...
They meet on move-in day in the most pedestrian way possible.
“Hi! I guess you’re my roomie then.”
Jamie is tired, but she supposes that’s to be expected. Even with what little she owns—just one box and a duffel bag—the moving process is physically and emotionally draining. Or maybe it’s just the “going to university” aspect that’s tiring. Owen’s spent the last few months of summer trying to psych her up for it, but all he’d really done is make her weary and prematurely exhausted.
Later, she’ll have to hit him for that. But he’s off getting comfortable in his own flat right now. It’ll have to wait.
And, anyway, she has her own things to contend with. For instance, this: her blue-eyed, blonde-haired American roommate who’s a bit too pretty for Jamie’s comfort.
This , she thinks, is going to be a problem .
And it is. Starting right then.
“Hey,” she says, then nods to the top bunk. “Mine then?”
The bottom one already has sheets on it and is made with military precision. The girl nods a little too vigorously and Jamie eyes her. Thinks that it might actually be nervousness and not excitement that’s got this girl chomping at the bit.
Jamie tosses her duffel bag up on the top bunk and sets her box on the empty desk beside it. The one across the room already has a box on it, declaring that it’s been claimed. When she looks back at her roommate, the girl shoves a hand out to greet her properly.
“Danielle,” she says as Jamie takes her hand and shakes it—trying not to think about how soft her skin is. “Dani.”
“Nice to meet you, Danielle-Dani,” Jamie says. “Jamie.”
Dani is still shaking her hand as she bobs her head. “Jamie. That’s a pretty name.”
Kindness is radiating off her in spades that make Jamie feel like she’s drowning. Maybe it’s because she’s lived so many horror stories in the foster homes she’s come up in, but Dani is the exact opposite of what she’d been expecting.
Eventually, Dani pulls her hand away, but doesn’t stop smiling. A woman comes in a few minutes later, burdened down by bags of groceries that don’t fit in Dani’s mini fridge. She chatters a mile a minute and Dani keeps throwing Jamie these sympathetic looks like they’ve been friends for years. Jamie tries not to read too much into it as she unpacks her meager belongings.
Dani’s mother shakes Jamie’s hand, too, and Jamie usually isn’t keen on meeting too many people at once, but one happy look from Dani and just a few minutes of knowing each other and Jamie is already under her spell.
It’s certainly a first. She thinks it would maybe be more surprising if Dani wasn’t so cute.
But she is.
Not even an hour into college life and Jamie is already screwed.
______________
Owen comes calling later that night, taking a seat on Jamie’s bare desk and surveying the room curiously. Dani is gone—off getting supper with her mother and saying her goodbyes somewhere—and, as usual, Owen has too many questions.
“What’s the roommate situation?” he asks not even ten minutes into his visit. “Not stuck with some dullard are you?”
“No. She’s nice,” Jamie says. The question makes her nervous and she knows why, but it still annoys her.
“Nice, huh? High praise coming from you,” Owen says fondly.
Jamie hums and pretends to be fussing with her phone—a gift from Owen’s mother so she’ll “keep in touch.” Owen’s mother does that sort of thing. Jamie hasn’t quite gotten used to it, but she’s come to realize that someone wanting to keep you around isn’t always a bad thing.
“Already best friends forever, then?”
There are a thousand things she could say to rebuke this; a good number of them come to mind and bite at the tip of her tongue, begging to be fired off like bullets in his direction. Teasing things. Annoyed things. None of them serious or even necessarily toeing the line of truth.
Instead, she ignores him.
On his way out not long after, Dani is outside the door, shimmering tears staining her cheeks. She sniffles and swipes at them nervously when she sees Owen. There’s an odd introduction between the two of them and Jamie hangs back, watches the way they interact. It isn’t until Dani’s eyes settle on her, lighting up a little with familiarity—and perhaps interest , if Jamie allows herself to hope—that she realizes that she’d been waiting for something similar to be turned in Owen’s direction.
He has that effect on most girls their age, not that he’s ever really noticed. Something about his gentle smile and the bright of his eyes behind his glasses makes him catch the attention of almost any girl he speaks to. But Dani doesn’t regard him in the same manner Jamie’s seen dozens of times before.
She’s relieved at this. Doesn’t admit to herself why.
Jamie sees Owen off and he turns around halfway down the hall to look back her, mouthing something that looks like, “She’s cute!” with a point in the direction of her room, where Dani now is. She waves him off, too embarrassed to do much else.
“It must be nice to have your boyfriend so close,” Dani says later that night, when Jamie is tucking herself into bed.
Jamie’s heart quickens, chest tightening around the errant muscle. “God, no,” she says quickly. “He’s not my boyfriend.”
Dani is looking at her strangely. “Oh.”
“He’s my foster brother.”
Her voice hesitates around the phrase. For some, she knows, “foster brother” might mean less, but it’s the only thing closest to what he really is to her.
“He seems nice,” Dani says.
She’s changing into pajamas now and Jamie can hear the rustle of fabric. Her eyes stay fixed on the ceiling above her head. She has a feeling that living with Dani is going to be a test of her willpower in more ways than one.
“He is,” Jamie says.
Dani cries herself to sleep that night and Jamie stays awake the whole time, trying to build up enough courage to say something.
She falls asleep before she can.
______________
Two days later, Jamie comes back from her Intro to Philosophy class to find Dani on a Zoom call with a bespectacled boy who’s making her laugh. Under normal circumstances and with anyone else as a roommate, this wouldn’t mean much of anything. Unfortunately, Jamie has spent nearly every class she’s had so far daydreaming about her roommate and the way she laughs and smiles—how she pokes her reading glasses up her nose when she’s on her laptop in their room; the way her lips curl round the straws of the ridiculous juice boxes she’s always drinking.
