Belmont right now."

Suddenly suspicious, higher pitched, drawn out slow, "What? With who?"

And Grace remembered— he hadn't told James that Eva was back yet.

"I'm with Eva."

A long pause ensued. And then—

"Oh." Cold. "She's back?" Distant. 

"Yeah, actually." Smug, like, I told you so. Grace couldn’t help it. I told you she wouldn't leave me. I told you there was a reason, and there was. She came back. She came back for me, like I said. 

"Since when?" James asked.

"Two days ago. Came by my house. It was all a big misunderstanding."

"Oh. Okay.” Flat. “Cool, then." Faux-disinterested, almost haughty, like, Fine. Good luck with that. Good for you. I'm fucking exploding you with my mind.

"Yeah...." said Grace, feeling a bit sick, feeling like he was about to hurl, feeling not good at all. "So, I can't today. Sorry. I can do maybe tomo—"

"Yeah, don't worry about it, just enjoy your day. Bye, Grace."

"Oh. Bye, Ja—"

The call ended. Grace dropped the phone to his side with a slump.

Eva arched a brow. Grace’s gaze did not rise to meet it. He turned his phone off, and later, when the sun had begun to set over the amusement park, Eva and Grace found themselves on the top of the ferris wheel watching the world be consumed in gold. 

He did not call James when he got home that night, and James did not call him back. He liked Eva's post on Instagram showing them together on the ferris wheel, glowing like treasure. The next morning, he thought about calling James again, but then just as he was about to press the button, his phone lit up with Eva calling him.

So passed the days, and he and James did not speak. 

And then passed the months, and still, they did not speak. 

And then James moved away, texted Grace his new number, and they spoke even less than never.

And it was just him and Eva again. 

July 18, 2028.

The first song fades into a finish. Grace is standing up and clapping. 

Eva thanks her openers for touring with her during the North American leg and gets into introducing her band, and Grace doesn’t hear much of what Eva’s actually saying through the blood rushing around his ears, and he’s starting to doubt if Eva can even hear herself, because Eva’s onstage with her head swiveling left and right and Grace knows exactly how it feels to pull those stupid sunglasses away and free her hair, and Eva’s eyes are scanning the crowd as she speaks like she's speaking on autopilot, and—

“Is she looking for something?” Grace hears a person seated on the next table ask. "Maybe she dropped her guitar pick in the crowd."

Me, Grace thinks, feeling more certain than he'd ever been in his entire fucking life, feeling eighteen again. His mother’s house, the public park and high school just beside it. Belmont amusement park. The trolley. The Vat. Countless cafés and open mics. Copper-in-the-sun hair and black skirts. The burn of first generation e-cigarettes, back when they were just trying to figure out how to convince people to vape. This is where we lived. She’s looking for me. 

Grace holds his breath. Behind him, someone stumbles over their legs and accidentally knocks onto Grace. They apologize profusely, and Grace smiles tightly and forgives them. When he turns his gaze back to the stage, he finds that Eva is looking right at him.

And suddenly, everything dissolves.

It’s been four years since they’d last seen each other like this, outside of phone screens and tabloids, outside of poetry archives and novels. Four years. Here they are again.

Grace doesn’t know what to do. He swallows. He raises his hand and waves weakly. From the stage, Eva blinks slowly before breaking into a grin. She waves back, a brisk flick of her wrist and a small snort, and she keeps talking about something-or-other, thank-you-all-for-coming, and nobody seems to have noticed that briefly, for a small, sickening second there, nothing existed except for Eva Stratt and Ryland Grace.

“Anyway,” Eva’s saying as she’s switching into a yellow electric guitar and strumming nothing-strings, “I’m gonna sing you Wonderwall.”

And despite himself, Grace is first to laugh, aware of Eva’s gaze flicking back to him, aware of the self satisfied smirk that graces Eva’s sharp lips, the same as they used to look before all this. Before they became pop star and poet, before they stopped talking. 

And Eva does not sing Wonderwall — she sings one of her most popular songs, perhaps equally as overplayed as Wonderwall.  It’s one of the songs that were written after Grace, and one of the songs that were obviously written aboutGrace. Grace’s listened to it a million times. He lets out a breath and listens to it once more.

Fall, 2023.

A couple weeks into senior year, Grace figured it was about the time he got serious about his future after high school and began to research the college application process.

As always, he maintained his adequately above-average grades and skirted the line between excessive absence and truancy, but as the days passed and conversations of college began to hum around him constantly like fruit flies on a hot summer day, and as the wall between him and Eva born from lack of communication grew the longer they did not speak about it, Grace found that he felt less interested in skipping class to go to music gigs and more interested in the rest of his life.

Summer died. Fall replaced him.

More and more, Grace spent his days in Grover Cleveland High asking teachers for letters of recommendations — and in a district as poor as theirs were, the teachers were ecstatic to write less-than-honest letters to increase the chances of students from these neighborhoods moving out of them — and his nights at home, filling out his FAFSA, turning in personal essays to UCs and out-of-states, applying for as many scholarships as he was eligible for.

It was after Grace applied to his last UC when Eva crawled through his window, smelling like cigarettes. The wind was howling outside, carrying the leaves of deciduous trees away, and the skies were gray and ominous. It was cold.

”Hey,” said Grace, looking up from his laptop. 

Eva blinked at him with this determined look in her eyes. Eva did not greet him back. She stumbled to the middle of the small room, in front of Grace, and she stood there, emanating this frantic energy, and she asked, finally, finally, "So what did you do over the summer?"

The question left her tongue in a rush. Grace inhaled and shut his laptop. 

The night Eva came back to him, and all the other nights after that, it was always obvious to Grace that what they did over the summer would remain without discretion.

Beyond surface-level questions of “Did you do anything interesting?” and brief anecdotes when relevant for passing conversation and small talk, Grace did not ask Eva what she did, and Eva did not ask him about what he did.

It had been very clear to Grace since Eva had come back that this topic of conversation was not something either of them wanted to engage with. It was dangerous. It would rock the boat. It would hurt. 

After months spent skirting around the subject of Eva's vacation to the youth residential rehab center and Grace’s friends from the summer who did not stick around, Grace wondered why Eva might have brought it up then. To bring it up so late seemed useless to him, like a deathbed confession or going through withdrawal just to use again.

It was— Well, there was really no other way to put it: It was too late.

“Nothing,” Grace said. The lie slid from his tongue easily.

But what Grace did left keto-crumbs on his bedroom rug and fingerprints on his full-length mirror. What Grace did wrote his name on his chalkboard, what he did replaced the bookmarks of Grace’s books with tickets to summer sporting events.

James immortalized himself on Grace's wall like a divine being, in polaroids and written notes and novelty cards that sang corny songs for a little while before they became as useless as the sentiments they represented. He smoked half of the last of Eva's pre-rolled cigarettes and found them too bitter to finish. And clearly, Grace allowed it.

And Grace couldn’t tell if he was omitting these details for the simple reason of protecting what he now considered to be private, because Eva never seemed terribly interested in them until now, or if he declined to tell Eva out of guilt or shame that a couple weeks of absence was all it took for Grace to be with someone new. 

Eva sagged. She looked pathetic then, all sad and disappointed. Grace had to look away. 

To distract Eva from the topic of summer, Grace told her about the nightmares he had, relating them to astrologically significant buzzwords he didn’t really believe but practiced anyway.

He told Eva about his Black Plague dream, the one he had all summer where he was bedridden and sickly, bundled in blankets arranged like a coffin and paralyzed. He confided in the nape of Eva’s neck and the juts of Eva’s collarbones his fears of being poked into and drained, his fears of black ooze replacing his blood, dying from the inside out and being thrown out onto the street as a corpse to be stacked upon.

And he asked Eva what her dreams were like.

Eva said she didn’t dream.

Grace said that wasn’t true, he knew because she would shift and cry in his sleep whenever she slept over.

Eva said she had night terrors, she said there was a difference. They didn’t count as dreams because she only remembered the fear.

Grace asked Eva what his night terrors were like.

Instead of answering him directly, Eva answered the way she always did; cryptically, with an inkling of a dark secret.

Eva said to Grace, “I think something spends the night trying to convince me not to wake up.”

What a fucking personality.

Grace forgot the scent of James’s cologne, that phantom aroma that followed him through grocery store aisles and downtown restaurants, all the way to the second dip in his mattress, the back seats of a silver car. Grace stored all of his memories with James in a safe inside his head, where nothing could touch or ruin them. He did not let those thoughts of James out to be thunk unless he was alone, and even then, he did not do that unless he knew he would not somehow hurt them.

Winter, 2023. 

Grace was done with applying to colleges. He was done with applying for federal financial aid. He was done with his midterms. It was winter and the future was fast approaching. 

He could do little else but wait for it.

Over the fall, Eva had decided to apply for community college. She was cleverer by Grace, could run circles around him intellectually, but her dreams were far from academia and her grades reflected that. So, community college seemed the most convenient option for her. Under the California Dream Act, her first two years in community college were free, which meant after those two years, she could save herself the full cost of a four-year by transferring from community to a university.

This, of course, paired with the fact that Grace had applied to several out-of-state universities, meant that there was a big chance that they wouldn’t be in the same state at all, come that time next year.

They, of course, ignored this. They were very well practiced at that.

Except—

Except, in the most annoying moments, Eva sometimes broke the rules and acted like they weren’t ignoring things, acted like that wasn’t ever a thing that they did.

“I had a roommate at the center,” Eva said to Grace once when they were smoking a joint at the park. “At Residential. Practiced Wicca. Her name was Olesya. Everybody called her Ilyukhina.”

Under better circumstances, Grace might have been more interested in Eva’s attempt at conversation, but an irritation had been welling up in his chest since Eva’s return, one that rose after the relief had faded and summer grew further and further away from them, like the opposite ends of a stretched rubber band.

It was an irritation that collected and collected and collected the longer they spent not speaking about the important things. This bitter dissatisfaction grew like an infestation inside of him, and it was in times like this one—just the two of them, alone—when Grace's festering anger presented itself much more prominently, senselessly.

He suppressed a glare. They didn’t have phones at rehab, or what? Why didn’t you try to contact me? And why won’t you ask me more about James? Is it because you don’t care? Is it because of guilt? Did you do something worse over the summer that makes you feel you can just let what I did slide? Why won’t you apply somewhere near me, so we can be together? And— And— And I don’t want to fucking talk about Wicca with you.

When Grace did not reply, Eva added, “I missed you over the summer.”

That was months ago, Grace wanted to scream. Why fucking bring it up now?

Eva continued, “I kept wondering about what you were doing.” 

Several curses entered Grace’s body, and he did not let them out. He knew regret quite well by then. He knew it was something to avoid. He stared at Eva blankly and looked away. 

“D’you know you don’t show me your poetry anymore?” Eva questioned.

Well— It sounded more like an accusation than a question, but Grace supposed that the joint made Grace give his boyfriend the benefit of the doubt, allowing for the question mark to be stuck at the end of her sentence, like a post-it note barely hanging on to the wall, a postscript that only existed in his head.

“I don’t have time to write these days.” The annoyance seeped into Grace’s tone, and unlike most people, Eva did not flinch from it, only matched it. 

“Asshole,” Eva muttered, with real venom this time. “You don’t show me the ones from summer.”

Grace glared then.

“Do you have the right to read those?” he shot back. Why didn’t you try to contact me? Is it because you don’t care? “Do you have a right to care about those now?”

Eva stared at him in disbelief.

Well, fucking believe it, thought Grace.

A silent minute passed between them. Two minutes. Three.

”Fine,” spat Eva. “Fine, don’t tell me anything. Like I fucking care.”

And Grace snarked, “That’s what I was already doing.”

”Fine, whatever!”

”Fine!”

“Fuck off,” said Eva, and she stood up angrily, glared one last time, and fucked off before Grace could do it himself.

Winter, 2024.

The fight carried on weeks after the initial argument, intensifying in a way only Eva and Grace noticed. To the untrained eyes, nothing seemed amiss. Their names stayed associated with each other in the lips of those who knew them, and in hangouts and parties and gigs, Eva and Grace arrived and left together. 

But contempt thrived in uncleared air, and as days passed and little nothing-arguments accumulated, Eva and Grace found that the pileup of unaddressed issues was close to burying them alive.

Grace’s resentment for Eva’s mercurial mood grew. He hated that Eva hated sharing. He hated that Eva picked and chose which parts of herself she showed Grace. Six years they’d known each other and close to five they’d been together-together, and after all that, Eva still couldn’t manage to answer the question that had been hanging over them since the summer: why? 

Why was she at Residential? Why didn’t she call? Why didn’t she say anything after she got out? Why didn’t she care when she saw the signs of Grace’s youthful infidelity? Why? Why, why, why?

Every time he thought it — why — Grace felt the resentment collect in him. And he could tell that the resentment was not one-sided. 

Eva’s blatant desire to go back to how things were before the summer made her act out whenever Grace refused to get back to what once was. She’d crack jokes, insensitive and sharp, and before, Grace used to laugh without question, but through the winter, following their argument at the park, Grace had instead begun rolling his eyes or looking away or giving the cold shoulder, and every time, a look of affront would cross Eva’s face before being replaced with this angry, formidable glare.

