A few seconds, and Natalie's reply arrived: "Right now? I love everyone."
Oakley: …
Was that a vow of compassion? A nunnery in soft focus? Impressive, in its way.
Truth be told, Natalie had always struck Oakley as singular. Cool in the same way Grace was cool, but different. Grace's calm felt human—reachable. Natalie's… didn't. She was like something extraterrestrial with perfect diction, forever dropping a sentence that blew the air sideways.
A beat later, Natalie wrote: "From the sound of it… did you catch feelings for Grace?"
There was a clarity to Natalie that bordered on invasive. She could peel away surfaces and lay her fingertip on the live wire underneath.
Oakley wasn't ready for the bluntness. Her mind stuttered, screens flickering. She ducked her head and started typing a long defense: "I was just curious about the concept, you know? So I wanted to ask if you'd ever…"
Cowardice, maybe—that, or pride. Last night she'd sworn to Natalie she'd watch Grace quietly for a while instead of jumping to conclusions, and here she was, twenty-four hours later, tripping over the same question. It made her feel brainless.
She didn't want to be brainless.
In the end, the little essay disgusted her; she erased it all. She sent, "I don't know. I'm very curious about her, that's true. I don't know if that counts as liking."
She'd never liked anyone before. Curiosity, though—curiosity happened all the time. Which muddied things.
It felt like liking. It also felt like a mix-up, some misfiled sensation dressed in the wrong clothes.
Natalie replied: "If you really like someone, your heart will tell you. Your actions will tell you. Even if no one says a word, you'll know."
So very Natalie—gentle, lucid, and somehow fogged at the edges. Like a portrait behind glass.
Oakley felt she'd asked for weather and received the climate. Yet—she couldn't deny it made sense.
"I think you're right," she wrote, mouth tugging.
Some conclusions didn't need to be forced. Time would tap them into shape. If it wasn't real, the thought would blow away on its own. If it was, then even if she tried not to think about Grace, the thoughts would keep walking back in and sitting on the end of the bed.
Natalie: "If it's real, and you're sure she's a good person, then go after it. Better that than regret. Some people do regret chasing, wish they'd never felt anything. But I think those are the rare cases."
There was weight in that. A quiet, resigned kind of weight. Who would tack on that second half unless there was a bruise behind it?
Had Natalie liked someone once and wished she hadn't? Usually, if you'd had a golden kind of love, you spoke of love as possibility. You didn't rush to mention the parts that cut. People who brought up the cuts—most of them had been cut.
Oakley's brows went up. "You sound… experienced."
Natalie didn't elaborate. She sent a giant smiling sticker instead. Everything, nothing, contained in the curve of a pixel mouth.
Oakley exhaled. Got it. Natalie didn't want to talk about feelings. Oakley could be tactful. She let the thread drop.
Backing out of the chat, she rubbed her temples and remembered the search she'd done the other day—the one she hadn't resolved. The one about orientation and bodies and what woke or didn't.
The thought made her pick up the phone again.
If she remembered, she'd saved a… collection. A mixed sampler.
No dithering: she opened her cloud drive and found the folder, a so-called "starter pack," a ridiculous ten gigabytes.
She fished out her earbuds, plugged them in, shoved a hand through her hair, and tapped on one labeled M/F. She would, scientifically, observe what her body did—whether any needle moved at all.
Except the moment the video buffered and the male lead appeared, she flinched. Goblin-faced, despite the suit. The kind of creep you could smell through a screen.
The woman opposite him was stunning—clean lines, luminous skin, a perfectly lovely face—and this was her partner? A swan paired with a toad. Oakley couldn't do it. Even before the plot (what plot?) kicked in, she bailed, pinching the bridge of her nose and hunting for another.
Two, three tries. The men were all catastrophes. She yielded, with relief, and opened a file marked F/F.
Curveball: anime.
Oakley blinked. Tapped the first. Four minutes. Four minutes? What could four minutes possibly hold?
The video stuttered once, then rolled. Blue-haired girl cornering pink-haired girl against a storage room wall. A forcefield of intent. Oakley's spine went straight.
Japanese with no subtitles. Oakley couldn't track the words.
Then, just as she was about to complain to herself, the blue-haired girl smiled with her eyes lowered and kissed the pink-haired girl.
Oakley's eyes went wide. So blunt? So soon?
She liked it.
Somehow, without her noticing, the kiss folded the pink-haired girl's lashes down. Midway, blue-hair murmured something, and her hand paused, then slid under the hem of the other's skirt.