“Oh, Eddie, hang on,” Dani says as Jamie is trying to make her escape. She waves Jamie over and Jamie comes, which is half the problem really. “Eddie, this is Jamie, my roommate.”
The boy on the screen waves, some of his dark curls falling into his eyes. “Hi,” he says a little awkwardly.
Jamie knows the feeling. Waves back. Leaves it at that.
“Jamie,” Dani continues, melodic voice catching on the syllables in a way that makes Jamie’s heart lurch, “this Eddie, my boyfriend.”
The word goes right through her. Right: a boyfriend . A nice, cute American boy she’s left back at home with promises of her return and more time spent together than Jamie has ever had with her.
“Oh,” Jamie manages. Dani’s eyes are gentle and blue. “Um...cool.”
She lingers a beat, the third wheel in a situation where only two people are physically present, and then makes an excuse to leave. Shuts the door on Dani’s sweet voice describing her day to a boy in another country.
Dinner that night is eaten in the cafeteria on her own, headphones slammed over her ears without any music playing. She tells herself to buck up. No use pining after someone you’ve just met that you can’t have. By the time the sun has gone down, she’s almost convinced herself.
And then she gets back to her dorm and Dani is sitting on her bed watching Netflix and sipping from a juice box and Jamie is screwed all over again.
Especially because when Dani sees her come in, she pats the spot on her bed right next to her and Jamie hardly even hesitates before coming over to sit down beside her. She offers a sip of her juice box and Jamie, usually bothered by the germs that accompany sharing drinks, takes it. They sit there quietly, watching some cooking show Jamie’s never seen before, shoulders brushing, fingers touching briefly in the juice box exchange.
Little things, maybe, but big all the same.
______________
For a week after that, she does her best to dodge Dani entirely. She spends her free hours in the library, tucked away in a corner where no one will bother her, and eats whenever the cafeteria is quietest. She changes in the communal bathroom in the hall and gets back to the dorm to find Dani asleep most nights.
But then it’s their second Friday night alone and Dani is missing her mother—missing a lot of things, apparently—and Jamie can’t just leave her to cry alone. She sits down on the bed beside Dani and offers her a tissue without saying a word.
“I’m sorry,” Dani says, her face wet and the ache of her sadness just enough to throb in the air around them. “It’s just—”
“It’s okay,” Jamie tells her. “I understand.”
And she does. After all, there are people she misses too.
Dani starts talking—babbling, really—about her life before moving to a different country for school. About her life at school and all the adjustments it’s required. Thanks Jamie for being a good roommate in the same breath she uses to admit that she’d been worried about who she’d get stuck with. Says that it’s nice to know she has one friend at least.
It takes Jamie a moment to realize that Dani means her.
Jamie gets to her feet then and offers Dani a hand. Says, “You hungry?” instead of answering because she doesn’t think anything she could say would be good enough.
“Um…” Dani breathes and then she smiles bright white and clean, nose pink and eyes bloodshot and wearing this baggy sweater with their university’s logo on it: prettier than anything Jamie’s ever seen. It makes her feel like the most dreadful and predictable teenager she’s ever been and she sort of wants to retch at herself.
“’Cause I am,” she pushes on. “Come on.”
Dani takes her hand and does.
______________
Twenty minutes later, they’re sitting in Owen’s tiny apartment while he whips something up in his cramped kitchen. Dani’s shoulders relax a little more with each passing moment, her eyes flicking between Jamie and Owen as they rib one another, like she’s watching a tennis match.
By the time they’re walking back to their dorm, she’s smiling again, all traces of sadness gone for the time being.
“Thanks,” she says once they’re back in their room.
Jamie looks up from her dresser where she’s gathering clothes to sleep in. “For what?”
Dani shrugs and gives her a graceful smile. “You know what I mean,” she says and Jamie does.
She smiles back—so much for keeping her distance—and says, “Anytime.”
______________
The days roll on and Jamie’s heart latches itself to every little thing Dani does no matter how small. Jamie gives up entirely on trying to fight it and lets herself be swept along, further and further beneath the open warmth of Dani’s spell.
They do homework together and go to the library together. When the film club hosts a movie night, they sit side-by-side in the lecture hall sharing a small bag of popcorn between them. Dani tells her things Jamie doesn’t think she’s ever told anyone else, so Jamie returns the favor. Other than Owen, Dani is the first person Jamie has ever known who is worth the effort being her friend requires. Whatever love she puts in, Dani seems to return in spades.
There are still calls to Eddie and times when Dani is glued to her phone, but Jamie’s never had any trouble disappearing into imaginary worlds. Sometimes she imagines putting her arm around Dani’s shoulders when they’re sitting on her bed watching something. Sometimes she pictures growing her flowers and giving them to her, kissing her when they’re walking back to their dorm from the library. She imagines these things so often that it becomes harder and harder to settle into reality once the images fade away.
______________
With Dani, it’s the little things that make Jamie fall harder—picnics out in the quad after Dani’s evening literature class lets out; being texted Spotify playlists made of music she’s admitted to never having heard before; coming back to their room to find Dani doing yoga to a Youtube video playing on her laptop; the snake plant Dani buys for her after Jamie expresses missing Owen’s mother’s garden.
It’s the way Dani nods and listens when Jamie opens up about her family, about before —her mother and her father and the two brothers she hasn’t seen in over a decade. The way she hugs Owen in greeting after Jamie talks about him and his mother and the only place that’s ever felt like home. Her arm looped through Jamie’s when they walk the campus together. Middle-of-the-day text messages when she’s bored in a lecture somewhere, featuring long rants about her professors and videos of zoo animals eating.