They cared for each other so much, it made them just want to fucking kill each other. They nearly did, one January morning a couple days after winter break.

They were in Grace’s bedroom. A mild disagreement about skipping class had devolved into a vocally violent thing. Things tended to do that at this point in their relationship — escalate. 

“Fuck off with that holier-than-fucking-thou attitude, Grace,” Eva was saying, nose scrunched as she snarled, a cat hissing with teeth or a snake baring fangs. 

Grace’s eye twitched.

“I’m not trying to act superior, you idiot!” He paced the room, his frantic hands shoving through his hair as a show of his restless frustration.

Eva stared him down. 

“Yes, you are! Typing all day in your laptop, thinking you’re beyond me with your poetry, applying to all these fucking colleges—“

“Ever heard of growing up?” 

“You aren’t supposed to move away from me!” burst out Eva. “I saw the places you were applying to, asshole! Massachusetts, Grace? What the Hell are you wanting to go to Massachusetts for?”

“You could have applied with me,” Grace pointed out.

And Eva half-screamed, half-gurgled, “I wouldn’t get in! You know me, you know they wouldn’t even consider my application.”

”Well, you never even tried,” sniffed Grace haughtily. He stopped pacing and dropped to a sit on the edge of his bed, eyes narrowed into cynical slits, fists clenched atop his thighs. “Half of the things that hold you back would be powerless against you if you tried.”

“Oh, well, sorry that the rest of us didn’t come out the womb fully-fucking-developed like you did.” Sarcasm dripped like venom from Eva’s teeth, and she was wild and panicked like a feral animal, bubbling with a rage that seemed desperate. “Sorry that some of us have dreams and goals they're working for and aren't just aimlessly doing what's expected of them like some dumb dog.”

And Grace leaned back, propping himself on the palms of his hands, staring at Eva through lowered lashes, a disapproving frown fixed hard on his mouth.

“Okay,” Grace said, coolly. “I forgive you.” 

“Fuck off,” Eva spat. 

Grace crossed his legs. 

”Piss off, Eva,” he sneered. “Your parents aren't poor. You can follow me to Massachusetts and graduate debt free and still pursue music. This 'tortured artist' bullshit doesn't work with me. Some of us have to actually work for their futures. I can't afford to drift like you.”

“Oh, yeah?” dared Eva. “Yeah, you’ve got so many issues don’t you? Too many to list! But let’s try to list them, why don’t we? Since you like trying so much. One: mommy doesn’t care for you. Two: …oh, wait… what other issues do you have?” 

“My girlfriend's a piece of shit,” Grace answered, deadpan.

Without even missing a beat, Eva snapped back, “Thought you were immune to it.”

Grace’s blood ran cold with rage. Immune to it. This was a reference to the things Grace would whisper to Eva before they fell asleep. This was a callback to all the midnight reassurances of unconditional care, the secret sentimentality Grace allowed himself to partake in around Eva.

I can take you, Grace used to say. I’m immune to everything you give me. I like it. I don’t care if you think you’re a mean person. You’re not. You’re not to me. Because I forgive you. 

What used to be words of safety and reassurance had been sharpened to a point, made as a weapon.

Eva continued to taunt, “Thought you didn’t care, remember? Didn’t give a shit that I was mean, because you understood me.”

It was hard for Grace to open up sometimes, to be vulnerable, to comfort. And Eva was using that against him. The redhead wanted a reaction and would go through lengths to get it.

Usually, this tenacity was endearing. Now, Grace could barely suppress his grimace. 

He swallowed his hurt, rolled his clear blue eyes, faux-unphased. Maybe Eva saw through it.

“I understand you for this, too,” Grace said.

“I don’t need your understanding. I don’t need anything from you.”

July 18, 2028.

Eva’s set lasts a little under two hours. The encore just keeps going.

But by the end of it, Grace is standing right against the balcony, smiling and clapping loudly for Eva, feeling a rush every time those blue eyes flick up to the direction of the balcony and meet his, and it’s like he’s years younger, seeing Eva in passing for the first time, thinking, Oh, my God. She’s the coolest person I’ve ever seen, why does she look at me like that?

On the second to last song, a real deep cut, a security guard taps Grace’s shoulder and said, “She said to bring you to the back.”

I’m in California, Grace wants to say. She’s already brought me back.

Instead of that, Grace just nods and follows the guard down, past the crowds all the way backstage, and he hears Eva out there, saying “Thank you all for coming to see me here tonight, San Diego! I’ll play just one last song for you all. Just to end on a good note,” and he hears the energetic tune of another song probably written about him. 

And a minute later the music stops to make way for the sound of deafening cheers, and slowly the lights come on, and it’s over, and Grace is standing backstage instead of the balcony, feeling utterly lost as the tour crew starts packing up their gear around him, when Eva appears, slender and sharp and beautiful and cool, fresh from the stage.

She’s grinning, a little bit nervously, but she walks with purpose, closer and closer, and the louder her footsteps sound against the floor, the louder Grace’s heart beats. Eva strides towards him easily, long legs carrying slender body, stopping just a yard away from the man she called hers as a teen, the man who dreams of bring called hers now. 

“You came to my show,” Eva says, breaking the silence first, and Grace thinks, grinning, Really? Four years of silence, and those are your first words to me? Aren’t you a lyricist? 

Grace is a poet. He doesn’t waste his words like Eva does. 

His first words after four long years are, “You’re still so beautiful.”

Almost immediately, a red flush rushes up from Eva’s neck, filling her face, just a shade away from her hair. She tries to wave it off, tries to seem all nonchalant about it, bringing her hand up to card long fingers through her hair, but he forgets that her shades are there, and her hand bumps against them, and she has to awkwardly take the sunglasses down. 

Grace holds his hand out for the glasses. Eva hands them to him without question. And as Grace examines them, he laughs, because the glasses are definitely designer and definitely worth more than a lot of the things Grace owned.

”Far cry from your old ones,” teases Grace, recalling the knockoffs Eva wore to her shows back in high school, and again, Eva flushes. “I guess being a star pays, yeah?”

Eva snorts. “I’m positively rolling in dough, Grace.” 

“You’d better be. I paid three hundred dollars to see you here tonight.”

Eva’s eyes widen.

“What? Oh, Hell, you should have reached out.” Ha. Reaching out. “I could’ve given you one for free. We’ll reimburse you, just hold on a second— Rachel? Where’s Rachel? I’ll get it sorted out for—“

”Leave it alone, Eva,” Grace laughs. “I’m fine with paying to see you.”

At that, Eva’s expression turns dumb, and then soft. “You never had to pay for that at all.”

“Well, I have to queue in the Ticketmaster line like everyone else for you these days. You’re a star now. I always knew you would be.”

And Eva’s lips do an odd little twist at that. Her head tilts to the side, and without her glasses to hold her hair back, the longer locks of it tumble slightly down to cover some parts of her gorgeous, freckled face. 

“Did you, though?” Eva asks.

Grace blinks. “Of course I did.” 

Eva shakes her head.

“Doesn’t matter,” she brushes away, and then she brightens up once more, and she asks, “How are you, Grace?”

Grace shrugs. I paid three hundred dollars to see my successful ex perform a setlist of songs, half of which were about me. I feel weird. Fine. Good.

“I’m published now. In the middle of my last year of university for my bachelor’s at Massachusetts, but I’m back in San Diego for the winter.” 

“How’s your mom?” Eva asks. 

Grace shrugs. “How she always is. How are you?”

“How I always am.”

”I doubt that.”

”All my songs are still about you,” shrugs Eva, casually, like that’s a thing they still do— the offhanded proclamations of care, easy affection. It’s been four years. It’s been four years, and they didn’t end well—

So why is it so easy for Grace to reply, “That’s okay. All my poems are still about you."

“Not all,” says Eva. “There’s some about him.”

And there is no resentment here. It’s just a statement— Grace has other muses.

Grace shakes his head.

“No,” he says, sternly. “Even all those are about you.” 

Eva blinks at him. Smiles. 

Spring, 2024

When the acceptance letter from a nice university in Massachusetts came in the mail, Grace thought about telling Eva.

It had been the school he was most excited about. Nice campus, nice culture, complete with seasons that changed. With admission rates so low, Grace couldn’t believe he’d gotten in, and on scholarship no less. He longed to celebrate it with somebody.

But he and Eva were still fighting, always on guard, anticipating attacks, hostile. Grace didn’t tell her. He celebrated alone. He left the letter under his pillow, and he pretended not to notice Eva reading it the next time she was over. She didn’t say anything. 

The world kept turning, merciless.  

Spring, 2024

It was the week before graduation, 12:54 AM.

Grace woke to the feeling of his bed dipping with the weight of an extra body. He did not panic, did not even open his eyes. Muscle memory had taught him not to be afraid. It was only his Eva.

He wrapped his arms around her, slender and sharp, and he buried his face in the crook of her neck.

And then he felt it— the hammering heartbeat under her chest, beneath her skin, beneath her everything and in the inside of her, frantic and unpausing. He felt it— the way she shook and shuddered and sputtered as she cried, sobbed, choked for air, muffled like she was doing everything she could to keep the sound from ripping out of her.

Six years and Grace had never seen her break down like she did then.

“Eva?” Grace spoke, more awake than he’d ever been before as he sat up and watched her on his bed, still sobbing, inconsolable, “are you okay? What’s going on? Is— Is it something you took—“

“Nngh— No,” managed Eva, hiccuping. “Not anything like that.” And she cried, demanded, “Just hold me,” and for hours, Grace did. 

He held her until she knocked herself out crying, and he held her until she woke up, and he did not sleep, could not sleep, could not feel tired , not when her tears had left his whole bed damp, could not think anything beyond, How could the universe hurt you that much?

When Eva woke in the early hours of sunlight, Grace asked, “What was that?”

She pushed herself up and sat on the edge of the bed. 

“What was what?” she asked, like nothing fucking happened. 

“Last night,” insisted Grace, feeling dread crawling up his chest. We can’t sweep this under the rug. I’m leaving in two months, we can’t just ignore this. We’re running out of time. “You know what.” 

“Sorry,” shrugged Eva. 

“For what?”

Eva shrugged again. “Springing that on you.”

“Springing what on me?” groaned Grace, frustrated. “What was that? Can't you answer, just once, without all the cryptic bullshit?” And then, desperately, “I need to know that you’re all right.”

She did not speak for a long time. It seemed like she was planning on not speaking at all.  She pressed her face against Grace’s neck and began kissing, and her hands wandered down under Grace’s shirt.

Grace couldn’t take it anymore. 

He threw his hands up into the air and pushed himself off the bed. He stood, demanding and expectant, in front of her. 

“No,” Grace said. “No, we are not doing this again, Eva. Is that just what you want us to do now? Not talk? Say nothing? Never speak again? No. I’m— I’m not doing this with you. Tell me. You have to tell me. Please.”

Eva snapped up, suddenly, standing up and crowding around Grace in an effort to intimidate, but this was Grace she was dealing with. Grace could not be intimidated by her, teenaged and angry. Grace could not be intimidated by a girl he had held through sobs. 

“Why the hell does it matter?” Eva huffed. “You’re going to be gone.”

“Is that it, then? Is that why you were crying?”

“No.”

“Then why?” There was that question again. Grace could feel his heart breaking. 

“I had a roommate at the center,” said Eva. “She practiced Wicca.” 

Annoyance flooded Grace. “Be serious, Eva, I don’t want to talk about Wicca with you—“

“I told her about you every day I was there. She said, ‘Don’t let your boyfriend know you’re fucked up.’ I kept saying, ‘He already knows. He doesn’t care.’ I cared about that. I liked that you saw me past everything else. And— and these past six years—  I just kept fucking up, and— and it’s like— like, you see it now, don’t you? You see how… how bad I am.”

“I don’t,” said Grace, shaking his head firmly. “I only see how much you mean to me.” 

And the time was tender, and the air was inviting, and Grace asked, “What did you do over the summer?” and he leveled Eva with his gaze, expectant and ready.

Eva inhaled. Exhaled. Shook her head. Answered. 

“Same old story. Did some uppers, popped a couple benzos to make the crash more bearable. Someone found me unresponsive, took me to the hospital, dad signed to put me in Residential. By the time they’d given me phone privileges, I’d already decided not to call you. I— I felt like I’d failed. I thought you’d be better off. It was stupid. I should have called.“

“I thought you left me,” said Grace. 

“I did, a little. Three months without a word. I’m sorry.”

Grace paused. And then he gathered his breath and admitted, “I think I cheated on you." And then, "No, I did. I cheated on you."

Eva snorted humorlessly. “With ‘James-was-here’?” Bitter resentment. “Yeah, I figured.”

“Do you mind?”

“Of course I mind. Do you mind I abandoned you with no warning for three months?”

Grace wrinked his nose. “Course I do.” 

“There we have it, then.” 

A pause. A silence. 

Grace asked, "Did you...?"

Eva closed her eyes. "I fucked Olesya, yes."

