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All Grace wanted, really, was for things to get back to normal.
The two of them, her and Frankie, in the beach house. Watching television or working on Vybrant or bickering over the cleaning or Frankie’s latest idea. No more talk of psychic predictions. No more of Frankie’s death date looming over them. Not now that it had passed, and she had lived - they both had, unbelievable as it all seemed.
And Grace trying to organize all the drawers in the kitchen was, she supposed, about as normal as things got for them these days. If things had really been normal, Grace would never have let it go this long. But there’d been the wedding, and then they’d nearly died, and then Bud and Mallory had insisted they both go to the hospital, and then Frankie had been kept there a bit longer, which in practical terms meant they’d both been there a bit longer since Grace had hardly been able to bring herself to leave Frankie’s side.
And then the doctors had pronounced Frankie fit to go home, so go home the two of them had. But the beach house hadn’t felt quite like home, not when Frankie barely seemed to have set foot inside these last couple of days since all of that. She’d been holed up in her studio, and while she’d sometimes disappeared in there for a while in the past during one of her intense painting frenzies, Grace knew for a fact that wasn’t the case this time.
The crumpled-up piece of paper Grace was looking at was probably garbage. But she knew Frankie sometimes seemed to have a different idea of what qualified as garbage than the rest of the human population, so Grace figured she should see what it was first.
She unfolded it, and there at the top in big capital letters were the words:
FRANKIE’S BUCKET LIST
Her immediate impulse was to crumple it right back up. Rip it to pieces, even. Try to forget that she’d ever seen it. She wasn’t sure why. The worst had already happened, hadn’t it? It was over. They’d gotten through. As she, for some reason, still found herself having to remind herself several times a day.
The actual words of the first few items on the list were clear enough, though their content was somewhat less comprehensible. The writing got less legible as the list went on. Grace’s heart twisted in her chest as she realized why.
Still, she kept reading. All the way up until the last item on the list, which seemed to have been left unfinished:
Tell Grace I
Or it might not have been an I. It could have been a lowercase L. Or the beginning of a T. Tell Grace that… something, maybe. It could have been anything. That it’s really only fair we should get chickens since I’m dying. Grace wouldn’t have put it past her for it to be something like that.
She crumpled the piece of paper back up and threw it in the garbage before she could give it another thought. Whatever it was, she told herself, it didn’t matter now. Frankie wasn’t going anywhere. Not for a long time, if Grace had anything to say about it. So whatever it was, if it was still important, Frankie could use her words and tell Grace herself. Whenever she got around to it.
Or not. It was fine either way. Really.
“Did you have something you wanted to tell me?”
Try as she might, Grace hadn’t been able to get what she’d seen out of her mind. She’d put the cleaning aside when she realized she was far too distracted to do it justice, and then regretted it when it had occurred to her that cleaning was one of the few activities to be done around the beach house that probably was better done without Frankie involved. So she’d ended up in Frankie’s studio, sitting on the end of the couch Frankie was curled up on.
Frankie looked at her. “Not that comes to mind,” she said. “Why?”
“No reason.” It was probably nothing, she thought. Some random thought Frankie’d had weeks ago and long since forgotten. Grace wasn’t sure why she’d expected anything else.
“Well, that doesn’t sound very important,” Frankie said. “What’d you really come out here for?”
“I wanted to check on you,” Grace said. “We could get lunch - “
“I’m fine.”
“Frankie, come on.” She put her hand on Frankie’s. “It’s fine if you don’t want to tell me whatever the thing was. Really. But you can’t just stay out here forever.”
“I’m pretty sure I can,” Frankie said. “There are plenty of leftovers in the mini fridge - “
“That’s not what I meant,” Grace said. “I don’t want you to stay out here forever. Because I miss you.”
“Why?” Frankie said. “I’m still here.”
“You don’t sound entirely happy about that,” Grace said. “Frankie, how concerned to I have to - “
“Not like that,” Frankie said. “I meant what I said. I wasn’t ready to leave you. Nowhere near.” She shook her head. “But that doesn’t mean it’s not all a little disorienting.”
“Of course,” Grace said. “If you need anything - “
“I don’t,” Frankie said. “It’s just a lot to think about, is all.”
Grace nodded, not really reassured. Frankie not wanting to talk about whatever was going on was pretty much always more worrying than whatever she might have to say. “If you’re sure.”
Grace went back to the house, not at all sure she was doing the right thing.
“I lied.”
Grace turned to see Frankie standing in the doorway. “No shit.”
“Yeah, you knew that,” Frankie said. “And I knew you knew that. But I’m not sure how.”