With Dani, it’s easy to walk further and further away from the shuttered-in person she’d been before. She’s spent so much of her life feeling tugged along by someone else or else running as fast as she can from everything she’s ever known. Dani makes her slow down, makes her breathe, makes it easy.
And, as cheesy as it might sound, Dani is the person who makes her want to stop running.
______________
In October, Owen invites them to a murder mystery Halloween party his shiny, new girlfriend is hosting. He tells them to get dressed up, even offers his wardrobe to Jamie when she reminds him of the fact that almost none of her clothes could be considered “business-friendly,” let alone formal.
By the time she gets back to her dorm, it’s almost time for them to leave and she knows Dani is getting ready inside, so she knocks on the door. Her hand is shaking because she’s nervous. Her legs feel weak, jitters buzzing up from the base of her spine. She tells herself that it’s just a silly party. Owen will be there, after all.
She can hack just about anything with Owen at her side.
And maybe Dani, too. She’s getting used to the idea.
“Come in!”
Dani’s voice comes filtering through the door, muffled significantly, but Jamie understands enough to open the door and head inside. She shuts the door behind herself and then her eyes finally look at Dani, her jaw dropping a little at the sight of her.
“Hey,” Dani says normally, as if she hasn’t quite noticed Jamie’s reaction. “I’m almost done. Sorry! It takes me forever to curl my hair.”
Whether it had been time consuming or not, the effect is mesmerizing. Her normally straight-to-wavy, blonde hair is curled at the ends, her bangs pinned up and away from her face. Between the hair and the brownish-red dress she’s wearing, Jamie can’t help but imagine that the circumstances are different. That she’s picking Dani up for a date or something equally silly to fantasize about.
“Wow,” Jamie breathes, swallowing thickly. “You look…”
The part of her brain that she usually tells to shut up seems to be running wild at the sight of Dani’s collarbones, the pale, freckled dip in the V below the base of her throat. She blinks. Shakes her head. Blinks again.
Clears her throat. “I mean,” she continues, feeling her cheeks heat up at the confused look on Dani’s face, “you look great. I didn’t know you...brought a dress or anything.”
Finally, Dani seems to understand what it is that’s got her so flustered. She ducks her head and looks away. “Oh, um...yeah. I actually went out and...bought this today. I didn’t have anything else. Is it okay? Or too much?”
Jamie swallows again around the lump in her throat. “Um, no...It’s good. You’re...good.”
A few moments of silence pass before Dani finally lifts her head again and looks at Jamie fully. “You don’t look so bad yourself,” she says, and she crosses the short distance between them, reaching up to adjust Jamie’s tie. “But did you tie this with the lights off?”
Jamie looks up the very small height difference between them, reminding herself to breathe evenly. She feels dizzy and she’s trying not to think about why . “I did it fine,” she argues, but her voice is breathy rather than hard.
Dani glances up at her and Jamie realizes how close they are. She pulls each end of the tie down and begins to retie it. “Just let me fix it, okay? I had to do this for Eddie before every school dance. He can’t make a Windsor knot to save his life.”
She’s not sure what she can say in response to that. As always, at the mention of Eddie, she’s left feeling unbalanced and more than a little unsure. So she just stands there and lets Dani fix her tie, watches the harsh look of concentration on her face, the way her tongue pokes out from the corner of her lips as she frowns.
When she’s finished, Dani releases the tie and pats it back down and then reaches up to fix the collar of Jamie’s grey button-down.
“Perfect,” she says, then takes a few steps back so she can admire her handiwork. “My, don’t you look handsome.”
Jamie shoves her toward the door, Dani laughing the whole way.
______________
Hannah, Owen’s girlfriend, is all charming smiles and welcoming gestures. Her house is actually one she shares with another woman named Rebecca, who is co-hosting the party. They introduce everyone and then immediately go about assigning roles to the partygoers.
Whatever Dani’s card says makes her lips twist in a pretty frown and Jamie is so distracted by it that she doesn’t even read her own card. It’s a bit of a surprise when she finds out that she’s playing a male character named Philip, a mysterious tax broker who's married to a woman named Edith.
Edith who is being played by Dani.
Based on the look Owen is giving her from across the room, the whole thing was planned.
It’s fine for a while, save for the fact that Dani holds her hand the whole time, squeezing periodically as they make small talk with the other guests. The character at least provides a buffer and it’s a lot easier to mingle when she has a cheat sheet for things to say.
Owen is an obnoxious presence when he drifts over to them every so often, playing the brother of Rebecca’s character. He won’t stop smiling, won’t stop looking between her and Dani when he does. Jamie keeps a defense on the tip of her tongue, ready to fire it off if anyone should assume her and Dani are actually a couple like they’re in some sort of romantic comedy.
Fortunately, she never has to use it.
The whole thing falls apart when the “body” is discovered. Or, rather, not discovered. Rebecca’s boyfriend, Peter, who is supposed to be playing the victim decides to pick a fight with her instead that seems to have a lot to do with Owen and the character he’s playing. Hannah tries to intervene, but she’s soft-spoken and Peter isn’t, so eventually everyone starts to break apart to avoid falling under his wrath.
Jamie takes the opportunity to retreat to the kitchen. More than anything, she needs a break from the tension in the other room, and not just the tension caused by an entitled young man yelling about something insignificant. The hand that Dani has spent the whole night holding is clammy and cold all of a sudden. It occurs to her that she’s been breaking all sorts of rules. Important ones that she’s been trying to be wary of—like touching Dani and putting herself in situations too intimate to be in with a girl she likes who has a boyfriend .
