The bathroom door swung open and steam rolled out ahead of him, curling through the lamplight in slow ribbons. Aliyah blinked against it, cheek still creased from the pillow, her brain dragging itself up out of sleep one heavy layer at a time. His room. Right. She was in his room, on his bed, still in yesterday's hoodie, and her chem homework was somewhere under her hip, probably creased beyond saving.

Then Jaehyun stepped out and her thoughts went quiet and stupid.

The towel sat low on his hips, one knot at the corner holding the whole thing hostage. Water beaded across his shoulders and chest, catching the lamplight, and a single drop slid down the center of his stomach, past his navel, down the line of dark hair that disappeared under the white cotton. His hair was wet too, pushed back off his forehead, and there was a faint pink flush across his cheekbones from the shower heat. He didn't look like the guy who ignored her in the hallway. He looked like something out of a dream she'd have to lie about in the morning.

She was staring. She knew she was staring. Her mouth was open and everything.

His eyes found hers and the corner of his mouth pulled up. Slow. Deliberate. Like he'd been waiting to get caught.

"Morning, Johnson."

"I—" She sat up too fast and the textbook slid off the bed and hit the floor with a flat smack. "I wasn't— I was just waking up. My eyes were closed. They were basically closed."

"They were wide open."

"They were not."

He crossed to the desk and picked up a glass of water, drank half of it, watching her over the rim the whole time. His throat moved as he swallowed. She made herself look at the wall.

"Your turn to help me now," he said.

She laughed. It came out thin and nervous. "Help you with what? You're the one who did my homework while I was drooling on my own arm. I think we're even."

He set the glass down. The click of it on the wood was the only sound in the room for a second, and then he was moving, and she didn't understand what was happening until his hand closed around her arm. His grip was warm and dry and firm, right above her elbow, and he pulled her up off the mattress like she weighed nothing.

"Jaehyun—"

"Walk."

She walked, because her legs did it before her brain agreed. He steered her backward, one hand still on her arm, the other at the small of her back, and her bare feet slid across the polished floor. She could smell him this close, soap and clean skin and something underneath that was just him, and her pulse was doing something fast and stupid at the base of her throat.

"What are you doing?" She craned her neck to look at him. "Seriously. What are you—"

The backs of her legs hit the mattress and her knees buckled and she went down. The bed caught her. She landed on her elbows, the blanket bunched under her, looking up at him from a whole new angle. He stood over her, water still drying on his skin, and he looked different from up here. Taller. Wider across the shoulders. His face had gone still in a way that made her stomach flip.

His fingers found the knot of the towel.

"I need to lose my virginity," he said. "And you're going to help me."

The towel dropped.

Aliyah's brain made a sound like a radio losing signal.

He was hard. Not half-hard, not getting there, but fully, thick and long and flushed dark at the tip, curving up against his stomach. She'd seen a dick before, in theory, in pictures, once in a movie she'd pretended not to watch. She had never seen one like this. Her mouth went dry and her thighs pressed together and she couldn't make herself look away.

"Jaehyun." Her voice came out a croak. "What— you're a virgin?"

"That's the problem." He said it flat, but something moved behind his eyes, a flicker that was gone almost before she caught it. His jaw worked once. "My brother's friends had a bet. Who loses it last. They said it would be me. I don't come in last at anything." He paused. "So. You're going to help me."

"You're—" She sat up a little straighter. "You're asking me because of a bet?"

"I'm not asking." His voice dropped. "I'm telling you. But if you want to get up and leave, get up and leave. The door's right there."

She didn't get up.

The silence stretched out between them, and she became aware of her own breathing, of the damp heat still hanging in the air from his shower, of the fact that her hands had curled into the blanket on either side of her hips and she hadn't moved them. He was watching her face, not her body, and that was somehow worse. Like he could see the yes forming in her before she'd said it.

"Why me?" she said.

"Because you're here." He tilted his head. "Because you were staring at my abs like they owed you money."

"I was not—"

"And because I've been thinking about it since you fell asleep on my homework." He said it without any shame at all. "You're pretty, Johnson. You know that? You talk too much, but you're pretty."

Her whole face went hot. "That's the nicest thing you've ever said to me and it was terrible."

"Take your clothes off."

She stared at him.

"Everything," he said. "Hoodie. Jeans. All of it."

Her hands found the hem of her hoodie and stopped there. "You're serious."

"Do I look like I'm joking?"

No. He didn't. He looked like a guy who had decided something and wasn't going to un-decide it, and the sight of that, the flat certainty of him standing there naked and hard and waiting, did something to her that she was going to have to think about later. Much later. When she wasn't about to do something insane.