Absurd. Ridiculous. Confusing. Grace wondered if this was a fight. He felt angry. He felt like he should punch something. But he also felt sad. Mostly, he felt disappointed. Tired. 

He said, “Why didn’t you tell me any of this until now?”

And there it was. The big question, asked. It hung over them, like God.

Eva shook her head. 

“You already knew,” she answered. And she stared at Grace with meaning. “Didn’t you?” 

And then that hung over them, too.

The truth was, Grace did know. They both did.

It wasn’t hard to infer that the three month long absence was because of rehab, was because of some fucked up inferiority complex that led to her making short-sighted decisions with long-standing consequences. Eva had a history that invited these assumptions, a history that confirmed them. And it was even less difficult to fill in the blanks of what Grace did over his summer. James left evidence generously. 

So they knew. They knew.

But they never talked about it until then. 

Never said, “I was in Residential because I have a history of depression and my drug of choice is downers. I overshoot it a lot. I’m sorry I can’t stop for you, but I wanted you, and the guilt ate me alive.” 

Never said, “I tried to replace you, and it didn’t work. I’ve called into question your care for me. I can definitively say I care for you more than anything. I can’t quite cope with betraying you.”

They never talked about it until then. 

And when they did, Grace did not feel relief. He did not feel vindicated. He only felt… dread.

Because then, he knew: 

It was too late. The time for talking had long passed. This conversation had mended nothing. 

It was the week before graduation. Eva grabbed his hand. 

“Let’s go away with each other. Let’s— Let’s start over. Please. After we graduate, we’ll pack into my car, and we’ll ride it— fuck, we’ll ride it wherever you want to go. Please. Please. I need you.”

And Grace stared at him for a minute. Two. Three. And then his eyes flicked down to where Eva’s hand held his. Her fingers were cold and calloused and indented by guitar strings. Her hold was familiar and tight. 

Voice just barely above a whisper, Grace heard himself say, “Okay.”

July 18, 2028.

“Where are you going after this?” Grace asks.

Eva’s eyes are wide and blue and sparkling. Her throat sounds dry and her breath sounds gone when she answers in a daze, like she doesn’t even know she’s answering, “Up to you.” 

Grace swallows thickly. He takes a step back. “I meant for the tour.”

“Oh. I don't know. The U.K.” 

“Oh.” 

“But we have a break in the tour between California and London.” Eva stares at him with intent. “San Diego’s our last stop. I have about a month before we leave for the European leg of the tour.”

Grace’s chest feels tight. “Was that on purpose?”

“What,” Eva questions, “the tour break at home?”

A nod.

Eva smirks.

“No,” she says. “I thought you’d still be in Massachusetts. This was fate.”

“Oh,” Grace maybe-squeaks. "Well, I'm staying back at my mom's for a month, too. Before college starts up again in August." He shifts where he stands. He fidgets with his hands. He meets Eva’s gaze head on and feels his face start to burn. He says, a bit awkwardly, “Do you have any questions for me?”

“Yeah, I got a couple,” laughs Eva. “Question one: what’s with the fucking glasses?”

Grace is caught so off guard that he barks out an involuntary laugh. The glasses. 

Eva’s referencing the wire-framed, non-prescription glasses hanging from Grace’s collar in every promotional video, press tour, or interview the blond’s ever appeared in since he started writing books people cared to read. The glasses make an appearance on the back cover or inside sleeve of every book he’s ever published, pictured there with him under the words “About the author.”

He thinks about it from Eva’s perspective— breaking up and going no-contact for years, and in every single public appearance your ex makes, he’s got glasses dangling from his collar when he's had 20/20 vision all his life.

“Is that like your brand now?” Eva continues. 

“My editor thinks it makes me look like a poet,” Grace chortles. 

“Makes you look like a doofus,” Eva returns, and Grace rolls his eyes, grinning fondly. “Seriously, that thing has so much personality, it deserves its own Twitter account.”

Grace snorts. He crosses his arms and rolls his eyes again. “Well, if that’s it then—“

“I said I got a couple questions, Grace,” interrupts Eva, effectively shutting Grace up with an amused click of the jaw. “That means more than one. Question two: will you go out with me?”

Grace blinks. “What?”

“Go out with me. For old time’s sake. Let’s catch up.”

Grace’s brows knit together in confusion.

“Are we going out,” he asks, “or are we catching up for old time’s sake?”

“Up to you.” 

Grace thinks, Up to me, up to me, up to me. If it were up to me, we’d be kissing. 

Grace says, “Okay. Okay, yes. Let’s get drinks.” 

And Eva looks shocked, like she didn’t actually expect Grace to accept the offer, and with this look of disbelief in her eyes, she questions, “Okay, wait, question three: are we going out, or are we catching up?”

Grace’s eyes twinkle. 

“Are you aware that a couple means two?”

And Eva snorts. She tells Grace to wait in a room while she helps the crew with some things. She promises Grace that they’ll go out for drinks right after. Maybe at The Vat, for old time’s sake. 

Summer, 2024.

The week before graduation, Eva asked Grace to run away with her. Grace wanted to. 

He wanted to build a home he and Eva could live in together. He wanted to hear her inhabit the hallways. He wanted to hear her footsteps against the hardwood, that quick stride and that satisfying click of her shoes. He wanted her to tell him she would quit using for the rest of her life, and he wanted to watch her quit for real this time. 

Grace thought about how utopic it would be, their life together if they did run away, away from Eva’s absent parents and Grace’s neglectful mom, away from self-loathing and hospitals, away from friends fickler than themselves. He thought about the garden they talked about, with the promised time capsule under the rosebush, the cottage they dreamed of settling down in.

But then the night after graduation came — that promised night.

Eva knocked at his window, closed to keep the city noise away. 

And Grace found that he could not give Eva what she wanted, found that he did not have it in him to go away like that. 

So, when Eva came to take him away, he did not get up and open the window. He did not lace up his shoes and grab the pre-packed duffel bags from under his bed to join his girlfriend outside. 

He remained paralyzed on the bed, and he pretended to be asleep. 

And God only knew Eva might’ve been the only being to have understood Grace, that will ever understand Grace, and obviously, it killed Grace to be still in his bed when his Eva was tap-tap-tapping on his window, calling, muffled, “Grace. Wake up, Grace. Wake up," but this was not the life they were meant to lead and he knew that. 

It killed him not to answer when Eva asked, voice breaking, “Aren't you ready to go? Won't you at least let me in?”

As if they could escape this. As if the world revolved around people like them. 

In staying still, Grace walked away from Eva, but doing so felt like he was going against the very nature of his being, or at least the law. But it needed to be done.

Here was them: hand rolled cigarettes and a letter under the pillow… shame, guilt, betrayal and infidelity, unconditional forgiveness which was different from care, the specter of the muse of an aspiring artist… etc., etc….

“I understand,” Grace heard Eva say. And in minutes, the girl was gone from his roof. 

And the next week when they finally saw each other again, they didn’t speak of it much — it wouldn’t have changed anything — but Eva said she forgave Grace, and when the time came for Grace to leave for a one-way flight on a shitty airline to his top choice university, Eva was the one to drive him to the airport. But Eva avoided speaking. 

This was how they both knew to exist without the world ending— duffel bags in the trunk heading to different destinations than he had in mind when packing them, Eva’s hands stiff around the steering wheel, visibly coming down from a high she’d been riding since the night before, her gaze determined to stay straight ahead, as if looking at Grace would set off a destructive chain reaction and they’d end up on the bends.  

Grace took measured breaths, but when you measure your breath, it comes out erratic and unnatural, so then he started hyperventilating, and still, Eva avoided looking at him. So he steadied his own breathing, and Eva sped down the I-5 North with her lips twisted in a half-snarl that reminded Grace of the type of restraint dogs in cages exhibited. 

They listened to the latest hits on the stereo before they became dated, and when Grace’s plane left for the next billboard city, he found himself mesmerized by the fact that he was on it.  

And he did not tell Eva, but he forgave her on the plane ride, too. 

Summer, 2024.

The first night after Grace landed, he called Eva. 

His roommate had not yet arrived, and he sparsely had any belongings he cared enough to take with him, so the dorm room looked more like a hospital room, referencing all the rooms he’d ever entered up to that point. 

The walls were too bare and unwelcoming to be the foundations of Grace’s home for the next year, and hearing Eva’s voice through the phone tugged at his heartstrings, reminded him of that first day they met when they talked on the phone for hours and hours. It made Grace miss the past. 

Not even twenty-four hours ago, they’d been in the same car, in the same state, in the same time zone. But now… well.

The distance between them felt bigger than God. 

Grace had traveled three hours into the future, and it only confirmed that his care for Eva would not be quick to fade, if it ever did. If that was something it was capable of doing. 

Grace said, “It’s lonely,” in response to a question Eva asked. He couldn’t even remember what it was that the redhead asked exactly, but he knew a confession of loneliness would’ve been a fitting answer no matter what the question was. 

Lonely was the highest truth, at that moment. Alone, in an unfamiliar state. Alone, in a cold, cold dorm room. Grace hoped Eva could not hear the misery in his voice, though he had no doubt she at least sensed it in the silences between conversation. 

The blond heard the sharp click of a lighter through the line. He missed yesterday, when he could have leaned over the space between them and shared a smoke. He did not say it out loud. Could not handle the possibility of Eva replying, You should have come away with me.

Eva asked what made Grace “want to go away for college, anyway?” with this forced evenness to her voice that immediately betrayed the true meaning: Why did you change your mind? Why didn’t we go away together?

And Grace thought he knew why he changed his mind, he really thought he did. He thought it was because it was in his nature, to go in over his head on commitments, to lie and make promises he couldn’t keep. But then he turned it over a little more in his head and realized, well, he was keeping her, wasn’t he? With phone calls and forgiveness, he was keeping her. And so things got a little more blurred, then. So for a while he did not know how to answer. 

He allowed the too-cold air conditioning to wash over him like a baptism or judgment, and turned Eva’s question over and over and over in his head. He could not stop thinking about it. Why did I want to leave, anyway? 

Eva paused, probably to smoke, and after, she asked, “Hello? Are you still there? Hello? Hello?” 

Grace’s lips itched for a cigarette, his fingers yearned for Eva’s hair. His internal to-do list grew, slow and daunting: figure out why, figure out what's next, meet with counselor.

“Hello?” Eva continued. The growing concern in her voice made Grace realize he was still holding his breath and hadn’t answered yet. 

He snapped back to attention. 

“Sorry,” he apologized. “Lag.”  

“Hm.” Rightfully unconvinced. Another beat of silence. “I’m thinking of quitting smoking.”

Fucker, Grace wanted to say, with more venom than he was willing to admit. I’ve only been gone one day and you’re already changing. 

But he didn’t want to hold Eva back. He didn’t want to manage her life through a phone— He wanted to live it with her. 

Still. 

He had made his choice. They could have run away with each other — a poorly thought-out plan, but appealing nonetheless — and instead, Grace chose to run away without her. He felt he had lost the right to tell Eva, No. Wait until I’m back. You can quit when I’m back, and we’ll celebrate. 

He swallowed back his inner monologue, that selfish, spiteful thing, and hollowly replied, “Let me know how it goes.”

That was the last time Eva and Grace spoke. She stopped answering. Grace called one hundred and seventy-seven times in the span of a week before he eventually stopped calling. 

It hurt more the second time Eva left him without a word than it did the first time. Grace cried her name into pillows and mourned her by staring blankly at the dorm room window. He texted Eva paragraphs which she never replied to. He wondered, if he went back, would they continue where they last left off? Would it be like that summer, before senior year of high school? He wondered, and made himself dizzy with it.

And even as the days and weeks and months and years passed, the wondering did not cease. 

July 18, 2028.

The Vat still looks the same, only a little bit smaller. Grace swears the ceiling never used to be this short. It’s not much different than he remembers outside of that, though. Well, that and the new framed picture of seventeen/eighteen year old Eva performing here on the wall beside the entrance. It’s a lot like those Al Capone shot a bullet into this wall tourist attractions, only The Vat is so obscure and underground and local that it still gets about as much foot traffic as it did when Grace and Eva were first coming here. 

Anyway.

Grace sits on a secluded booth at the back east-pointing corner of The Vat across from Eva, drinks on the table between them. Eva drinks a coke while Grace sips his third frozen marg of the night, still feeling the first two from House of Blues buzzing inside of him.

”I went to Los Angeles,” says Eva. “Right after you left for college. Completely scrapped that community college plan. Lived in my car for a bit, but then I met this guy, big producer. He set me up with this guy in a studio, I showed him all my music stuff— the videos, the gigs, the concepts. A couple months later, I was flying off to New York to record a couple demos, and if they liked it, I had the opportunity to get signed with this big record label — huge fuckin’ deal. Anyway, day before I was supposed to go record the demos, I decided to explore the city a bit. And, well—“

”I know the story,” Grace interrupts. Everybody who was even just a little bit interested in pop culture knew the story of Eva Stratt's rise to fame.

Eva arches a teasing brow. “Do you? You kept up with me?”

”Of course I kept up with you. It was hard not to. Your face is on billboards.”