A boyfriend in America, sure, but a boyfriend all the same.
There’s wine on the counter, the stopper sticking out of the top a little too far, and she grabs a plastic cup from beside it and fills it halfway up. She’s barely taken a sip before there are footsteps behind her. She turns and Dani is there, all blue-eyed beautiful, and the center of the damn universe.
“Hey,” she says. “Are you okay?”
Jamie nods, taking another long drink. Unaccustomed to the burn of the alcohol, she wrinkles her nose as she swallows. Dani comes a little closer, step-by-step, until she’s leaning against the counter beside Jamie, so close that the fabric of her skirt brushes against Jamie’s leg through her trousers.
Without a word, she holds her hand out in silent askance and Jamie gives her cup over. Watches as Jamie takes a drink. She hands the cup back.
“I think I was the murderer,” she admits quietly. “Sorry about that.”
Jamie laughs, beyond herself. “You’ve got to be kidding me. How could you have kept something like that from me?”
Dani shrugs. “If you want a divorce, I understand.”
There’s music still playing in the living room and Peter’s shouting has become a lot more quiet now. Soft jazz drifts down the hallway to the kitchen where they’re standing, the volume too low for her to really hear it, but she can still catch a few snatches of the melody every so often.
“Well,” she says, “in sickness and hell, right?”
Dani’s nose scrunches up as she laughs. “Health,” she corrects. “But you’re a good husband.”
“We could always frame someone else,” Jamie offers and Dani takes her cup again, drinking a little more wine from it.
“Like who?”
“That Peter bloke, if’ya like.”
“I think he’s supposed to be dead.”
“Awful noisy for a dead guy,” Jamie comments and Dani laughs again.
Their fingers brush in the cup pass-off. Dani’s are soft—much softer than Jamie has let herself understand before—and warm, too. When they’d been holding hands before, she’d been too busy trying to keep herself away from a panic attack to marvel at it.
“Thank you,” Dani says after a little while. She has her head turned towards Jamie’s and her eyes are wide with some emotion Jamie can’t name.
“For what?” Jamie asks—that same conversation that they’ve already had, albeit back when things were still uncharted and Jamie maybe still stood a chance in running.
Now, her feet are too stuck in the now , in the moment , in Dani standing in front of her in a pretty dress on Halloween night. The curl of her eyelashes and the pink of her mouth.
They’re standing close, she realizes. Really close. Dani’s eyes flicker from Jamie’s eyes to her lips and back up again. She seems happy enough and Jamie certainly knows the feeling. There are things she wants to do right now and almost all of them involve her leaning in , but she doesn’t. She restrains herself.
“I don’t know,” Dani whispers, sounding like the words are just as much a surprise to her as they are to Jamie. “I’m just really glad I met you.”
She smiles, her pretty, pink lips twisting in a way that makes Jamie feel like this is where she was always supposed to be—where she was always going to wind up. And she knows she shouldn’t push her luck, but fuck it . Life is short.
Life is short and Dani Clayton deserves to know how important she is.
“You’re really pretty when you’re happy,” she says, not a single shiver in her voice.
They’re so close that she can feel Dani’s breath hitch and halt. Start again. Puff out against the short distance between them, drift over Jamie’s chin and lips. In the seconds after , Jamie feels so much lighter than she ever has before.
“So are you,” Dani says, the words a murmur, and her mind seems to catch up with what she’s just said a moment too late. “I-I–” she stammers, tongue struggling to keep up. “I just mean...You’re also really pretty when you’re— when I’m happy. I mean—”
Jamie smiles, feels her heart flutter beneath her ribs. She leans in and touches their foreheads together. In the low light of the kitchen—the flickering Warm Pumpkin Pie candle on the counter—Dani’s eyes are an endless, pinching blue. The kind of place she can imagine disappearing inside. Drowning in.
“You’re my best friend,” Jamie hears herself say because this is a night for confessions, for feeling absolutely giddy at the possibilities held in Dani’s eyes. It’s silly, really, because she’s never felt this way about anyone before but there is no other word for what Dani is to her.
Something about her makes Jamie want to strip her soul bare and hand it over without any sort of fight. Dani makes her want things she used to make fun of other people for wanting. Things like fingers in her hair or a peck on her lips when they say goodbye. Things like a hand on her knee or the warm wrap of a sweater that is not her own on her body, a smell that is so familiar and gentle that she never wants to escape it.
Better yet: a body beneath her own, lips on her neck and chest, a tongue flicking against her teeth and soft skin beneath her palms.
But there is more to it than just that. There are nights spent watching stupid movies. Dani sharing her juice boxes and tossing a blanket over the both of them. Studying in the library together and cupping their hands over their own mouths because they can’t stop giggling at something ridiculous.
Dani’s nostrils flare. Her eyes shimmer in the candlelight. “You’re the best friend I’ve ever had,” she says on an exhale.
For a moment, Jamie lets herself entertain the idea of leaning in even further. She imagines Dani cupping her face and kissing her back—what that chapstick she’s always putting on her lips must taste like. She never gets the chance.
A buzzing sound–loud and insistent—cuts them off and then Dani is pulling away so quickly that she almost trips.
It’s her phone, ringing in the swaying pocket of her dress. Someone is calling her.
She answers.
“Hey, Eddie,” she says. “No, it’s only like...eleven here….Yeah.”