“I found something you wrote,” Grace said. “A list. In the junk drawer.”
Frankie blinked. Then her eyes widened. “Oh,” she said. “That.”
“Yes,” Grace said. “That.”
“I never thought you’d find it in there,” Frankie said. “I mean, I can never find anything in there. I figured that’s what the junk drawer was for. Things you don’t want to find.”
“And that was something you didn’t want to find,” Grace said. A decision she’d probably made as she’d stopped mid-sentence, in the middle of that last item on her list. “And it was because of whatever that thing was? That last part, about me?”
“I was doing so well,” Frankie said. “With the whole accepting-my-approaching-demise thing. But that just made it all worse again.”
“Well, you don’t have to worry about that anymore,” Grace said.
“I know.” Frankie sighed. “But eventually one or the other of us is going to go. And I don’t think we’re going to be able to line it up perfectly like that again. That was really a once-in-a-lifetime kind of thing.”
“Right,” Grace said. “But - “
“And there are still things I want to do before that happens. And the most important one of all is telling you that thing I was going to write down on that list.”
“Which was…”
“That I’m in love with you.”
Grace shook her head. “I thought you were being serious, Frankie.”
“I am,” Frankie said. “As serious as being electrocuted by a runaway martini, you might say.”
She really might be, Grace realized. She wasn’t laughing or dismissing her own words, and if anything she looked a bit afraid, fidgeting with her hands and glancing down. And that, all of that, was something Grace still had no real idea what to do with. It had been years since it had first crossed her mind that what she felt for Frankie might go beyond friendship, years since she'd dismissed it just like she'd dismissed all of Frankie's jokes in that vein - and yet she somehow felt entirely unprepared. She hated that feeling.
Frankie looked back up at Grace. “There it is. You’re doing that face again.”
“What face?” Grace said. “I’m not doing any face. This is my normal face.” It wasn’t. It couldn’t be. Couldn’t be her normal anything, she was pretty sure.
“Yeah,” Frankie said. “I guess it is.”
“This isn’t about my face,” Grace said. “This is about that - thing you just said. You really did mean it this time, didn’t you.”
Frankie nodded. “And maybe all the other times.”
“All the other times - “ There had been so many of them, and going back years. “Then - “ This certainly wasn’t ever how Grace had envisioned her life going, and yet all she could think of to say was what took you so long?
“I didn't want to leave it unresolved, but when I thought about actually saying it... I told myself I couldn’t do that to you,” Frankie said. “I figured I wouldn’t have to think about it anymore. Not after I was gone. But you would, Grace.”
“Oh,” Grace said. “Well. That’s - “
“But that wasn’t the only reason,” Frankie said. “It would just have been one more thing I didn’t manage to do right.”
Grace stared at Frankie. “Oh,” she said, unable to think of anything else to say.
“Some people might think it was romantic, a deathbed confession,” Frankie said. “But you never really went for that sort of thing. And anyway, I knew you deserved better.”
“Better.” It didn’t add up. There was no such thing, she was realizing. Not for her.
“I was trying to cram a whole life into those last few weeks,” Frankie went on. “But I think part of me knew the whole time it was too late. Whatever I could have given you, it wouldn’t have been what you wanted. It sure wouldn’t have been what I wanted. So I got to go a bit longer without throwing that into the middle of our friendship.”
“Because you thought I might not feel the same way?” Grace supposed she couldn’t blame her. It had taken her quite some time to realize, let alone accept, the possibility herself. “Frankie - “
“And I really did forget I even wrote that list,” Frankie said. “The magic of the junk drawer and all that.” Sure, if that’s what you want to call it. “But when you asked me about it - I realized I’d wasted enough time. And if all this has taught me one thing, it’s that you never know how much of that you can afford to waste.”
Frankie was right, Grace thought. She couldn’t push this aside, not anymore.
“What you said, about having wasted enough time…” Grace knew what she had to do. “Frankie, that’s just as much on me as on you.”
“What do you mean?”
Grace felt her mouth open and shut, but words didn’t seem to want to come. She didn’t know how she could possibly explain what she felt, what she’d been feeling for… she wasn’t even really sure how long.
So instead she leaned in and kissed her - and immediately she knew she’d made the right choice. Kissing Frankie felt warm, felt light, felt alive. And as Frankie’s arms wrapped around her in return, it felt utterly right - she felt like home.
“I’ve wanted to do that,” Grace said as they broke apart. “And I don’t know why I waited. It’s been more than long enough.”
“It really has,” Frankie said. “And we’ve got a lot of catching up to do.”