”Well. I kept up with you, too, Mr. Ryland Grace. Bought a copy of your first book the second it was published.”

”I didn’t think I’d ever publish anything,” admits Grace. “Much less, publish something people enjoyed reading enough to buy. My first ever published work was in—“

”Hail Mary Magazine,” finishes Eva. “It wasn’t a poem. It was a narrative. Eulogy, you titled it. It was a story about a girl flying home for her childhood best friend’s funeral." She stares at him with meaning. "I think it might’ve been about me.” 

Grace swallows. He didn’t think Eva actually kept up, kept up with him.

He manages, “It won an award. I made a website. I submitted to more magazines. I won more awards. Eventually wrote a full poetry book. Got an editor, got it edited. Got a publisher, got it published. And luckily, people liked it. And that’s me.”

”Plus the glasses,” teases Eva.

 Grace smiles. “Plus the glasses.”

Under the LED lights and in the neon booth, Grace gets a sharp sense of déjà vu.

“You haven’t changed as much as I thought you would have,” Grace admits. 

Eva looks up at him through her lashes. “Did you think I’d be a dick now?”

Grace snorts. 

“A little,” he confesses. “You’re a celebrity.”

“Yeah, I am, sort of.” Eva sounds very sheepish about this.

And Grace rolls his eyes. 

“Nothing ‘sort of’ about it,” he says. “You’re a proper celebrity. You basically headlined Coachella. Twice.”

Grace tips his glass over his lips. Drinks. And when he sets the glass down, he finds Eva staring at him with her head tilted, odd expression on her face.

“What?” Grace questions.

Eva shakes her head. “No, nothing…. It’s just— weird. Hearing you say ‘Coachella.’”

Grace rolls his eyes again. “I’m from this century, Eva. I know what Coachella is.” 

“Feels wrong,” Eva continues to tease. “Before, the only songs you knew were mine. And now I’m just supposed to cope with you using ‘Coachella’ in a sentence that isn’t ‘Eva, what is Coachella’?”

“Yes, well,” huffs Grace. “I’ve had to learn.”

Eva arches a curious brow. “Yeah?”

“Yes.” Grace looks away. “I happen to know someone who performs at these events, you know.”

And Eva’s eyes widen, just a little bit. “You learned what Coachella is for me?”

“Yes.”

“Wow.” A meaningful pause. And then, “And to think… all it took to culture you was getting famous….”

Grace glares lightly.

“Har har,” he says, voice dripping with sarcasm, and he drinks again. 

Eva grins at him as she sits back on his side of the booth and sips her soda coolly.

“Just so you know,” she says, “when we get back to my hotel later, you’re going to be autographing my copy of your book.” 

Grace stares at her. He tilts his head.

“Is that your idea of foreplay nowadays?”

And Eva smirks. “The foreplay comes after.”

“Sure, it does.”

They stare at each other.

Eva stands abruptly. “I’ll go pay.”

Fall, 2024.

Grace met his roommate three days before his classes started. Some guy from Instagram who described himself as "Chill, quiet dude looking for a roommate who is not loud or talkative." His name was Carl.

He moved in late and did not even have to unpack to make his side of the room homier than Grace’s. They exchanged phone numbers and Instagram handles for use in case of emergencies, but did not talk much after their initial meeting. Grace supposed neither saw the need to. 

Grace refrained from existing too much around him, at first out of respect, and then later out of laziness.  It was really only when Grace came home to the dorm with his filled prescription for Ativan — the meeting with the counselor the month before had not gone very well, and she’d referred him to a psychiatrist — when he felt some sort of kinship with Carl.

Carl had nodded curiously at his orange pill bottle from where he sat on his desk, and his stare was not one of judgment, but through years of experience, Grace had learned the lack of judgment usually signified the presence of superiority.

“What’s that?” Carl asked. 

“Sleeping pills.” And suddenly remembering that the use of prescription pills for mental illnesses may still be stigmatized where Carl came from, somewhere in the South or Midwest — difficult for a Californian to tell between the two — Grace rushed, “It’s prescribed. Is it fine if I leave it on my desk, so it’s easy to reach? I could put it away if you ever have visitors.”

Carl tilted his head and said, “Course. And I won't have visitors.”

The next morning, Grace left to go on a grocery run, and he noticed Carl had left his own pill bottles on his desk, too. His did not seem prescribed. Grace laughed about this. It seemed everywhere he went, everyone had their own little vices. 

July 18, 2028.

Eva is staying at a cushy hotel in Del Mar Mesa. Her room is expensive, more like a suite than anything, Baroque European-style decor, decadent and dazzling, all gold hues and ornate fabrics. It’s very impressive, the type of hotel that costs far too much a day for Grace, but because she's succeeding in impressing him and he doesn’t want her to get such a big fucking head about it, Grace only hums appreciatively as he settles onto the California king, and he leaves his comments on luxury at that.  

“This is only temporary before they can get me situated in an AirBnB, or something,” Eva’s saying, emptying her pockets onto the bedside table. “I was thinking it was too far north, anyway. Might stay in Downtown for the rest of the month.” 

“You’re staying in the city for the full month?”

Eva glances over at him. Her brow is arched, her expression careful. “Where else would I go?”

”I don’t know. Aren’t you rich enough to have a mansion in LA you can fly to now?”  

Eva snorts. She walks over to Grace, stops right in front of the blond, and in the back of Grace’s mind, a voice questions, Haven’t we been here before? 

“You’re overestimating how much money a musician can make with two albums,” Eva says.

”You’re a celebrity,” argues Grace, finding it hard to focus on what he’s saying when Eva’s stood so close, looking so beautiful as she towers above Grace. “I watched you sweep at the VMAs on my TV. They play trap remixes of your music at frat parties and college bars. Fucking inescapable.”

”All right, that’s fair. But I’ve been touring,” Eva shrugs. She takes a step forward. Grace opens his legs a small bit wider, just enough for Eva to step between them, and he scoots back imperceptibly on the mattress. Through light, fluttery lashes, he stares up at Eva, who stares down at him, reverential. “Don’t have enough time to buy property in Beverly Hills.” 

“I’ve missed you,” Grace admits, suddenly, breathlessly, and Eva leans down, down, down, as if taken control by some holy force, and she leans closer, closer, closer, until their breaths are intermingling in the short space between them, until their lashes are fluttering shut on instinct, until they’re both getting closer, until their lips meet, sweet and tentative, tender and warm.

Grace is lying back on his elbows, and Eva’s kissing him, insistent but soft, and he can’t fucking believe this is happening. 

“I’ve missed you,” Grace repeats, in between kisses, and he wants to just die with her lips on his, thinks it would be the most romantic thing in the world. “I’ve missed you, I’ve missed you, I’ve—“

”I know, Grace.”

”No, you don’t. Nobody knows. I’ve had to hold this inside me for the past four years.“

Eva pushes him fully onto the bed and crawls on top of him, straddling. Grace shuts up in awe. 

“Were four years really that long?” she asks.

Grace nods without question. “After the way we left things? Yeah.”

Eva grinds down on him, elicits a sharp gasp. 

“I don’t want to talk about the way we left things,” the musician says.

Grace snorts, caustic.

“What’s new?” he wonders aloud, and then he holds Eva by the hips, seeking friction. Doesn’t matter. Outside of the weight of Eva on top of him, outside of the softness of million-thread-count bedsheets, nothing else matters. Not closure, not anything, just her.

Her fingers go for the buttons of Grace’s shirt. They tremble there, slightly, asking for permission. Nothing else matters. Grace nods eagerly.

Spring, 2025.

He stopped existing two weeks before his first finals. 

By then, he and Carl were less strangers and more very estranged siblings, though Carl's private school education and the general lack of similarities between them made that metaphor less fitting. 

Still. There was a camaraderie there. 

Carl did not judge Grace when Grace told him he’d be staying in the dorms for a lot of the time, did not judge Grace when he came back from Thanksgiving break and found Grace had started chewing on his sleeping pills like candy to stay unconscious. He could be reliably trusted to tap Grace awake if he was sleeping through an alarm. 

In return, Grace did not judge him when he fell into the habit of chewing on Adderall halfway through the year. They understood each other, if only just a little. It was enough. 

They desensitized themselves to each other’s presence, grew comfortable with their ideas of who the other was rather than the real things, and concern dissipated enough for them to leave each other to their vices of choice: Grace’s chronic sleeping that verged on medically induced comas, and his roommate-without-ADHD’s ADHD medication. 

Still, despite the constant presence of each other, they did not go out of their ways to hold a conversation, but Grace still managed to learn about Carl, in bits and pieces, through dark posters of indie rock bands taped against his side of the dorm walls and by unintentional eavesdropping on late night phone calls. 

Grace knew Carl’s schedule from his calendar, hanging right above his desk. Grace knew his extracurriculars from what he packed into his sports bag. Grace knew the face of his childhood best friend from the wallpaper of his laptop, the breed and bark of his parents' new dog from the occasional speakerphone call.

All this, he knew from observance, so he did not need to talk. And Carl, Grace presumed, knew all he needed to know as well, because he never cared much to ask Grace about himself either.

During Grace’s bouts of depression, when the blond would wake only to go back to sleep — “Burrowing in,” Carl called it; “Are you burrowing in today?” — Grace would stare at Carl’s side of the dorm room like an open-eyed corpse until the pills kicked in, enough times to sear the image of it into his brain. 

He still studied, still found time to watch lecture videos and commit the concepts to memory, still did the work and wrote the essays and responded to the bulletin boards. It was hard to pass college if you did not try, and Grace tried academically. Just not socially. 

He did not join clubs, did not attend social events, did not go anywhere beyond classrooms and his dorm. He did not speak to anybody. He did his work, his due diligence as a student, and then as a reward, he knocked himself out. He burrowed in.

A month before midterms, he flew into the sun with his burrowing in and entered a state of delirium that lasted two weeks and had been building his whole life.

For fourteen days, Grace lied paralyzed on his dorm room bed, sometimes the floor if his bed was too much, wallowing in the parts of him he could not escape, willing himself to become nothing but a simple organism, devolving out of existence until his sense of self was nothing more than the color one saw when they closed their eyes. 

Eva’s absence was still three months fresh.

All Grace’s mind had escaped him again for the millionth time thinking about it, and he had decided to will himself out of his body as well. Of course, that never worked, not in the way he wanted it to. The fact that he would inevitably wake again — at the hands of Carl’s phone calls or his sleeping pills wearing off — became its own obstacle whenever Grace was made aware. 

On the fourteenth day, Carl shook him awake. 

More accurately, he attempted to shake Grace awake, but all he really accomplished was shaking him. 

Grace was deep in another one of his blurry-states, which meant the handful of sleeping pills he chewed down hours prior was doing its job, so he could only blink blearily as Carl’s grip dug into his shoulders, could only mumble disgruntledly as Carl tried to get through to him, past the delirious haze in his eyes, the paralysis interrupted only by a shaking he could not control.

Grace didn’t understand Carl’s panic at the moment, couldn’t make the connection that maybe finding your chronically depressed roommate passed out cold with a bottle of empty sleeping pills next to him could be jarring, but in his defense, Carl had seen him swallow down these pills before and had never batted much of an eye when he passed out like this. 

Perhaps he really thought Grace was trying to kill himself this time.

But even then, Grace couldn’t understand why he’d intervene. 

The guilt made Grace convulse. The nausea made him groan and curl into himself, and through the half-conscious fog of his own vision, he saw his own hands pushing Carl away, saw watery bile escape through his mouth and dribbling down his chin like the opposite of a possession. His body was exorcising itself.

Anyway, Grace could make out none of what Carl was saying to him, or rather at him, but he could process the concern in his tone, and he at least had the decency to feel bad for being the cause of such concern. 

He wanted to explain to Carl that he was not committing suicide, was just simulating it, but he couldn’t find the energy to. And he felt guilty for that, as well. 

“…call…? I…. ay with me, okay, stay with me… should I—“ Gibberish, it was all gibberish. 

Carl left Grace’s eyesight, and Grace could not find it in himself to care, slowly slipping back into the nausea, slowly easing back into sleep, but Carl came back, holding Grace’s phone in his hand, and Grace felt inexplicably relieved. 

He held the screen close to the blond’s face so it would unlock.

An edge seeped into Carl’s voice as he ordered, firmly, clearly, “Listen— Listen to me— just tell me who to call.”

The urgency in his eyes reached Grace then, and it reminded him of himself, in a way.

He instilled shame in Grace with a look, pleading, and the distant fear of him calling for an ambulance broke through Grace’s mind fog, enough for him to make the realization that this moment might’ve been his first time in years having someone look at him the way Carl did— like he expected something from Grace. 

Grace could not hold a thought, much less a memory, so he became nothing but the present. He didn’t hear the name he told Carl to call. He didn’t hear anything. He became a single-celled organism. 

When he woke, Carl was gone, but he was not alone.

The ghost of his youth sat on his absent roommate’s bed. It was not Eva. 

Stern cold eyes and fidgeting with his flavored vape, he stared at Grace with a distant warmth, instantly igniting him from the inside out. 