Jamie’s chest aches, static thrumming through her veins. Everything inside of her falls silent and waiting. Her head spins and she knows that it’s not the wine. She forces herself to step away and imagines, rather dramatically, that Dani might one day be the death of her. That she’ll be heartsick for as long as she lives.
Silly, teenage thoughts.
Things she shouldn’t be thinking.
She turns and steps around the island counter, taking a long drink from her cup. Dani is still leaned against the counter, her blonde hair curled, tucked behind her ear on one side. Their eyes catch and she smiles, almost apologetically, so lovely Jamie thinks she really could die.
She doesn’t.
Instead, she goes to the living room in search of anything, anyone, else.
______________
After the party, things change. Jamie puts more distance between herself and Dani. She spends more and more of her time, more of her dinners, at Owen’s apartment and tells herself that she’ll move on. Sooner or later, she’ll have to.
Owen is less than supportive about the whole thing.
“Clearly she’s in the same boat as you,” he tells her one evening as he sears a chicken breast on the stove. “Just give her some time.”
“She’s got a boyfriend,” Jamie counters, always forcing herself to return to this simple fact anytime her heart gets away from her. “And we live together. It’s already messy enough without me screwing it up even more.”
Hannah always backs her up on this fact, but Jamie can’t really tell if it’s because she actually agrees or because she feels like she needs to try and win over Owen’s honorary little sister. Whatever she means by it, she can’t really complain about having someone else in her corner.
“You should do what you think is best for you, dear,” she says, touching Jamie lightly on the shoulder.
And it’s sweet, but that’s the thing: Jamie doesn’t know what’s best for her.
Owen seems to: “Just play it cool and take it slow. If it’s meant to be, it’ll be.”
Hannah seems to: “It’s okay to put your own needs first.”
But Jamie? Jamie has no clue.
So she stays away. Recalculates. Tries to come up with a way to love Dani from afar, but can’t figure out how to do it without breaking her own heart. Dani tries to fight it at first—the distance, the space; Jamie’s new cold and quiet demeanor—but eventually she stops trying.
She stops asking how Jamie is doing. How her classes are going. If she wants to go get lunch or dinner. Not giving up, no. Not exactly. Because Jamie will catch Dani looking at her like she’s a puzzle to be solved. Like maybe Dani is recalculating to. Making scenarios of her own.
And the whole thing is silly, maybe, but Jamie didn’t know she could want someone the way she wants Dani. Part of her always thought that poets and novelists and singers were lying. Exaggerating. Making it up.
They aren’t. She understands that now and she wishes so much that she didn't.
______________
Three weeks into November, Dani finally breaks. It’s a Friday night and Jamie is coming out of the library, into the freezing cold of the winter wind, and Dani is sitting on a bench directly across from the door. She is pink-cheeked and shivering, a bright pink beanie covering her head, mittened hands shoved into her pockets. When she sees Jamie, she gets to her feet, but doesn’t step forward. She just fixes her roommate with a look like the leaves falling, rain freezing in the air before it hits the ground.
“Hey,” she says.
“Oh,” says Jamie.
She’s not sure what she’s expecting from Dani exactly. It’s been a long and exhausting month of being acutely aware that she’s in over her head. Some of it felt like cutting herself in half to keep their conversations flip and short. But Dani is persistent. Dani is the kind of person who won’t give up on you even when you’ve given up on yourself.
She says: “If I...If I did something to make you upset, or…I’m really sorry.”
She says: “I hate that we’re not talking and that we’re…”
She says: “I just miss you a lot. And if that sounds crazy or-or clingy then...whatever.”
And then: “But I miss you. So…”
Jamie’s breath puffs out, pluming like smoke into the air. As she has been since she first met Dani, she feels hard-pressed to tell her the truth of the situation. But she can’t, so she doesn’t.
“You didn’t do anything, Dani,” she says, a sigh, really, and Dani looks like she doesn’t quite believe her. “Really. It’s just...I’m...It’s me.”
Dani laughs, this nervous thing, and crosses her arms over her stomach. “That sounds like a breakup line, Jay.”
Jamie winces. “It’s not…” she sighs. “It wasn’t meant to.” She stomps the heel of her boot against the pavement, trying to fight off the cold a little. It feels like she could very well vibrate out of her own skin, but she hasn’t yet. Probably won’t.
“Can you just...If I didn’t do something wrong, then what is it? How can I help? Please let me help.”
The way she says it breaks Jamie’s heart. There’s a look in Dani’s eyes that she can’t bring herself to understand. She wants to look away, but she can’t, no matter how long it lasts. Certainly there are things to be said, but if she says them, then it’s real. Then there really is no going back.
“You can’t help , Dani,” she says, adjusting her bag over her shoulder. “You just can’t and I—”
And she knows she’s being melodramatic, but she means it. There’s nothing Dani can do to fix the situation and, even if there was, it’s not her job. It’s not her fault that Jamie has feelings for her.
“Then what can I do, Jay? Because you’re hurting and I just want you to be happy,” Dani is saying. As she speaks, Jamie starts toward her with slow steps, getting closer and closer until they’re just a few inches apart. Like they were three weeks back, in Hannah’s kitchen.
Jamie’s heart stutters and her hands curl in the fabric of her own jeans, curling and uncurling. She feels faint and distant and buzzing. She watches as Dani’s eyes dart down to her lips and back up again.
“Jay,” she whispers. “Are you—?”
Before she can finish, Jamie leans in and kisses her. It’s soft and hesitant, just waiting for Dani to pull away, but Dani doesn’t and Jamie doesn’t. Can’t, really. Wouldn’t want to even if she knew how. Dani’s hands lift, cupping Jamie’s face in her mittens, pulling her closer, and the kiss changes course, gets deeper. Something lightly taps the seam of her lips and when she realizes it’s Dani’s tongue, Jamie hears herself let out an embarrassing whimper, already opening her mouth to allow entrance.
