Jess stares at the ceiling, using her eyes to outline the shadows being cast in the dim moonlight.
It's been two hours since they both crawled into his bed, thoroughly exhausted. Nick looks like he's sleeping, but as tired as she feels, Jess is wide awake. She turns over a little, so that she's facing the closet, away from Nick. A quiet sob escapes her when she sees all of her dresses hanging neatly beside his flannels and she presses her hand to her mouth in a pathetic attempt to stifle it.
She feels the bed shift, feeling him beside her, and she loses control. She presses her face into her pillow and lets every emotion she's been feeling for the past several months of her life flood out of her eyes like rain.
She's going to lose him.
She can't go back to being friends with him.
She doesn't think she knows how.
She lets out another gasping sob as she feels a gentle tug at her shoulder, and suddenly he's rolling her over, pulling her into his chest. He's telling her not to cry, he's telling her it'll be okay, he's holding her head tightly against his chest and she can feel him crying too, his erratic breathing causing his chest to shudder against her forehead.
He's going to run, she can feel it, he's going to panic moonwalk right out of her life because she'd bet her life savings that he doesn't remember how to be friends either, so she does the only thing she knows how to do, and clings to him, her tears and snot soaking the front of his shirt, and she's shaking and she feels like the walls are closing in on them.
"Nick," she manages to choke out, her voice breaking. "You can't leave, okay?"
She feels his fingers dig into her back.
"I'm right here," he says, so quietly she thinks she might have imagined it, but she doesn't care because he's holding her and for just a few more hours, they're alone in their own world and it's going to be gone tomorrow and he might be gone tomorrow because she really doesn't know if she believes him.
But she believes him.
"We have to be okay," she says, with as much conviction as she can muster, trying to convince herself as much as she wants to convince him, and she doesn't even know what she means by that, but all she knows is that he doesn't want to be her boyfriend, and she doesn't want to be his girlfriend, and it's the kind of relief that isn't really relief, the kind that is sending a rusty knife through her gut.
She doesn't know anything.
"Jess," he says, his voice strained. "I can't promise you anything-"
Jess cuts him off with the sound of all of the air escaping from her lungs, and she feels like she's been bodyslammed to the ground, but maybe it's for the best, she thinks, because look at how messy things have gotten, and maybe she just needs to disappear for a while-
"No, Jess, look at me," Nick pleads, pulling back from her and tilting her quivering chin up with his thumb.
His voice is strained, and with every word that spills from his lips, Jess can feel her heart simultaneously swell and shatter just a little bit more.
"I can't promise you what's going to happen from here, okay? I don't know what any of this means. But I meant what I said. I want my friend back. We'll be good."
He presses a kiss to her forehead, eliciting a breathy whimper from her.
"We'll be good," she whispers, pulling him closer to her. She could hold him for one more night, she could find some kind of comfort in his steady heartbeat and in waking up in his arms for one last time.
So they cling together, legs tangled, fingers laced, heads nuzzled.
"We'll be good," Jess breathes one more time, absolute exhaustion taking over before she can hear Nick echo her words.