He tilted his head at Grace, inquisitive, like he was refamiliarizing himself with Grace’s face, burning the newness of his age into his mind now that he was awake and the worry lines he grew up with could be measured. 

Grace did not feel judged by the way those deep brown eyes looked him over, but he could not speak either. 

He did not know what to say, and even if he did, he feared opening his mouth would make way for nothing but bile and flies. 

“Question,” James grinned at him playfully. “College not working out for you?”

Grace managed a smile himself.

“Nothing ever does.” He sat up. “How are you here?”

“I’ve lived here for over a year, dumbass.” James gave him an unamused look. “You’d have known if you texted me.” 

“Phone’s a two-way street,” Grace argued.

“Oh, you always crossed it easier than I could,” James sighed, which meant something. 

Grace reached over to his mini fridge and rummaged for a Celsius to beat his grogginess, which he downed disconcertingly quickly after realizing his thirst. James watched impassively.

“I told my roommate to call you?” Grace asked, after.

James hummed. “No.” 

The taller man blew vapor out the window, and briefly, Grace hoped his RA was not anywhere near, despite the quick dissipation of the exhale, the barely-there lingering of the smell taken away by the coming wind as quick as it came into existence. 

“You weren’t coherent enough to say shit. Your roommate only called me ‘cause of the area code on my phone number. Only one in the same state.” James flashed Grace a knowing look, one that asked, Really? No new friends? “I guess he assumed I was the best choice, cause I lived nearby.”

Grace pushed himself off his bed and swam past the wave of nausea that overtook him for the longest minute of his life as he stood to make his way over to James. 

James did not move from his place near the window, and Grace was thankful for it– he did not need steadying. He’d made it this far being dumb and dizzy, and five more steps to take a seat beside James would not be the one to kill him now. When he reached James, Grace held his hand out for James’s vape, and James passed it without mention. 

Grace took a puff and held it in his lungs long enough for the smoke to disappear inside of him. He had forgotten how to release. 

“I figured I’d see you again,” Grace confessed. “Kind of always did.”

“Like this?” James smirked. “Your roommate calling me because he thought you were killing yourself?”

Yes, Grace answered in his mind. Catastrophe has always increased my gravity. 

“I wasn’t killing myself,” he said instead, and was met with a passive stare. 

In flashes of memory, in the hours of the night staring only at the color of my own eyelids, Grace remembered Eva, and it flooded him, almost biblical, lifting up all his other sins to the sky, torturous. The pills helped. He did not want to be alive more than he wanted to be awake. How would he have gone about telling James that? With James’s staunch dislike for a woman he'd never met, and worse, his explosive hatred for self-degradation? Fuck’s sake, James used to wake up at five in the morning to hit the gym before high school. How would Grace have gone about informing him he’d exchanged his nasty habits from youth for new ones that were just as hopeless? 

James shook his head. 

“You still act like her when she’s not around.” James wrinkled his nose. “It doesn’t fit you.”

That felt significant. An observation that insulted without intending to. Grace felt defensive, all of the sudden, and naked under James’s gaze.

He pointedly looked away. 

Summer, 2025. 

Afterwards, James visited the dorm a lot more. 

The memory of being found near unresponsive on the floor of his dorm room was still fresh to Grace, but it was quickly fading on account of how strongly his will to repress it was growing, and he was glad to let James in, because James was somebody who saw him, somebody who grounded him without restricting him. 

Oftentimes, James visited while Carl was there, and James and Grace would sit on Grace’s bed talking and smoking while Carl played with his Nintendo switch on the bed across.

One day, James asked, “Think he’ll let you dorm with him again next year?” 

James nodded back at Carl whose own ears were fully covered by his new noise-canceling headphones, bumping music so loud, Grace could hear the bass leak from where he sat on the bed across the room.

“Probably."

James hummed and was silent for a while until—

“Question.”

”Shoot.”

”Why didn’t he call the cops, if he thought you were dying?” 

“The cops?” Grace barked a laugh. “Glad you’re not my roommate.” 

This made James freeze. He looked a little put down by it, though Grace couldn’t pinpoint the reason why. James just cringed into himself, like Grace had hit him or something.

Grace sighed and questioned, “Why’d you even ask?”

“Nothing.” James rushed it out in a huff. “Just… if you’d rather not deal with roommates, I have a place. And it’s nearby. You could commute.”

“I don’t have a car,” Grace said, skeptical. “And I can’t pay rent.”

Maybe he thought that James’s offering was a pity service, a charity. Maybe he assumed James inviting him to live with him was some sort of strange suicide watch thing James felt he needed to do.

“There’s buses,” James insisted. “Trains. Not like in California, not the way you’re used to. But it’s still a reasonable way of travel.”

Grace let himself be amused. “You want me to take the bus to college? Every day? When I already live here?”

James sniffed.

“Well, I have a car. Worse than the last one– you’d be embarrassed sitting in it, knowing you. But I could drive you. It’s… the college is on my way to work, anyway. I’ll take you to your classes. It’ll be nice. It will be. Better than here.”

“You work in Boston.”

“…Yeah.”

“That’s the opposite direction from here.” 

“I—“ James fumbled over his words before growing frustrated and groaning. “Look, just fucking move in with me next semester, Grace.” 

And Grace shrugged and said, “Okay.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

The next day, it started to rain. Grace sat under a tree while the little droplets fell to the ground around him, and he wrote a poem about burying a friend, only he couldn’t stop adding to it, couldn’t find a way to end it, so it stopped becoming a poem and instead became a story.

By the time he was done writing, his fingers had gone blue and numb, and still, he stayed twenty minutes more, just watching the scene around him. James found him there.

Grace said to him, "My finals are over. I don't want to go home for the summer."

James said, "Move in with me, then."

July 18, 2028.

Eva has a tattoo stretching from the small of her back to the bottom of her shoulder blades. It’s all thin lines and masterful shading, like a renaissance sketch, and it depicts an angel, wings out and mid-flight, hovering. The angel’s robes billow around him, and he raises a trumpet to his lips with purpose. Eva says it’s the angel who’s meant to signal the apocalypse, says that’s what the trumpet’s for.

When Grace pushes Eva onto her belly on a mattress or a table or any surface really, Grace’s eyes are dragged to the lines of ink, the way they stretch and squeeze when Eva arches her back or starts to quiver, the way the angel shines as Eva sweats. 

She still feels the same, Grace thinks. The same muscle twitches, same body spasms, same moans and groans and high-pitched gasps. The same babbling. 

“You're so good, Grace, I need you, so good, so good, please, you feel so good—“

When Grace comes, emptying himself inside of Eva, he can hear the noise of the trumpet all around him, proud and all-encompassing, like Eva herself.

And Grace thinks, So what if the world ends now? So what?

Summer, 2025.

Grace stood in James’s entryway, his humble roller luggage of belongings at his side as James walked on ahead, expecting him to follow. 

But Grace was a vampire and had not been invited in yet. When James disappeared behind a corner to another room without looking back, though, Grace forced down his shyness and stepped inside, and the carpet warmed the soles of his shoes, as if to disapprove of his intrusion. 

When Grace caught up with James, the taller man was waiting for him in the hallway, a dimly lit space which was made bright by the simple fact that James seemed to have walked it enough times to have left an imprint of his path on the carpet.

James opened a door, revealing a lived-in bedroom, decorated with rubber houseplants and a military-made bed. 

“My room,” he said, and then he nodded over to the door across. “Yours.”

He did not open the door to the other room, the one he’d assigned to Grace, and instead, James watched him expectantly. Grace didn’t open the door to his room, either. 

Instead, he left his luggage in the hallway and walked into James’s room. James gave him an encouraging smile, and he was home. 

Grace called James his best friend in his head from that moment on, and it felt like a continuation of their past, a well-deserved second chance at having James in his life, with the possibility for even more warmth in the future, basking in James’s golden glow of confidence and self-assuredness.

Grace sat on his mattress, looking around the strangely personal-yet-impersonal decor. James’s cork board of pinned empty postcards, receipts, and envelopes from the bank. A clean ceramic ashtray. The record player with ska vinyls seemed the only thing with sentimental value in the room. 

“Did someone steal your furniture?” Grace joked, nodding at a blank wall with uniformed patches of cleanliness that suggested framed pictures were hung there, once. 

“Nah,” James said. “Used to be family pictures of the old owner's family. I took them down, but the guy was an indoor smoker. Left the wallpaper stained everywhere else.”

“Looks wonky.”

“Would you rather live on the streets?” James joked. 

Grace rolled his eyes, quickly retorting, “But then who would you sleep with?”

James froze. 

Grace froze. 

“Not— like that.” Grace was sputtering.

James gave him an odd look.

(James’s dad was an Evangelical Christian, which meant up until he was eighteen, James was also an Evangelical Christian. The policy for being gay in Evangelical Christianity rules was, it was okay, as long as you were trying to fix it.

Well. James wasn’t eighteen anymore. And they were in Massachusetts, far away from his father’s home. He didn’t have to fix anything.) 

James shrugged. “Not yet, probably.” 

And he walked away, and in Grace’s head, he began calling James his boyfriend. 

Grace kissed him on the living room couch three months later, and James kissed back with a disbelieving smile as if he did not expect it, but he hoped. They didn’t go further than that on the first night, but in the morning, as Grace was showering before his classes and second year of college started, James joined him, made him shudder under warm droplets of water, and made him clean.

Grace arrived at his classes feeling fulfilled in ways even a sleep coma couldn’t have ever hoped of achieving. 

Fall, 2025.

It wasn’t difficult to pinpoint when exactly Eva Stratt got famous. She didn’t ease into it like most other popstars did. She exploded overnight. Like a supernova.

It was fall, 2025 when the spotlight shone suddenly down on Eva. Quite literally. 

(By this time, Grace had begun his second year of college in Massachusetts, and they’d lost contact for about a year. Everything Grace knew about Eva’s first technical debut to the wider public he did not hear from Eva as it was happening, because they were not friends anymore. He heard from the internet, after the fact.) 

Antarctica — the household name band, not the place — were playing in some super underground venue somewhere in New York. It wasn’t a planned performance, wasn’t something anybody present bought tickets for. Rather, everybody was out drinking and Antarctica just showed up and found themselves onstage. 

Except the bass player wasn’t there. 

“Lamai is sick tonight,” François Leclerc, the lead singer, explained into the mic, and the crowd went up in a collective aww. “So sorry, we may be limited to the few songs Reddell here can play the bass for.” 

And then a voice called out from the crowd, “I can play for you!” 

And Leclerc arched a brow. He squinted against the stage lights, looked down to the crowd, and she asked, “Who was that?”

Heads turned to the one who spoke. A spotlight shone down.

Russet red hair pushed back with sunglasses and a killer smirk. A bentness to her nose that wasn’t there before. Eager, bright eyes that stared at Leclerc, earnest and confident. Anybody else might have flinched at the spotlight, anybody else might have squealed at the acknowledgment. But not her. 

“Eva Stratt!” she called out. “I play the everything!”

Leclerc laughed kindly. The crowd laughed along. “D’you know our songs?”

“Who doesn’t?” Eva replied, to the cheers of the people around her. 

“And you can play them, Eva Stratt?” Leclerc questioned. 

“Better than he can!” Eva bantered, jutting her chin out at Reddell, who laughed loudly. The entire venue chuckled along.

It was New York, the night was young and electric, and the room wanted a laugh and a song. 

“Fair enough,” Reddell said, “get up here, Eva Stratt!” 

It was cheers all around. 

Eva was pushed through the crowd all the way up to the barricades, which she hopped over with ease, all legs, her. She was pulled onto the stage by Lamai, and the bass guitar’s strap was hoisted over her head and onto her shoulders by Leclerc. 

Antarctica plus Eva Stratt only performed four songs that night, given the unplanned nature of it all, but four songs with Antarctica in front of a live and enthusiastic audience was all Eva needed. 

They went viral that same night, the way all things Antarctica went viral, but the clip that got itself plastered on practically every social media ever was the last song. The two minutes and thirty-two seconds Eva spent playing Antarctica's song, Hail Mary. 

Leclerc let Eva share his mic on that song as well as play the bass. Eva, while playing the most complicated riff of the band’s discography, sang her entire heart out onto the mic Leclerc pressed onto her lips.

She swayed her hips, stuck her tongue out when the riff got complicated, sweat onto the stage, bumped her head and shook her hair to the feeling of the music, the beat of her heart, the vibrations coming out of the speakers around her. 

And there it was. The birth of a popstar.

Eva’s socials were tracked down the moment the videos were posted online. Fans of Antarctica found her Spotify with a thousand monthly listeners. They found her Bandcamp, Soundcloud, her Instagram and Youtube.

Antarctica followed her socials, the actual bass player of the band posted him to the caption, Always someone younger and better to take your place! Well played, Stratt. Cheers. Please don’t take my job. Clips of her impromptu performance were quote tweeted by famous musicians— Breathtaking; I haven’t been able to stop thinking of this since I’ve watched it. Eridian Records signed her onto their label the next week. 