She pulled the hoodie up over her head and her hair came with it, the puff collapsing, and she shook it out and dropped the hoodie on the floor. Then the jeans, which took some wriggling, and her underwear, and then she was sitting on his bed in nothing at all with her arms crossed over her chest because she didn't know what else to do with them.

Jaehyun exhaled slowly. "Fuck."

"What?"

"Nothing. Just—" He came down onto the bed, one knee first, and the mattress dipped and she leaned back to keep her balance and then he was over her, braced on his forearms, close enough that she could feel the heat coming off his chest. "You're gonna tell me if you want me to stop. Say it."

"I'll tell you."

"Say the words."

"I'll tell you if I want you to stop."

He nodded, once, and then his mouth was on her neck and her whole body arched up off the mattress like it had been waiting for permission.

His lips dragged down her throat, wet and warm, and his teeth caught her skin and she made a sound she didn't recognize. His hand found her hip and gripped it, held her down against the bed, and his other hand slid up her side, over her ribs, until his thumb brushed the underside of her breast. She gasped. He did it again, deliberate, watching her face.

"Sensitive," he murmured.

"Shut up."

He laughed against her skin, low, and then his mouth closed over her nipple and her back bowed and her fingers dug into his shoulders. His tongue was hot and flat and he sucked, hard enough that her hips jerked, and his hand slid down her stomach, over the soft curve of it, and his fingers found her.

She was already wet. Soaking, honestly, and he made a sound in his throat when he felt it, a rough little hum of satisfaction that vibrated against her breast.

"You've been thinking about this too," he said.

"I haven't—"

His fingers slid through her, slick and slow, and her sentence fell apart. "You're dripping on my sheets, Johnson. Lie to me again."

His middle finger pushed into her and her mouth opened on nothing. He worked it in to the knuckle, then pulled out slow, then pushed back in, and his thumb found her clit and pressed and her hips bucked up into his hand and he held them down with a grunt.

"Stay still."

"I can't—"

"You can. Stay still."

He added a second finger and curled them and she saw white spots. Her hands flew to the blanket and twisted in it and he kept going, steady, unhurried, watching her come apart under his hand like it was the most interesting thing he'd ever seen. When she was right at the edge he pulled his fingers out and she actually whined.

"Not yet," he said.

"You're a sadist."

"I'm a virgin." He sat back on his heels between her legs, and his cock was right there, thick and heavy and wet at the tip, and he wrapped a hand around himself and stroked once, slowly, his jaw tight. "And I want to be inside you when you come."

He leaned over her and his cock dragged through her wetness, slicking himself up, and then the blunt head of him pressed against her and her whole body locked up. He paused. His eyes found hers and there it was again, that flicker, the crack in the cool, and his voice came out rougher than before.

"You ready?"

"Yeah." Her voice shook. "Yeah. Do it."

He pushed in and she understood, suddenly, viscerally, why people made such a big deal about this.

The stretch was everything. He went slow, but he was thick, and she felt every inch of it, her cunt opening around him, her hands scrabbling at his back. He stopped halfway and his forehead dropped to hers and he was breathing hard, mouth open, and she could feel him throbbing inside her.

"Fuck," he whispered. "You're so tight."

"Keep going."

He pushed the rest of the way in and she cried out and he caught the sound with his mouth on hers, kissing her sloppy and desperate while she got used to the fullness of him. Then he pulled out, almost all the way, and thrust back in.

She saw stars.

He set a rhythm that was not gentle. His hips snapped forward and the bed rocked and she grabbed at his shoulders and he drove into her again and again, each thrust punching a sound out of her. The wet noise of it filled the room. His hand came down on her ass in a sharp smack and she yelped and clenched around him and he groaned.

"Oh, you liked that." Another smack, harder, and she moaned. "Didn't you."

"Yes—"

"Say it. Tell me what you like."

"I like—" He hit something deep and her sentence turned into a gasp. "God. Right there. Don't stop."

He didn't stop. He shifted his angle and drove into that spot over and over and her legs wrapped around his waist and she was climbing toward something she could feel coming like weather. Then his hand found her throat.

His fingers closed around it, not hard, just enough to make her aware of them, and her eyes flew open and found his. He was watching her, waiting, and when she didn't tell him to stop he tightened them a little more. Her breath came short. Her head went light and floaty and the pleasure got sharper, brighter, and her hips rolled up into his.

"That's it," he said, low. "You like being choked. Look at you."

She tried to say something and only a squeak came out.

"Such a good little slut for me." He said it calm, matter-of-fact, and it went through her like a live wire. "Aren't you. Say it."