Oakley bit her lower lip.
Direct. So direct. F/F anime was… like this?
Four minutes ended. Oakley realized her body had gone taut, scalp tight, mind bright with static.
She stared at the blanked screen.
No way. Was she really this worked up over animation? Over drawn mouths and lines and color?
From the bathroom, a small mechanical click sounded—the latch giving, metal on metal, like the start of a door opening.
Oakley Ponciano shot a sharp glance toward the sound and, with soldier-fast reflexes, killed the cloud drive. No repeats of last time. Never again. The memory of that near-mortal embarrassment—social death, truly—still prickled at her skin.
Back on the home screen, safe, she swept her hair off her neck and, heat licking between her shoulder blades, looked over. "You're done?"
"Yes." Grace Barron emerged from the mist in a robe, crossed to the table, and drank a glass of water.
Oakley curled deeper into the duvet, phone in hand, teeth catching her lower lip without her noticing.
Grace was all clean lines and long bones—slim wrists, elegant hands, the quiet articulation of a dancer. With her hair loose and the robe falling straight, she called to mind a pale crane stepping out of fog. That faint, ascetic reserve—cool and careful—managed to invite longing without asking for it. It was, for Oakley, dangerously specific.
Grace set the glass down and rubbed her scalp, as if smoothing static.
The gesture tugged a memory forward: the hot spring, and what Grace had said then. Oakley sat up. "Are you… still a little wrung out?"
"A little," Grace admitted.
It was more than a little. Lately the tiredness had been a tide that rose to her chin. Some days she wanted to be weathered driftwood and nothing else.
Oakley pressed her mouth flat, then tipped her head, patting the mattress beside her with a coaxing smile. "Come here. I'll work on you."
Grace lifted her eyes and remembered: Oakley's claim of magic hands. "Right. I almost forgot you knew how."
A woman with too many talent points to count.
"Mm-hm." Oakley's voice turned playful. "Come on. Let me show off."
Grace didn't argue. She came.
When she sat at the edge of the bed, Oakley moved behind her, kneeling, spine lengthening, shoulders open. She swept a handful of glossy hair aside with a careful touch and set the pads of her fingers at Grace's temples, circling gently, heat to skin.
After a moment, Oakley asked, "Pressure okay?"
The instant warm fingertips found that thin place, Grace went a little blank, then nodded. "It's fine."
"Good." Oakley smiled into the space between them and kept her even, professional rhythm.
Silence settled. Their breathing pared itself down to something steady and small. Beneath it, something else accumulated—an early-dawn fog that didn't lift, only thickened.
Oakley traced from temple to scalp and back again. After a while she wet her lips and said, softly, "Grace."
"Mmm?" Grace opened her eyes.
Oakley had only wanted to puncture the hush, so she chose the most ordinary thing. "Lean back a little. You're far. I can't get the leverage."
"Oh." Grace obeyed, tipping back.
Too far. In the suddenness of it, her head met something soft and resilient, and every nerve caught. She started forward, but Oakley's hand came to her shoulder, light but certain. "Hey. Why retreat after you've already arrived?"
Grace turned her head a fraction, not trusting her voice.
"This distance is perfect," Oakley said, a small laugh in it. "Now I've got strength."
Grace swallowed. "Do you… not think this is too close?"
"Close?" Oakley leaned to her ear, a breath brushing the rim. "A little. But if it's close, so what? What's going to happen?"
Grace pivoted, quick as a thought—and found a mouth very near her own, full and warm, and eyes so clear they seemed blown from glass.
The distance between them vanished to a stitch.
The room's temperature climbed without ceremony. Heat ran along their spines; their throats felt dry, as if they'd drunk nothing all day. The air itself seemed to be fermenting, a slow, heady chemistry.
Oakley, brave on borrowed courage, lifted her lashes and met Grace's gaze directly. With her other hand she hooked a loose strand of Grace's hair and wound it loosely around her finger. "Mm?"
Grace's lashes fell. She closed her eyes, opened them again, and then—sudden—caught Oakley's wrist.
Oakley startled. Before she could register the shape of what was happening, the mattress dipped; the world tilted; she went down with a soft, helpless thud, breath knocked thin by that brief free fall.
By the time her mind caught up, Grace had already gathered both her hands, lifted them, and pinned them above her head against the headboard—clean, decisive, inescapable. Oakley's breath stuttered to a halt and then returned as a shiver.