The scream comes from across the arrivals lane. Grace is barreling toward me at a speed that should be illegal outside of a track meet—arms windmilling, scarf streaming behind her like a cape, her entire body operating on a frequency that can only be described as unhinged sisterly joy.
She crashes into me. Full-body. Nearly takes us both to the pavement.
"You smell like sunscreen and sex!"
Several people turn. An elderly man with a rolling carry-on gives me a thumbs up.
"Grace."
"What? You do! The sunscreen part!" She pulls back, squinting at me under the fluorescent lights. "Also you're glowing."
"I'm jet-lagged."
"You're GLOWING. That's not jet lag. That's orgasm residue."
"That's not a thing."
"It's absolutely a thing. I read about it."
"Where? Where did you read about orgasm residue?"
"The internet is a vast and educational place, Jane."
She loops her arm through mine and steers me toward the Massport shuttle stop, already launching into what she calls her “essential interrogation protocol.”
“Did he—tell me everything. I need details. Seventeenquestions.”
“Seventeen?”
“I had twenty-three but I narrowed it down to essentials.”
She grins. Wide. Unrepentant. The Cooper family grin—too big, too bright, impossible to fake.
I've missed her so much my throat tightens.
We climb onto the free shuttle to Airport Station, the doors hissing shut behind us. Grace is vibrating with excitement. I’m vibrating from cold. My suitcase wheel is squeaking like it’s filing a relocation complaint.
And somewhere between the shuttle lurching forward and Grace demanding to know if West has a birthmark “anywhere interesting,” I realize—
I thought leaving him would make me feel incomplete. Like I’d left a piece of myself on that island.
But I didn’t lose anything.
I came back with more.
The shuttle lurches to our stop and Grace is still talking.
“Did he look devastated? Was he stoic devastated or tortured devastated? There’s a difference.”
“He was… steady,” I say.
She makes a face. “That’s worse.”
The doors hiss open and we spill out with the rest of the passengers.
Grace hooks her arm through mine as we head toward the stairs down to the Blue Line.
“Steady is the dangerous kind,” she continues. “Tortured can be dramatic. Stoic can be repressed. But steady? Steady is ‘I already made up my mind.’”