"I'm—" Her voice was a rasp. "I'm your—"

"Say it."

"I'm your slut."

"Good girl." He let go of her throat and her breath came rushing back and he drove into her harder, his hand sliding down to her hip to pull her into each thrust. "You gonna come for me? Show me what you look like when you come on my cock."

She was so close. Right there. And then he reached down between them and his thumb found her clit and pressed, and his name tore out of her mouth and she came.

It rolled through her in waves, her cunt clenching hard around him, her whole body shaking, and it didn't stop. It kept going, and then something else broke loose, a hot rush that soaked his hand and the sheets under her, and she heard herself sobbing his name.

He pulled out.

The sudden emptiness made her cry out, a raw, stupid sound, and her cunt clenched around nothing, still pulsing, still wet, still chasing him. Her thighs were shaking. The sheets under her were soaked through, a dark shine spreading under her hips, and she couldn't even be embarrassed about it because she couldn't think.

"Turn over."

"Jae—"

His hands were already on her hip, her shoulder, and he flipped her like she weighed nothing, rolling her onto her stomach, her cheek hitting the pillow and her hair spilling across it. She got a mouthful of cotton and her own wetness smeared against her thighs as he dragged her knees apart and pulled her hips up, up, until her back dipped and her ass was in the air.

"There it is," he said, quiet, almost to himself.

She tried to look back at him and her neck wouldn't cooperate. All she could see was the pillow and the lamp and her own hands fisted in the sheets.

"Jaehyun—"

His cock dragged through her from behind, wet and thick, sliding over her clit with a pressure that made her whole lower body jerk. He did it again. And again. Coating himself in what she'd spilled, the sound of it obscene.

"You made a mess," he said.

"I know—"

"I'm not complaining." He lined up. The head of him pressed against her and she held her breath. "Breathe, Johnson."

He pushed in.

The angle was different from behind. He reached deeper, and her back arched and her mouth fell open against the pillow and she made a sound that had no shape to it at all. He didn't stop this time, didn't give her the slow inch-by-inch, just sank into her to the hilt and stayed there, his hips flush against her ass, his fingers digging into her hips.

"Fuck," he breathed. "You feel—" He didn't finish. He pulled back and slammed in.

The smack of his hips against her ass cracked through the room and she jolted forward on the bed and he dragged her back.

Then his palm came down on her ass.

Hard. Harder than before, a flat crack of skin on skin, and she yelped into the pillow and her cunt squeezed around him so tight he groaned.

"Yeah," he said, low. "You like that."

He hit her again, the other side, and she was so wet she could hear it, the slap landing wet and sharp, and she pushed her ass back into his hand without meaning to.

"Say it."

"I like it." Her voice was muffled in the pillow. "I like it, don't stop—"

"Look at you." He spanked her again, three fast ones in a row, and she was crying out with each, her knees sliding on the wet sheets. "Begging for it. Bent over my bed. You were asleep on my homework an hour ago."

"Jaehyun—"

His hand closed in her hair.

He gathered the puff at the back of her head and twisted it around his fist, and he pulled, hauling her head up off the pillow, her neck arching, her back bowing, and the angle of her hips shifted and his cock drove into a spot that made her vision go white.

"Oh—"

"There?" He pulled her hair again, harder, and thrust in to meet it. "That the spot?"

"Yes— right there— don't you dare stop—"

He didn't stop. He set a pace that was brutal and steady, one hand knotted in her hair and the other clamped on her hip, dragging her back onto him with every thrust so she took all of it, every inch, the wet slap of their bodies filling the room. She couldn't move. She couldn't do anything but take it and make sounds into the pillow and dig her nails into his sheets.

"Such a good girl," he said, and the words went through her like a current. "Taking all of it. Look at you."

He let go of her hair and she dropped back down, gasping, and his hand smoothed down her spine, over the curve of her back, and then he pulled out and she made a desperate noise and he pushed back in, slow this time, deep, grinding against that spot with the head of his cock until she was sobbing.

"Please—"

"Please what."

"Please—" She didn't know. She couldn't remember words. "Please, Jaehyun—"

He reached around her and his fingers found her clit and she bucked so hard she nearly threw him off.

"Hold still."

"I can't—"

"You can." He pulled her hips back into place with his free hand and started moving again, fast, his thumb working her clit in tight circles, and the two rhythms together made her head spin. "You're gonna come for me again. I can feel it. You're squeezing me."

She was. She could feel it too, the building pressure, the coil winding tighter and tighter, her thighs shaking, her toes curling against the mattress.