In the next months, a sizeable number of her songs from her first album went viral on TikTok. After that, Eva was invited to tour with another established artist for the North American leg of her tour as the opener. Eva, of course, agreed, and for the six months after that, videos of her from that tour went viral and only catapulted her into further notoriety. 

She released another album not long after she stopped touring as an opener. By then, she’d built up an audience of roughly forty million monthly listeners on Spotify, and everybody monitoring her success watched as critics praised the album, thirteen songs on various topics such as Grace, Grace, Grace. 

And then interviews, festivals, being invited to perform for and then headlining events. Talk shows, articles, famedom. 

This is where Grace rediscovered Eva— in the bright, bright middle of it all.

Fall, 2025.

“You know, I know a lot about your dad,” began Grace, “but you never talk about your mother.”

They were in James’s — it still felt wrong to call it his — kitchen. It was early into the evening, but because it was late into the Fall, the sun had long set. James was sat on the counter space beside the stove, eating some granola from a box, and Grace was on the breakfast bar, scooping spoonfuls of cereal into his mouth.

James shrugged.

“That’s cause you’re not supposed to talk about it when your parents are divorced, Grace,” he replied, casually. 

Whenever James said anything like “you’re not supposed to”, or “it’s not right to”, or “it’s wrong to”, it usually meant he was regurgitating some shit his dad’s church used to insist on him. Grace had had many conversations with James about his history and relationship with religion, and he could very confidently say that James was the most well-adjusted traumatized person he knew. 

“It’s a sin. The church hated my dad for it. Wasn’t my dad’s choice, though — my mom took him to court to get the divorce — so they couldn’t kick him out. They spun the whole divorce into a faith thing. Weird.” James took another mouthful of granola. “Anyway, I just don’t talk about it because of that.”

“Well, you talk about your dad,” Grace pointed out.

”Yeah, so?”

”So, how come you can talk about him but not your mother? He’s just as divorced as she is.”

And James shrugged again. “I guess it is also because she’s dead.”

Grace froze. “… What.”

”Yeah, you’re not supposed to talk about it when your mom’s dead.” James did a little laugh. 

“Your mom’s dead?”

“Oh, yeah. Died ages ago.”

”I didn’t know. Sorry.” 

“Don’t be. I don’t talk about it a lot.”

”I think you should.”

”Well, I do whenever you ask.”

”… I’ll make sure to ask more often,” Grace said, slowly. He couldn’t help but notice how getting James to open up was deceptively easier than getting Eva to. James volunteered information readily if called upon, but the whole “calling upon” made Grace feel a lot more responsible than he felt with Eva. It was different. Strange. 

James didn’t seem to notice. He just nodded and said, “‘Kay.”

Fall, 2025.

One night, just as Grace was about to fall asleep, James asked, from beside him, “You still into that ginger girl?”

By this point, James had been told the entire story of Grace and Eva. He hated the whole experience of hearing it, but he knew that it was important to Grace for him to understand.

Even after knowing the full scope of Eva’s impact on Grace, though, James still spoke like Eva was just some passing character in Grace’s life, some nobody Grace was with for a week. He referred to Eva as “that redhead”, or “that one girl”, or “Red”. It annoyed Grace relentlessly, but he never brought it up because he wasn’t keen on starting a fight.

James’s question jarred him away from annoyance, though. Grace felt only shock. Are you still into him? Where the hell did that come from?

”James, what?”

”You heard.”

”Me and Eva are done. Why are you askin—“

James shifted in the space beside him. In the dark of the room, Grace could only make out the dark silhouette of him, but he could tell James looked annoyed.

”A lot of your poetry is still about her. Even your new stuff. Sometimes I’ll read something you wrote thinking it’s about me and by the end, it’ll turn out it’s about her. It’s weird, Grace.”

”You know my writing’s not like that.”

“You use three pronouns, y’know? Consistently. I noticed. In your poetry, the characters are never just ‘me and you.’ It’s ‘me and you and her.’ I’m a third in my own relationship.”

”Where is this coming from? James, I haven’t heard from Eva in over a year.”

”I have.”

”What?”

”Your ex is always on the fucking radio.” 

“What.”

”She’s always fucking singing about you.”

”Christ.”

Fall, 2025.

Deep down, Grace always knew Eva had it in her to be a star, so he wasn’t really all that surprised to hear that she’d made it. Of course she’d made it— she was Eva. 

Eva was cool and interesting and magnetic. Eva was likable but unapproachable. Eva was born charismatic and alluring, and fame did not change that. In fact, her rise to fame only opened the eyes of the public to her. A hidden gem, polished by attention, allowed a stage to shine on.

Eva just had the ability to woo an audience in her. She could make them laugh and aww and sniffle wetly and sit on the edges of their seats. She was clever and witty, but she also knew when to banter and when to let herself be the joke. And most of all, she was desirable. People wanted her. People wanted to know more about her. 

Grace understood where Eva’s fanatics came from— he’d been in that position once. He couldn’t blame them.

Lokken from The Saturday Show called Eva “a talk show host’s wet dream” when she first came on. With minimal media training, Eva smashed it, just like she’d always done, just as she always will do. Anyway, in that particular interview, Lokken showed a clip of Eva as a scrawny young teen playing iconic guitar riffs with ease in that childhood bedroom Grace only ever saw in pictures.

Grace could recall exactly where he was when he first watched that interview, sat on James’s bed without James around, holding his breath, as if the sound of his breathing would distract him from the sight of Eva on his phone screen. Eva looked tireder but happier, and she was just there, a year older being fucking interviewed on The Saturday Show with this video of young her — the her Grace first met — playing on wall-length screens, being cheered at.

Whiplash.

And on the topic of Eva’s beginnings—

There were old clips of her performing in local events that went viral once every month. Public parks and dimly-lit bars, not the concert festivals and concert halls she was selling out by then. Sometimes, Grace would make a brief appearance in these clips, just another face in the small crowds, bopping his head along to Eva’s singing, and if any fan ever made the connection of that reoccurring blond in the background of these clips, they could never track Grace down, because Grace maintained his quirk of not having a public social media presence, even after all these years.

Anyway, anyway.

On late nights, Grace went through the childhood videos Eva’s fanbase had unearthed as if he were a fan himself, as if he did not ever know Eva, as if he were finding out about the redhead for the first time. And after he detached himself away from his history with Eva, Grace began to notice things he hadn’t before. 

Like how youth suited Eva like a secondhand glove. Youth restrained her. She held so much determination in her eyes — it looked almost like she was always two seconds away from demanding God to make her famous — but she didn’t have the same freedom, the same solidified sense of purpose that maturity had given her.

She didn’t wear flashy costumes back then, and probably, that had something to do with the lack of funds to buy them with, but Grace thought that the comparison from her stage clothes from before — black henley, black skirt, black shoes — to her stage clothes now — still black, but shimmering with glitter or shining leather, designer, cutting pops of red and white, interesting textures and silhouettes, fishnets and tulle, confident and cool — made young Eva look awfully insecure. Or maybe unrealized.

Still. She had that same drive to her, even without the fancy new clothes and that ridiculous car she bought as soon as she had the means to which ended up being too distinctive to drive for a celebrity of her renown without getting recognized and followed.

She possessed the same hands, hands that shook unless they were around a mic, or pressing into keys and strings, or holding a pen, or holding Grace, once upon a time. Eyes that narrowed into knives, scrutinizing and unrepentant, eyes that knew the worth of their stare. And a voice that commanded. Her stage presence was larger than life. Her presence off stage was even larger. 

After years and years, Grace’s admiration for her had never once wavered. 

On the last night of fall, after they’d both gotten into bed, James asked, without announcing the question first, “How long are you going to act like you don’t keep up with her?” 

Grace froze and felt guilty.

“I can’t help it. I get curious. She's, like, famous now. Properly.”

“Why?” James huffed. “Why do you care?”

“I don’t. I’m just curious.”

“What-fucking-ever, Grace.” James turned on the mattress. He switched his bedside lamp off. “Wear headphones when you watch her fucking SNL skit, asshole.” 

Grace frowned deeply. 

“Fine, I’ll stop watching them.” 

“I shouldn’t have had to bring it up with you.”

“I’ll stop watching them.”

“She treated you like shit, why do you even like watching that garbage?”

“I don’t like watching it.”

“So why?”

“I don’t know.”

“Yeah, okay, whatever. Goodnight.”

“Goodnight.”

Winter, 2025.

Grace and James smoked separately in the mornings. James always rose earlier than Grace, and claimed the backyard as his, doing his workout out there in between puffs of his nicotine bar and gulps of his pre-workout. When Grace woke up alone, his routine was not to join James, but rather to settle in the front porch, smoke one menthol cigarette, and prepare himself mentally for the coming day. 

Neither of them minded smoking alone. James would get mean in the early hours of the day and Grace would get snippy back — this was their solution. 

Early winter, Grace let a stray into their house.

It was a dog, scraggly and carbon-gray and large, and it seemed to need Grace even through the thick exhalation of foul-smelling smoke and condensation between them. It seemed to want him, despite the cling of menthol on his teeth, the mix of sweat and stains on his sleep shirt. It walked right up to him, like it chose him, and he couldn’t just let it stay out in the cold after that, now, couldn’t he? 

When James came in from the backyard through the sliding glass doors, he was sweaty and awake and buzzing with energy. He looked down at the stray and clicked his tongue and mumbled, “Oh good. Another thing for me to compete for your affection with.”

Grace ignored him and said, “I’m going to give it a bath,” and got annoyed with the dog when it bumped against his thighs, making him stumble as he spoke. Did it not know Grace was negotiating its stay? Did it not know how important James’s approval was to him?

James hummed, but after a brief pause, he just sighed, neither endeared nor unbothered. “All right. Clean the bathtub after.”

“I will.” 

“I’m going to shower first, though. Keep it in the yard in the meantime, yeah?”

“Are you going anywhere?” Grace asked, tilting his head. James usually showered at night on his days off.

“They need me at the lab today. I’ve been telling you I’ll be busy with the merger. It’s been going smoothly, but this asshole transferred into my department from the other company, and they’ve been frustrating me to no fucking end. Need to be there to make sure they’re all right.” 

Lab? Merger? Grace wanted to ask. What is even your job?

The stray at his feet began to scratch behind its ear.

James looked annoyed. “Hey, do me a favor and put it outside, yeah?”

Grace pursed his lips.

“It’s not gonna be an outside dog,” he said. And as if God was sending a sign, a thick smattering of rain suddenly smacked against the roof and windows of the house. 

“Just for now,” James returned, shrugging. “Until you can clean it. Or, if you’d rather bathe it with the hose outside, that might be better—“

“It’s freezing out there, I’m not bathing it with the garden hose, James.”

James rolled his eyes, and he looked like he might argue some more, but then he glanced at his watch, made a small annoyed noise, and sighed, “Well, whatever you do with it, just keep it outside until it’s not dropping fleas on our carpet, all right?”

Grace frowned deeply, watched James stomp off to work, and did not take the stray out at all.

The next day, James didn’t take his day off again which saddened Grace far more than he thought it would. He watched James get ready from his place in the bed, and the stray, which had been bathed thrice before James allowed it into their bedroom, lied at his feet, watching him. 

“All right, I’m gonna go,” James announced, pocketing his keys and bending down to give Grace a light peck on the lips. “Want anything before I do?”

Grace thought, I want you to settle on my chest and sleep until noon, but said instead, “I’ll miss you. Just stay today.”

Grace’s stray whined gently at his feet. 

James spared the dog a pitiful glance, and managed another Grace’s way, which made him feel like an animal, begging at James’s feet. This should not be mistaken for degradation— to be in James’s presence was an honor. Grace would whine like his stray to get James to stay. Pride could not get to him now. 

“Please.”

James softened, if only for a moment, and said, “I’ll text you.”

“When?” Grace did not do a very good job at keeping the desperation out of his voice. He feared it might have been too much, feared James might have found him clingy, but Grace couldn’t stop talking. He couldn’t stop prolonging James’s time in this room, even if one foot was out the doorway. 

“My breaks.” James’s voice was reassuring. Comforting, but firm. It was the type of sound Grace was not used to hearing. Dove coos, serenades, fireplace crackles. His voice was among them. “I’ll text you.”

“What if I’m asleep? Then I wouldn’t get your text.” The argument was weak. It faltered even as it left his mouth.

“If you’re asleep, then it wouldn’t be any different if I were home.” 

“I wouldn’t be asleep if you were home.” 

“Oh, yeah?” 

Grace picked his last attempt at getting James to stay, and he stuck with it, putting all his eggs into the basket of seduction. He tilted his head a certain way, pulled away from the blankets around him. He nodded, he pouted. He held eye-contact a moment longer and licked his lips a little slower, more deliberately.

“Yes." Doubling down. Grace was good at doubling down. He was so good at letting this part of him take over. "I wouldn’t be asleep. We’d be too busy.”

James got a glazed look in his eyes, one not too different from the first time he kissed Grace, as teens. It was a look that had inspired a lot of poetry from Grace, in letters he never sent, in notes he never followed through with.

“Doing what?” Tempt flashed through James as he prompted Grace, and the attraction was so clear, it was electrifying. 

It did not make Grace feel young again. It made him feel new. 