This is Dani she’s kissing. Dani is kissing her .
Her legs feel like they could give out at any moment.
They’re kissing . This is happening and it’s—
It’s so—
Why did she wait so long to do this? She’s wasted so much time, so much effort; broken her heart over a boy she’s never even seen in person and—
Jamie jerks back and away, taking a few stumbling steps backwards to give herself space. Dani stands there, dazed, and her hands are still raised as if Jamie is still standing there. She blinks her eyes open slowly and Jamie watches as worry fills them.
“Jamie,” she whispers. “Why– Why would you—?”
Jamie blinks, quiet for a beat. “I’m in love with you, Dani.”
And the look on Dani’s face at that—the way the earth drops out from beneath both their feet. It’s quiet on the campus—just the howl of the wind between the buildings, a few people laughing across the way as they go into another building.
Dani takes a shaky breath. “I don’t know...I don’t know what I’m supposed to...do...with that.”
“I’m sorry,” Jamie says. “I shouldn’t have—” She can’t think straight. She looks away. “I’m sorry, Dani.”
She sees the reaction up close, the way Dani freezes at her words, eyes shimmering in the early evening light, biting her lip and trembling. She looks like she’s about to fall apart right there and Jamie knows that, if she does that, all of her resolve will break. She’ll want to pull her close and fold into her and—
She just can’t . Not right now.
What she can do is this: turn on her heel and walk away, steps quick and head buzzing. Eyes fixed on the ground.
Dani calls her name one. Twice.
Jamie aches. Wants to take it back. All of it.
Can’t. Keeps walking.
______________
Owen makes her hot chocolate and lets her cry into his chest as he hugs her. Shushes her quietly, tells her it’s all going to be okay, and Jamie—for the first time in her life—lets herself be held and cared for. Hannah comes over not long after Jamie arrives and then there’s a warm hand on her own as she sits at the table, burning her mouth on her hot chocolate.
“First love always feels like the end of the world,” Owen tells her, squeezing her shoulder. “You won’t believe me, but it really will be okay.”
Jamie tries to think this over, turns it over and over in her mind, but she keeps flashing back to the look in Dani’s eyes when she’d pulled away. Part of her really does believe him, but the rest of her is too busy collapsing in on itself.
“Come here, dear,” Hannah says, and Jamie thinks—not for the first time since arriving on Owen’s doorstep—that she must really look a mess. She lets Hannah fold her into a soft hug. “You should see the way that girl looks at you. One would think you hung the moon,” she whispers so that Owen, cooking at the stove, can’t hear. “If you’re honest with her and you let her be honest with you, it will all work out.”
Jamie nods and pulls away, lets Hannah swipe a few of her wayward tears away; lets herself be comforted and loved; lets herself be fed and cared for. Couldn’t fight it if she wanted to.
______________
In the end, Jamie goes back to face the music, because she knows that she cannot run forever, not from Dani; trying to, she thinks, would only end up leading her back to herself. What a mess she’s made in just a few short months. A record, perhaps, even for her.
The dorm room is dark when she enters, just the floor lamp in the corner by Dani’s desk on. The shadows are sharp and slant, bending off the edges of the desks and the bed, the walls. The air is tense with something that, for as truthful as Jamie allowed herself to be, remains unsaid.
“You came back,” Dani says. Jamie looks at her, nudging the door shut with her foot: she’s sitting on the edge of her bed in the same clothes she’d been wearing before, sans hat and mittens and coat. There’s a tissue bunched in her hands, pressed into the darkened screen of her phone, also cradled there. She looks and sounds very much like she’s spent the past few hours crying. “I didn’t think you were going to.”
“I do live here.”
It’s meant to be a joke, but it’s poorly timed. Dani winces, probably hearing it as a gibe.
“I was worried. I…” She shakes her phone for emphasis. “I tried calling, but you didn’t answer.”
Hearing that makes Jamie almost hate herself. Her phone is still tucked away in her backpack where she’d put it before her class. “I didn’t mean to scare you,” she says, and she can feel the heat of tears in her eyes. “I just had to...get away. I can leave if you want or ask for a different room assignment if it makes you uncomfortable. I know that you didn’t...sign up for this, or…”
It feels like her throat is closing up, like she might start sobbing at any second. She tries to swallow around it, but can barely manage it.
“I broke up with Eddie,” Dani says, tone petal-soft and simple.
“You…” Jamie starts, not letting herself believe what she’s heard just yet. “Why did you—”
“Maybe it’s silly or...too soon,” Dani continues, as if Jamie never even spoke at all. “I know we haven’t...known each other that long, but...you’re my best friend, Jamie, and I was so scared when you just...left. I didn’t know what to do.”
Jamie takes in a heavy breath. Dani is on her feet now, moving closer. She reaches out with both hands and captures one of Jamie’s cold ones between them. Rubs it between her palms, trying to warm her up.
“I’m okay,” Jamie says. “I’m sorry that I...scared you, but—”
“I love you, too.”
For a second, Jamie is certain that she’s heard her wrong. Part of her wonders if she’s dozed off again, if she’s still at Owen’s and that all of this is just a dream. Her head is swimming and her ears are ringing, that lump in her throat tangled in all the things she wants to say and can’t .
But, no. She heard her right. Dani is staring at her with wide, terrified eyes, just waiting for Jamie to say something and she knows exactly how that feels because she felt that way just hours before. She felt that way when they’d been in Hannah’s kitchen, so close to what she wanted but not quite reaching it.
