•⋅⊰∙∘☾✶☽∘∙⊱⋅•✾•⋅⊰∙∘☾✶☽∘∙⊱⋅•

I still didn’t know what to do with that memory. It had been rolling around in my mind all week like a forgotten item in a coat pocket, real and specific and undeniably mine, but still unexplained.

If Damien were anyone else, I could’ve filed it under crowd participation, sports entertainment, meaningless. But he wasn’t anyone else, and I had long since stopped being able to label anything about him as meaningless, and the more I tried, the clearer it became that my filing system was broken.

What kind of person kisses another person in front of a crowd and then goes home to wait in a dark apartment, climbing into bed with them days later and laughing like everything was easy?

And more importantly: what kind of person kept thinking about it?

That familiar tightness in my chest came back, and I let it, because fighting it had become more exhausting than just accepting it.

Beside me, Damien shifted, a small movement, just enough to remind me that the space between us was a defined distance rather than a lack of thought about it.

I closed my eyes. "Fine," I said.

"Hm?"

"Do whatever you want, jerk."

A beat of silence. A different kind than before me, the stillness that comes after a sound fades out but hasn’t been replaced yet.

Then quietly: "That’s surprisingly generous of you."

"Don’t make me take it back."

His chuckle was the softest I’d heard, low and almost private, and the word that popped into my head for it was fond, which I immediately dismissed, no arguments allowed. We were not using that word.

That word required a whole different conversation, one I wasn’t having tonight, or potentially ever.

I pulled the blanket up higher and focused on the storm.

The storm was good. It was outside, impersonal, and had nothing to do with any of this.

Then Damien spoke.

"I noticed you’ve been avoiding me."

My whole body froze, as if startled into stillness. Not flinching, just stopping, like a recording that’s been paused.

His voice wasn’t teasing. Not like it usually was when he had an entertaining point to make. It was quieter. More direct. The tone he used when he dropped the act and just talked, which didn’t happen often enough for me to ignore.

I kept my eyes closed. "I haven’t been avoiding you."

"You have."

"I’ve been busy."

"Oliver."

The way he said my name. I had, without asking for it, created a detailed catalog of how Damien said my name.

This one had that specific weight that meant I see you, and I’m talking to you, and I’m not going to pretend otherwise. It was the most effective version, and I hated it for that very reason.

I stared into the dark behind my eyelids.

"Still upset about the kiss?" he asked.

And there it was. The thing that had been hanging in the air since he climbed into bed, waiting patiently to be addressed.

My soul left me briefly.

Just long enough to register what this conversation was and what it was asking of me, then it returned because I apparently couldn’t even have a proper dissociation without my body pulling me back into reality.

I forced my voice to sound casual. "I’ve been busy. Classes, work shifts, Melanie. Life doesn’t—"

"Busy," he said.

"Yes."

"Hm."

"Stop saying hm."

"Make a better argument."

"I am giving you the argument—"

"You’re just listing activities."

I cracked one eye open. He was a shadow in the dark, looking at the ceiling with his profile just visible in the weak light coming from the window. He looked infuriatingly relaxed.

"You drive me crazy," I said.

"You know you do the same to me."

I shut my eye again.

The thing was, there was a sentence in my chest that I’d been rehearsing all week, the clean, simple, self-protective version, the one that created distance by default.

I’d said it to myself in the mirror twice. Once to the wall in the middle of the night. I thought that when the moment came, it would do what I needed it to.

"I’m not upset about the kiss," I said, truthfully.

Damien didn’t say anything.

"It doesn’t mean anything anyway. So what’s the point in being upset? It was just—" I hesitated. It sounded more solid in practice. "It was just a moment...just like that party."

The words came out sounding hollow, like something poured out that left an empty cup behind, I heard it myself. I recognized the gap between what I’d said and what was actually true, which had always been there, but never felt so loud before.

The rain kept falling.

Damien stayed quiet for a while. Long enough for me to count my breaths. Long enough to wonder if he’d decided to just ignore it, which would’ve been — fine.

That would’ve been fine, that’s what I wanted. Normalcy and the comforting idea that this was all very simple.

When he exhaled, it didn’t sound relieved. It wasn’t the kind of exhale someone gives when they get the answer they wanted and settle into it. No, it was the exhale of someone who’d heard some bullshit they didn’t quite buy and decided, tonight, not to push back.

There was something in it that felt like disappointment, not angry disappointment, but the softer kind, the kind that arrives when something just doesn’t quite hit the mark.

Something tugged in my chest. An uncomfortable pulling, like a thread that someone had just yanked from the other side.

I suddenly wanted to unsay what I’d just said. Not because I had something better... I didn’t, at least not one I was prepared to voice, but because the sound of that exhale was messing with my insides in ways I didn’t approve of.

I stayed silent.

So did he.

Eventually, I cleared my throat. "Goodnight, jerk."

The pause before his reply was just long enough to matter.

"Goodnight, Oliver."

I told myself I felt relieved. I practiced it. I lay in the dark, feigning relief with determination, but it didn’t take.

The rain continued. The thunder drifted farther off. The apartment stayed cold and dark, except for the warmth beneath the blanket, which had turned into a shared thing without either of us formally deciding it.

I fell asleep eventually, in that gradual, involuntary way of someone who’s been awake too long and can’t muster the energy to keep their eyes open anymore.

Sleep didn’t ask permission; it just arrived and took over, like it does when your body decides it needs to recover, no matter if your brain has processed everything.

I dreamt in snippets, arena lights, the roar of a crowd in a frat party, the city zipping past the limo windows, the cool weight of a small metal keychain, and a kiss that I insisted didn’t mean anything, yet kept returning to anyway, waiting in my dreams like it knew it wasn’t going anywhere.

I woke briefly in the night to the sound of the rain easing up. The room was still dark. The blanket was still warm.

Damien was still there, breathing steadily next to me, and I was aware of it for just a few seconds before sleep reclaimed me. In those seconds, I didn’t think of anything useful.

I just lay there in the dark, listening to him breathe, and felt the undeniable warmth of being exactly where I was.

Then I slipped back into sleep.

And in the morning, I knew I’d have to deal with all of it.

But we’d cross that bridge when we got there...