And James was considering it — considering staying — but did not speak past prompting him, did not contribute to his case. Grace took it as permission to continue, as permission to work for it, a promise for something more if he did good. An opportunity. 

Grace took it. He’d take anything James gave him, long as it came from his hands. 

“Lots of things." Grace was deliberate with his tone, his flirtation. There were a lot of things he could say in this moment, from soft to obscene. But he stayed vague, keeping his words as evasive as they could be, because this was a game of give and take, and he could not give too much else there would’ve been no reason for James to want more. "Nobody else is here but us.”

There was a brief pause there, filled with flashbacks of James’s old car back in California, Grace riding on the passenger seat, the tentatively fond gazes they grazed each other with to make moments of intimacy seem more private than they really were. Back when there were no wrinkles except for the ones around their wounds, they thrived not because of the fear and prying eyes, but in spite of them. 

Grace knew with experience now that it was better with nobody around– knew the performance would be bolstered by the lack of “I’m not gay’s” or “I’m devoted to someone else’s” and an appetite set only to feed themselves, no fathers to cite Bible verses, no absent boyfriend to feel responsible for.

James laughed, a ringing melody, the toll of a bell. Grace caught the way his tongue flicked to dry his lips, and he fixated on it. And then James flashed a fond smile at him.

“Text me about it.” 

James walked out the door. Grace did not like being alone. It was not new. 

He slept until it was well past midnight, dog cuddled up at his feet, and he woke not to James but to the sight of snow falling outside.

July 18, 2028.

It’s… after.

After the sweat and the sex. After the short post-orgasm nap. After Grace regained his memory and remembered how they last left things, four years ago. After.

Grace dresses in his clothes from earlier in the night. He feels a bit disgusting with them on. Knowing the sweat has dried on his skin makes his body feel a little tight. And Eva’s still naked in contrast, half-covered with a blanket on the bed, blue eyes tracking Grace as he slips his hard brown leather shoes on.

“Why can’t you stay?” Eva asks, and even now it’s a disorienting experience, hearing her voice so clearly when Grace had spent years only getting to do so through the radio. 

That’s my line, Grace is tempted to say. The resentment has returned. 

“I just didn’t expect to not be home,” Grace shrugs. 

“Just stay. I’m sure the hotel’s got extra toothbrushes or whatever. Everything you need is here.”

”I can’t Eva.”

Eva huffs, petulant. ”Why not?”

And Grace levels her with a look. “You know why.”

And finally, Eva backs down. She looks dejected and pathetic, but she backs down.

“Fine. Just give me a second to get dressed, then.”

”You’re not coming with me,” says Grace.

”No, idiot, I’m driving you home.”

”We’re an hour away from my house. You’re not driving me home. I’ll Uber.” 

Eva groans loudly. She throws her arms up in the air, proclaims, “Grace, you had your whole dick in me thirty minutes ago, I’m going to drive you home.”

Grace frowns deeply. “But I don’t want you to.”

Eva returns the frown. “Why not?”

Grace shrugs. And he can say a lot of things.

He can say the whole and honest truth of it— a summer of absence couldn’t be fixed last time, so there’s no fucking chance four years of it on top of that can just be swept under the rug— forgiveness is not a substitute for care, and honestly, Grace is still trying to decide if he forgives Eva for disappearing again four years ago just as cruelly as she did the year before that— four years is a long time, they’re different people now, Grace knows how to exist on his own, and Eva has everything she’s ever wanted.

Grace can say, This doesn’t work. We know this doesn’t work. It was nice to see you again, and I’ve missed you terribly, but I can’t afford to care about you that hard anymore. What happens when you become the thing my life orbits around? What happens when I leave next month for college and you leave next month for tour? You’ll drive me to the airport and then never speak to me again, just like last time? It doesn’t work.

He doesn’t say that. 

He says, “You confuse me, Eva. It's unbearable.” 

A grimace. A beat of silence. 

The message is received. 

“Let me give you my new number at least,” she says, recovering, and it almost sounds like a plead. 

Grace feels something twist up in his chest. He sighs, tired, sad, a little over it, and he passes his phone over to her.

He watches her fill out a new contact, watches her save it, watches her notice how sparse his contact list is and hesitate. Grace’s only got a few numbers saved on his cell. His editor’s, his publisher’s, his mom’s, James’s, Carl's, and now, once again, hers.

Eva passes back the phone. And then, with a measured voice, she asks, coolly, trying to mask her curiosity, “How is James?” 

Grace is tired.

“Goodnight, Eva,” he sighs, and he leaves the room without another word.

Winter, 2025.

Grace got really into college, and James got really into work. Occasionally, when James wasn’t looking, Grace got really into surfing trending pages during big music events. For no reason at all.

Grace was still not entirely sure what James did for work.

(He knew he promised to ask more questions, but he wasn’t really ever the curious type when it came to shit like work. Disastrous, considering James was really into his work.)

All he really knew was, James worked in a big chrome building with his uncle, in a lab, and recently, there was a merger, and James was really pissed off about a someone named Adrian. 

“What kind of parent even names their kid Adrian? Who just does that? Carries a kid for nine months and then names them Adrian? But seriously, ridiculous name, right?”

”It's a perfectly normal name," shrugged Grace, and James rolled his eyes.

“Whatever. That’s not even the point. The point is, they’re frustrating. And now we gotta go to this fucking team bonding thing—“

”What?” Grace asked, suddenly. “What’s that?”

James frowned. He leveled Grace with a look. “Grace, I told you about this last week.”

”Did you?”

James pinched his nose. “Yes! It’s— it’s a whole merger thing. Team building retreat, I’ll be gone for three days starting this Friday.”

Grace blinked. “You told me you had a thing this weekend. Not that you’d be gone.” 

“I can’t get out of it, Grace. I’m helping run it.”

”I—“ Grace felt dejected. “I wasn’t going to ask if you could get out of it. I was just… I don’t know. Looking forward to the weekend with you.”

James sighed. “Would it help if you knew I won’t be enjoying the retreat at all? Three days with Adrian. Fuck’s sake.” 

“You talk about them a lot,” Grace commented, offhanded. “I think I know more about Adrian than I do about your actual job.”

”You’re not interested in my job.”

Grace almost argued that he wasn’t really interested in Adrian either, but he caught himself, and he said instead halfhearted, “I’m interested in it. I’m interested in everything about you.”

James laughed. “That’s the biggest lie you’ve ever told me.”

Grace thought, Eh. One of.

And on Friday, as soon as James kissed him goodbye and left for his work thing, Grace made himself comfortable on the couch and watched clips of Eva performing at the Grammy’s.

July 22, 2028

8:03 PM

Eva

Do you want to see where I'm staying for the next month?

Grace

??

Eva

You can see all of Downtown from here
The bay
Coronado Island in the distance
Can see everything, I swear

Grace

what are you looking at right now

Eva

That apartment above Gaslamp we partied at one time
Remember what we did in the bathroom?

Grace

christ
just send me the address

July 22, 2028.

”Why do you change guitars, when you perform?” 

Grace lies atop Eva’s chest, hands playing with her hands, interlocking and then separating, running fingers over knuckles, turning so it’s palm-up and then turning back so it’s palm-away. He brushes over the soft veins of her arms, and he kisses, selfishly, around the callouses of the tips of her fingers, the deep divots of guitar strings, fingernails cut short, short, short. Eva was never a nailbiter, but she picked at them a lot so the shape of her nails are wide and dull. “It’s ugly,” Eva would insist, sometimes, and Grace would only reply, “No, I like them.” 

“Each guitar is tuned differently,” the redhead answers. Her voice is low and rough post-sex, easy and relaxed. “Some songs require different tunings. Easier to switch guitars than to adjust between songs.” 

The light is dim and green, just single dot from the radiator near the bed trying its hardest to illuminate the hotel room. It’s just a room, not as fancy as the other one at all, but Eva’s here, and Grace’s body has turned to jelly in the most pleasant way, and even with Downtown right below them, still visible and glowing outside the window, Grace still feels like nothing exists except this room, at this time, because this is where Eva is.

He falls back into old habits with minimal resistance.

“You never used to switch guitars before,” Grace points out. “Y’know, when I’d watch your gigs.”

Eva laughs, jostling Grace. ”Guitars are expensive. I didn’t have the money for it before.” 

“Hm.” Grace sighs. “I liked your old guitar.”

”I still have it. It’s in New York.”

”Why’s it in New York?”

”That’s where I’m living now, when I’m not on tour.”

Grace shifts. ”New York?”

Eva nods. “Mhm. Manhattan.”

”Since when?”

”Since about two years ago,” shrugs Eva. 

And Grace stiffens. He pushes himself off her chest, turns to look at the woman right in the eyes, clear blue eyes leveling with icy ones.

“I live in Massachusetts.” 

“I know you live in Massachusetts,” says Eva, grinning. She doesn’t understand. How could she not understand? Grace’s breathing turns heavy.

”They’re so fucking close to each other, Eva. There’s a fucking train connecting them.” There is an anger bubbling up in Grace, something that had gone to fitful sleep but was now waking again. It’s got a foaming mouth and a heart full of resentment. “Why the hell wouldn’t you—“

”You were with him,” Eva interrupts. Not… not angrily. Not sharply. Just… says. “You were living with him. Of course I wouldn’t. I couldn’t.”

And the angry thing in Grace softens just a touch. Only a touch. 

Grace points out, “I haven’t lived with James in a year. We broke up. Everybody knew. You could have—“ 

”I couldn’t just show back up into your life,” Eva insists. “Not after how I left it.” She seems to struggle with the words, like they’re all in her throat with insanely serrated edges. “It— I… I figured I was sparing you. From me.”

Jesus bleeding Christ, thinks Grace. 

"And you're not sparing me now?"

Her eyes turn stormy, then hurt. "You came to me," she reminds.

Grace glares. "I shouldn't have. I shouldn't have."

And he stands and starts to get dressed.

Winter, 2026.

Early January, James came home full.

”I had dinner with Adrian over work,” he said, and he walked right past the kitchen and into the bedroom without offering Grace so much as a peck on the lips. Grace fed James’s portion of the meal he’d cooked to the dog. 

James continued coming home full. And then he began using his work phone at home.

Usually, he slept with the thing inside the drawer of his bedside table, but one night, he left the phone under his pillow, and there it remained for every night after that. Sometimes, Grace woke up to the sight of James typing on the cell, late at night, and he’d mumble, “What are you doing,” and James would only say, “Just work. Go back to bed.”

Grace was not an idiot.

He knew. He knew. But he said nothing. Because that’s how it was with Eva, back when they were in a similar situation— knowing, saying nothing. He knew. And it hurt, of course it hurt, but besides avoidance, besides neglect, he understood no other form of self-preservation. He said nothing.

He made James food which James refused. He rolled over and faced the wall at night, closing his eyes hard against the harsh glow of blue light through his lids, suffering through kisses.

And then one night, James came in through the front door, and he said, “Grace, I need to talk to you about something important.”

And Grace fiddled with his fingers and rocked side to side awkwardly on his feet, and he said, “Yeah, what?”

“I cheated on you.”

And there was no release of tension. There was not an urge to scream and shout “How could you’s” and “Why would you’s.” There was no shock, no disbelief. There was just the feeling you get when a thing you’ve been expecting to collapse finally collapses. Emptiness. Sorrow. Self pity. 

Grace bit his bottom lip. His face fell but recovered after a shaky inhale. And then, he nodded resolutely. 

“I forgive you.” He tried for a smile, but it felt too tight, too insincere. “Let’s have dinner?”

”It’s been going on for nearly six months now,” James continued, shaking his head, like a boulder rolling slowly down a hill. He didn’t sound particularly guilty. Maybe he wasn’t. He just seemed… well, more resolute than Grace ever was. James blinked slowly at Grace. “It’s Adrian.” 

Grace nodded again. He already knew.

“Okay,” he managed. 

“I’m breaking up with you,” James finished. 

Grace closed his eyes.

”I know.”

July 23, 2028.

”I moved out the month after he broke the news. James kept the dog. Last I saw, Adrian named it Eridani. They seem happy on Instagram.”

Same hotel room.

Same two people. 

He always comes crashing back to her. It's always easier than it should be. 

”I’ve got a song called Eridani," says Eva.

”Yeah, I know.” Grace laughs a little bitterly. “Pretty sure Adrian named it after that song, actually. Funnily enough.”

Eva bursts into a laugh. “And that massive prick allowed it? I thought he hated me.”

”Eh,” shrugs Grace. “He hated you because of me, I think. I guess once I was out of the picture and he found out his new partner was a Stratt fan, it was easier to like your stuff.” 

“Huh,” Eva hums. “Guess that’s just the way things go.” She yawns. It’s late. “And after you guys broke up, where’d you go? Back into the dorms?” 

“God, no,” Grace snorts. “Lucky for me, I befriended a girl in one of my classes, Annie Shapiro. She let me room with her and her boyfriend for cheap rent, so I just picked up a couple jobs at the University. Barista at the Starbucks, paid internship as a research assistant for the English department. Good enough money.”

”And did you miss James?” Eva wonders.