She shakes her head, laughing a little; she’s always laughed when she’s nervous, when she’s caught and stuck and doesn’t know what to do. “Dani, you’re—”
Dani cuts her off by kissing her, pressing their lips together like a storm landing on the beach, rain lashing down on the furious waves crashing on the shore. It makes Jamie feel like she can’t breath, and she gives in so eagerly. So willingly. Hears her backpack hit the floor as she reaches out to wrap her arms around Dani’s waist, tugging her in.
Soft fingers stroke her face, cupping her cheek. Dani’s lips part and she makes a noise that vibrates the roof of Jamie’s mouth when Jamie flicks her tongue inside, tasting her. The world spins around them and with it goes Jamie, off-kilter and so so so —
“You mean it, yeah?” she hears herself whisper and Dani bumps their foreheads together affectionately, her eyes closed as she pulls Jamie in closer.
“More than anything,” she whispers back and then they’re kissing again.
More than anything .
Yeah. Jamie can work with that.
______________
“Ow, Christ .”
“Oh my God, are you okay?”
“Fine, fine. Got a thick skull.”
“Are you sure? That sounded like it hurt.”
“Yeah, m’sure. Just keep kissing me.”
Gentle and easy, Dani’s fingers curl into Jamie’s curls and she pulls her back down again, into another kiss. Jamie’s head is still throbbing and it isn’t as if Dani kissing her can fix that, but it can serve as a pretty good distraction. Especially when Dani’s lips trail down her jaw and settle against Jamie’s neck, drawing some of the skin there between her teeth and making Jamie groan.
It’s the bed that’s the problem. Not only is it narrow, her own mattress is right above her. Trying to adjust herself on top of Dani had been a challenge that ended in self-injury. But now that she’s there—now that she’s straddling the girl she’s spent months pining after on her bed—it’s more than worth it.
“How long?” Dani asks, pulling away a little.
“How long what?” Jamie returns, bending now to kiss Dani’s neck up to her jaw.
“When did you start…” Jamie’s lips trail over to Dani’s ear, nipping at the sensitive skin there and Dani gasps. “When did you start having feelings for me?”
Before she can answer, Dani kisses her again. This is perhaps the first time she’s ever really felt like a teenager, like someone her age. It isn’t as if she’s never kissed a girl before or even made out with one, but it’s different when you’re in love. That’s what she’s coming to realize. And her heart is pounding so hard that she’s certain Dani can feel it, too. Her hands are shaking with every second that passes, every nerve in her body setting alight and making her shiver. Dani’s tongue licks into her mouth, making her gasp.
“Moment I saw ya’,” Jamie says, pulling away so she’s sitting on her knees. She places her hands on the mattress, on either side of Dani’s hips, and looks down at her—this girl she can’t believe she gets to kiss; gets to laugh with and touch and watch movies with. “You looked so nervous. It was the cutest thing I’ve ever seen.”
At this, Dani’s cheeks turn bright red and her eyes look like they might pop out of her head. “Oh?” she squeaks, then clears her throat. “Well, it’s not every day I meet my super hot roommate.” Her fingers wrap loosely around Jamie’s wrists and she pulls a little, silently asking her to come back down. Jamie does, lacing their legs together and hovering above Dani so close that she can’t remember what normal breathing feels like.
“Super hot, huh?”
Dani quirks an eyebrow. “Oh my God. Have you seen yourself?” At the flush of her neck, visible even in the dim lightly and past her ruffled sweater collar, a surge of pride fills Jamie’s chest and she has to bite her lip to keep from smiling too widely. “Or heard your accent? Holy hell , Jay.”
“Have you heard yours ?” she returns, letting her smile break free, and then she leans down and kisses her again because she can’t wait any longer.
Dani pulls her down even further and then makes this sound against Jamie’s mouth when Jamie’s thigh slips between her legs. Before Jamie can pull away or apologize, Dani’s moving her own leg up to rest between Jamie’s legs, the contact and intent unmistakable. One of Dani’s hands comes down to curl around Jamie’s hip and guide her into a slight movement, making Jamie release this pathetic noise from the back of her throat at the pressure.
“I-I’ve never—” she starts, needing to say it before things go any further.
Beneath her, Dani nods, pupils blown wide and lips parted. “N-neither have I,” she confesses. Her hand stops pulling and her thigh stops flexing and they are held in a terrible stalemate for a long moment. “Do you want to...stop? Or…”
“I don’t want to do anything you don’t want to,” Jamie says.
Part of her is impressed with how steady her voice holds even with her leg between Dani’s and their breath mingling in the scant space between their faces. Dani reaches up and runs her fingers through Jamie’s hair, lifting her head to press a kiss against her chin.
“This is good,” she says quietly. “Maybe not…”
Jamie nods. “Yeah, yeah.”
“Not never , just—”
“It’s okay.” Jamie kisses her to prove it. “Whenever we’re ready.”
“With E-Eddie,” Dani says next, her voice stuttering around his name, “we never did more than...kiss. And even then only…”
Her eyes are panicked and wide, looking for any sign of emotional upset in Jamie’s expression. But there isn't any. This is the first time that the mention of him hasn’t made her feel like her heart was being squeezed in her chest and Jamie knows it has little to do with her and everything to do with the way Dani’s hand feels in her hair, how her body flexes and moves beneath her own.
Jamie rubs Dani’s arm with her own hand. Kisses her cheek. “Just tell me what’s okay,” she whispers and then Dani is reaching up to the collar of Jamie’s flannel, messing with the top button of the thing.
“Would it be okay if you...if you took off your shirt?”
There’s a note of desperation in her voice and it rolls hotly in Jamie’s stomach, making it hard to answer. So she sits up again and fumbles with the buttons of her shirt, practically yanking it off and throwing it on the floor. She has a t-shirt on beneath it and Dani frowns at the sight of it, pinching the fabric at the hem between her forefinger and thumb.
“This too?” she asks, gesturing at her shirt, and Dani nods, open-mouthed.
So the t-shirt comes off. And Jamie is nervous, yes. She’s so, so nervous, but it’s strange how un-strange it feels to be like this with Dani. In an instant, Dani is sitting up a little and pulling at her own sweater, the angle making it strange. Jamie helps and a few moments later, Dani is in nothing but a light blue bra on the bed beneath her and Jamie loses her breath all over again.
“Can I touch you?” she hears herself ask and Dani nods, lips still parted.
Immediately, Jamie is reaching out with a shaky hand to touch Dani’s pale skin. Her fingertips trace the sensitive skin of Dani’s sternum. Just looking at her makes everything in Jamie go very still and Dani shivers, either from the change in temperature or the situation they’re in.
“God, keep kissing me,” Dani breathes and tugs Jamie back down into a kiss, groaning when their bare skin meets. That thigh is back between Jamie’s legs and her own is making Dani grind up into her and it’s almost too much.
“Shit,” Jamie whispers, licking her lips. “You are really, really, really—” But the words elude her. Nothing she could say would be good enough anyway. She shakes her head and kisses her again, one of her hands coming up to loosely wrap around Dani’s breast.
“You are too,” Dani gasps, curling her fingers into Jamie’s hair. “Have you imagined this? Doing this with me?”
The heat thrumming between Jamie’s legs flares at the words, making her shift a little. “Yes,” she admits quietly, pushing her own leg down against Dani, liking the way it makes her squirm. “But actually doing it is so much better.”
Dani moans and grabs Jamie’s hips again, tugging her down until her weight is resting on Dani’s thigh. One of her hands slips up Jamie’s back, the press of her palm making Jamie feel sort of like she’s at risk of floating away entirely. One more tug and Jamie is falling forward onto her elbows on either side of Dani’s head. Warm breath heats up the side of her face, the sound of it making goosebumps break out across her arms and chest. She’s revelling in the fact that this is probably the most erotic moment of her life until she shifts and Dani whimpers and then Jamie’s hips are rocking down all on their own.
The seam of her jeans is pressing in just the right way and she can hear herself moan a little distantly. She can feel Dani’s fingers curling harder and harder into her hips, encouraging her to grind and move a little faster.
“I-Is this okay?” Dani asks, the words breaking a little as she grinds herself up against Jamie’s thigh. Her lips move as she speaks, pressed against the hinge of Jamie’s jaw and all she can do is nod, press a wet, open-mouthed kiss to the side of Dani’s face.
“ Yes ,” she hisses. She ducks her face into the side of Dani’s neck, kissing the skin there, moaning again as Dani’s thigh moves up a little harder. She threads the fingers of her right hand into the mess of Dani’s hair, spread out on her pillow and all reservations fly out the window.
She bucks her hips a little harder, groaning as Dani’s fingernails bite into her shoulder blades. The metal bed frame is squeaking beneath their actions and Jamie might normally be nervous that someone in the dorm beside theirs might hear them, but she can’t care at this moment. The sound only adds to the heat in her chest, in her veins, the warm slickness against the fabric of her underwear, sliding against her with each of Dani’s movements. One of Dani’s hands slides down to slip into her back pocket and squeeze , tugging her into each thrust, and Jamie is so close .
Dani must be, too, because each of her breaths is ending with a high-pitched whine, her head thrown back, throat exposed, and legs shaking. Jamie drags a kiss from the other girl’s chin to her mouth and kisses her, messy and hard . Each of her senses is flooded with nothing but Dani —Dani’s hands and her skin and her mouth, her thigh pressing up and up, and each swivel and thrust of her hips.
It only takes another short minute before Jamie feels Dani’s muscles tense below her, her fingers digging into Jamie’s skin as her hips jerk up and down with no rhythm. She gasps out Jamie’s name and the sight of her arching, her head tipped back still, has Jamie pressing her own body down hard and coming alongside her, falling forward in a loose-limbed collapse.
When she finally stops shaking, she feels Dani’s arms around her, holding her tight. Leaning in, she presses a wet kiss to Dani’s chin. “Wow,” she says, still breathless. “Holy shit, Dani. Who the hell knew?”
Dani laughs, fingers drawing circles on the dip of Jamie’s spine. “Not me,” she says, “that’s for sure.” She reaches out and brushes some of Jamie’s damp hair away from her face. “Any complaints?”
Jamie considers this. Thinks it over.
Remembers Dani’s firm handshake that first day and the way she looks first thing in the morning—how her hair fluffs up and looks ridiculously attractive. Remembers the press of their shoulders together as they curled up on this same mattress and Dani’s patience going over statistics with Jamie before her midterm.
So this is what love is like. Jamie never knew. It’s hard to remember that there’s a life beyond this, their room. That there are things to do and people they need to see. Classes to go to and papers to write. Mothers and foster brothers to call. She never wants to move, though. She wants to wrap her arms around Dani and stay .
As long as Dani will have her.
And somehow the scariest part is the same thing that soothes all of her fears:
Dani is feeling this, too.
“No complaints,” she says, meaning it.
And Dani is half-asleep, yes, but she smile all the same and when she says, “Same here,” everything finally makes sense.
..