”Well, yeah.” Grace tries to collect his thoughts on the whole thing. He’s done a lot of thinking about it, actually. “It just… it was a long time coming, y’know? I mean, of course you know. I don’t address things. Maybe I could have been a more attentive boyfriend. Maybe he could have been, too. But at the end of the day, we were drifting in different directions, and it was bound to happen. But I still felt bad about it. We’d known each other since teenhood. We had history. At the end, especially considering how it ended, it just felt like a... a....“

”Waste,” Eva finishes, like she knows. And she does know. 

Grace stares at her long and hard. And he nods. “Right. That. A waste.”

And then a long, significant pause blankets them before Grace admits, “To be honest, I don’t think I ever saw him as the one for me.”

Eva arches a brow. “So why’d you stay with him for so long for?”

Grace shrugs. “I just kept thinking about how great it could have been if he was.”

Eva scoffs. “Well, whatever. After this, you wrote your book.”

Grace nods. “After this, I wrote my book.”

”I read it.”

Grace smiles slightly, and there is this melancholic look to it that he cannot help. He admits, “I knew you would.”

Eva turns away. “It was good stuff.”

”Thank you.” 

July 23, 2028.

"Did so much of it have to be about me, though?" Eva questions, panting as Grace slides in and out of her between her legs. Sweat sticks her hair to her forehead in long, wet strands of red, like rivers of fire, and the rest of her body shines with the sheer sheen of sex, and it is jarring and different, her willingness to be honest and address things. Grace hasn't quite decided if he minds it yet. He just wishes she would stop springing shit like that up on him when he's inside of her and breathing heavily into her neck like a dog.

Grace says, "Shut up."

She insists, in between moans, "R-Really, though."

Grace groans. He presses his face deeper into her skin, presses his cock deeper into her, and he shudders, shudders, shudders, coming inside her, pressure releasing. Her legs wrap around him tight. Her arms, too. And they're just bodies, just bodies, just sweat and warmth, until Grace pulls out and away and collapses onto the space beside her, closing his eyes and faintly seeing visions of three red foxes jumping about a forest in the rain. 

"Grace," Eva says, bringing him back.

He sighs and runs a hand down his face, tired. "I don't know, Eva. I could ask you the same thing."

"About my songs?" Eva huffs. Grace nods. "Of course so much of it is about you. It's you."

Grace sighs. "There you go then. 'Write what you know.' Course I wrote about knowing you."

And Eva shifts in the blankets beside him. When Grace turns to look at her, he finds this deeply contemplative, deceptively blank look on her face. She is so disconcerting. He has to look away. A silence blankets them, heavy and deafening, and when Eva breaks it, her voice is strained. 

"That's not what I was asking," she says. "You know what I was asking."

Grace has guesses. Did your poetry have to be about me, could easily mean, What does it mean? Is this a window left open in the chill of fall? Is this tracked mud you refuse to clean? Do you... care for me still, in the same way you did when I was your God and you were mine? Or is this just an archive of us, something you wrote to make sense of the senselessness of youth, something that follows you, like distance? Grace has guesses. It's all he ever has with her. 

Grace shakes his head. "Spit it out. Because sometimes, I don't know."

Eva blinks at him. She's exactly the same, but she's different.

"Is there a chance, Grace?"

Grace stares back. He parts his lips. Speaks. 

July 27, 2028.

Eva convinces him to come with her to a karaoke bar in Gaslamp. It’s lively and dimly lit, and it smells like sweat and drinks, and Eva looks right at home sitting across from him in a small booth, eyes half lidded as she takes in the atmosphere. Grace carries over their drinks from the bar. As always, for him, a frozen marg, and for her, a tequila sunrise to nurse.

Grace says, “It’s loud.”

She returns, “It’s familiar.”

He asks, unrelated to any of it, “Are you happy?”

And she shrugs. “I think so. Are you?”

Grace shrugs, too. “Probably.”

And they look at each other with frank expressions. It’s comforting and nice, to be seen. Eva looks away first, turning over to the small stage of the bar, watching three friends sway and sing Billy Joel’s Piano Man, even though it’s not nine o’clock and not Saturday. 

“There’s time,” Eva says.

Grace sighs. Sometimes, he thinks that’s all there is. Time.

He traces a finger around the rim of his drink and says to her, “What did you do, after me?”

At that, she turns back to him. Her face is blank, her body relaxed.

“There was never an after you,” she answers. “I worked. I partied. I got sick of partying. I stopped. I worked more.” She flashes him an annoyed, exasperated look. “What did I do?” She scoffs at the question. “I don’t know. I hoped.”

Grace looks at her, utterly stunned. And before he can answer, Piano Man fades away, and Eva is standing up abruptly and walking over to the stage, and when they pass her the mic and she steps on, everybody recognizes her instantly. Grace wonders if she even queued into the karaoke machine, or if she just cut in and they let her. He huffs a laugh at the thought. 

He sips his drink and watches her, and she’s up there watching him, smirking, and he shakes his head in disbelief as she sings without looking at the lyrics behind her, voice softer than the original, “When I wake up, well, I know I'm gonna be, I'm gonna be the man who wakes up next to you.”

Christ, Grace thinks. Christ. 

Summer, 2027.

Shapiro and DuBois lived in an apartment ten minutes away from campus at the edge of the woods. The month the cicadas came, it sounded like God was doing road work outside Grace's bedroom window. It was magical the first couple times, but then annoying for the rest of time after that. Still preferable to the sound of Shapiro and DuBois banging through the wall their bedrooms shared, though. So, midsummer nights, Grace left the window open and let the calls of the cicadas come in, drowning out the noise of sex from the other room, and he let his mind go quiet, and he sweated over the sheets, and he thought of nothing— Not Shapiro and DuBois, not James, Not Eva. 

Eventually, of course, morning came, and he had to get up, and he had to start thinking again, so he did, and when this happened, he though of things that went up just to go back down, like plants, and skyscrapers, and the water cycle, and people in the beginning of the day and at the end of it, and arrowheads, and arrowheads, and arrowheads, and arrowheads. 

He went to work at the Starbucks on campus. He went to his classes. He went to work at the Literary Arts building. 

He wrote. About cicadas and his mom, and Shapiro and DuBois and Carl, and James and Adrian and Eridani, and, of course, Eva. He tried to be angry but couldn't find it in himself to commit to such a large emotion, so he turned introspective instead. Big conversations with himself pretending to be poems. He wrote a lot. It kept him sane. By then, he'd already gained a following online for his prose and poetry, a large casual fanbase and a much smaller but much more dedicated literary cult of his own at the center of it. 

He kept up with James on Instagram. He kept up with Eva, too. But the more serious he grew about writing, the less time he spent Googling their names and the more time he spent Googling himself, and the more he wrote, the more blue links popped up. Literary magazines, independent presses, interviews and accolades. 

The day his book was published, he climbed outside his window and sat on the roof of the apartment, facing west towards the setting sun, towards California. Shapiro, DuBois, and Carl appeared behind him through the same window, DuBois holding a small cake while Shapiro and Carl held plates and forks.

"Don't jump," Shapiro joked, and Grace laughed, and Carl gave him a private, knowing look, and Grace laughed a little quieter. 

"I wasn't going to," he said.

DuBois held the cake out to him. It read, in really terrible icing-writing, Happy Bookday. Grace shook his head fondly and thanked them, and they ate together on the roof. 

August 2, 2028.

Eva chain smokes cigarettes on the rooftop terrace of her hotel. She still rolls them by hand.

Grace looks at her and asks her what she'll be doing for the next twenty years. She smiles at him and shrugs. 

"Singing," she says, "probably."

"Outside of that." 

Eva gives him a meaningful look. She sucks in smoke and lets it dissipate inside of her.

"Penthouse suite in Manhattan, facing Central Park," she shrugs. "With property in La Jolla and a winter home in the Swiss Alps." 

Grace snorts and steals her cigarette. He inhales. Exhales. They share a smile. And then she looks up at the sky, the clouds, the moon peeking out from behind. 

"Married," she adds. "Hopefully."

Grace feels the breath get knocked out of him. He swallows and stares at the skyline over the bay, the flickering lights of Coronado, the ships and yachts and fishing boats. 

"With kids?" he wonders.

Eva laughs. "God, no."

Grace tilts his head.

"Really?" he says. "Not even one?"

She takes her cigarette back, then she gives him an odd, odd look. "Maybe."

"Okay," nods Grace. "Good."

August 7, 2028.

His childhood bedroom, his mother out at work. They're both taller now, both different now, and against the backdrop of I WANT TO BELIEVE posters, chalk boards and cork boards, Grace wonders how this small space ever used to accommodate anybody. Eva seems to marvel at it, too. She stares at the obnoxiously teal walls, traces her fingers over the signatures on Grace's chalkboard, a sort of bittersweet smile on her lips.

Grace collapses onto his bed.

"What a time capsule," Eva breathes. 

"Yeah," agrees Grace. 

"Cramped now, though."

Grace shrugs. "It was always cramped."

And Eva shrugs and smiles. "Guess so."

She settles on the bed beside him, lies down. And then silence. 

“We love each other, don’t we?” Grace asks.

Eva blinks, unbothered.

“Of course we do. Have since we were twelve.” A bright yellow umbrella, mud tracked on windowsills. A girl on the precipice of things and a boy in the center of it all. All this time? 

Eva arches a brow. “Was that ever in question?”

She is such an expert in bone-crushing deliveries. Knows just what to say to get you all introspective. Grace stares at her and breathes. She stares back.

”We’ve never said it,” he says.

”We’ve never had to,” she returns. And she closes her eyes and sighs, and Grace wonders if she’s considering saying it now the same way he is, if she’s coming to the same conclusion he is— that she’s right, and they don’t have to.

He closes his eyes as she does. He feels something so encompassing and obvious, it does not need to be acknowledged. Her hand comes to rest above his own. Hm. For the first time, Grace starts to think that the opposite of fire might not be water, starts to think that the opposite of fire might be no fire. He falls asleep, and when he wakes up, her hand is still atop his. 

"D'you think there was a point to any of it?" he breathes.

She does not open her eyes. Just sighs. "To feel."

August 15, 2028.

Windansea Beach at La Jolla, off the main beach, over at the smooth sandstone and rocks. 

In the ocean breeze, sunset makes her hair look like fire. Her knees are pulled against her chest, and she's wearing a bikini top and sweatpants to protect against the growing chill. Grace sits beside her, memorizing. They don't speak. It's okay. There's nothing to be said. 

August 18, 2028.

Eva drives him to the airport in her flash new BMW. Her fingers tap against the steering wheel to the upbeat of the pop rock song on the radio, and under her breath, she sings along to the lyrics. The windows are up and tinted, because that's a thing she has to do now, but when Grace closes his eyes and focuses on the dull thrum of the car's engine, the soft rumbling of the road as they drive above it, he can imagine, vividly, how the wind would feel if the windows were down, whipping across his face and hair, sharpening and invigorating. When he opens his eyes again, he finds her glancing between him and the road, a contented, curious look in her eyes. 

"What is it?" she asks.

He says, "Nothing," and he means it. 

Nothing. Not thinking of anything. Just living this moment with you. Just here. 

She nods at him. Turns her attention back to the road. Continues tapping along to the stereo. 

In the airport, they part in front of his gate, and Grace is surprised to find that neither of them are crying or sniffling wetly or otherwise dissolving into sadness and despair in similar ways. It's a normal affair, them standing in front of each other, Grace with two rollers beside him and Eva with her hands in her pockets, smiling beatifically. Grace wants to kiss her, so he does, and he does not melt into her, does not lose himself in the motions of her tongue as it slips into his mouth. His personhood does not blur at the edges in the blinding glow of her light. He just kisses her, and he pulls back, and the world remains exactly as it was before it happened. 

"Don't ghost me this time," he says sternly. 

Eva laughs, clear and beautiful, and she shakes her head with her eyes closed before returning, "D'you wanna know what my favorite part of everything is?"

Grace shrugs. "Sure."

"That we're not eighteen anymore."

Grace rolls his eyes. Scoffs, "Can never just say, ‘Okay, I won’t,' can you?"

She laughs again. "I'll call you when you land," she assures him. "I'll fly to Massachusetts any time I can during the tour. And when I come back, I'll show you around New York, okay?"

Grace sighs. Takes a real good look of her. Older, wiser, more relaxed. He must look the same.

He pulls her into a hug, and she melts into it with little resistance.  

"I'll listen for you on the radio," he says into her hair, "in case you don't."

”I will.”

”Just in case.”

”Okay. I’ll say it on the radio, too. In case you decide not to pick up.”

They let go of each other. Grace doesn't know who pulls back first. He inhales deeply. Exhales shakily. Eva kisses him and nods sadly. And he returns her nod, understanding, before turning around, leaving to board his plane, and she follows his lead, turning in the opposite direction, hands in her pockets again, leaving the airport the way she came. And when Grace turns around just before entering the gate, he finds her turned around, too, smiling at him. She laughs. Waves goodbye. He waves, too.

July 23, 2028.

"Is there a chance, Grace?"

"There always is."