"Come on," he said in her ear, and he was leaning over her now, his chest against her back, his mouth at her neck. "Come on my cock. Let me hear it."

His teeth found the back of her neck and bit down and she broke.

It hit her like a wave this time, from somewhere deep, her cunt clamping down around him hard and rhythmic, her whole body locking up, and she screamed into the pillow and then turned her face and screamed into the room, his name and nothing else, over and over, while he fucked her through it and didn't let up on her clit until she was pushing his hand away because it was too much.

"That's it," he said. "That's it. Good girl."

He pulled out and she collapsed forward onto her stomach, boneless, her cheek flat on the pillow, her legs still spread because she couldn't bring them together yet. She could hear him breathing hard behind her, could feel the mattress shifting.

Then his hand was on her back, between her shoulder blades, pressing her down into the bed.

"Stay."

She stayed.

She heard the wet sound of his fist on himself, fast and slick, and she turned her head just enough to see him out of the corner of her eye, kneeling over her, his jaw tight, his hand a blur on his cock, his eyes on her back.

"Fuck," he whispered. "Fuck, fuck—"

He came.

Hot stripes landed across her lower back, her ass, one up near her shoulder blade, and she felt each one hit and felt him shudder through it, heard the sound he made, low and broken and nothing like the cool, flat voice he used in class. His hand kept moving, slower, milking himself, and another stripe landed and then he was done.

He sat back on his heels.

For a second there was just the sound of both of them breathing, the room hot and close and smelling like sex, and her back covered in him, cooling on her skin.

"Don't move," he said.

She heard him get up. Bare feet on the floor, a drawer opening, and then the bed dipped again and a warm, damp cloth pressed against her lower back. He wiped her down, careful, thorough, the cloth warm and rough, and he did it without saying anything, and she lay there with her face in the pillow and let him.

He got the sheets too, what he could reach, and then he tossed the cloth in the direction of the hamper and it missed and neither of them cared.

Then he lay down beside her, on his back, one arm flung over his eyes.

She turned her head to look at him. His chest was still rising and falling fast, his hair stuck to his forehead with sweat, his stomach slick with it, and there was a red mark on his shoulder where her nails had been. He looked wrecked. He looked, for the first time since she'd met him, like a person instead of a wall.

"Princess."

She blinked. "What?"

He moved his arm off his eyes and looked at her. "I said. Princess." He cleared his throat. "Sorry. About the— I was rough."

"I noticed."

"You okay?"

She thought about it. Her ass was going to bruise, she was pretty sure. Her throat felt scraped. There was a tenderness between her legs that she was going to feel every time she sat down tomorrow. And she was lying naked in Jaehyun Park's bed, and he'd just called her princess, and something in her chest had turned over and gone warm and stupid.

"I'm okay," she said.

He nodded and sat up, swung his legs off the bed, and padded out of the room. She heard water running. He came back with two glasses and handed her one, and she sat up to drink it and her whole body protested in a way that made her laugh, and then wince.

"I have water," she said. "I mean. Thank you."

"Don't thank me." He sat on the edge of the bed, close but not touching, and drank half of his in one go. "You want something to eat? I can make something. Or order. Whatever."

She looked at him over the rim of the glass. He was staring at the far wall like the paint was interesting, and the tips of his ears had gone pink, and she realized with a slow, spreading delight that he was nervous.

"Are you being nice to me right now?"

"I'm being practical."

"You're being nice."

"Johnson."

"You called me princess and now you're offering me food." She took a sip of water and tried not to smile and failed completely. "This is a whole different guy. Where's the one who put his headphones in when I tried to talk to him?"

He turned and looked at her then, and the look was flat but his mouth was doing something it couldn't quite control. "That guy didn't know what you sounded like when you come."

Her face went hot. "Okay. Rude."

"True, though." He stood up and pulled open a drawer and tossed a t-shirt at her, and it landed across her lap. "Put that on. I'm making eggs."

She looked down at the shirt. It was soft and gray and smelled like him, and she pulled it over her head and it hung to her thighs.

"Eggs," she said.

"Eggs. I'm not a chef." He pulled on a pair of gym shorts and looked back at her. "You eat eggs?"

"I eat eggs."

"Good." He walked out, and she heard the light click on in the hall, and the sound of a cabinet opening, and then his voice from the kitchen, muffled. "Your homework's on the floor, by the way. It's still done."

She sat there on his bed in his shirt with her hair a wreck and her legs still shaky, and she picked up the glass of water and drank, and outside the window a car went past and the light swept across the ceiling and was gone.

The glass was cool against her palms and she pressed it to her forehead for a second, eyes shut, letting the condensation do something about the heat still sitting under her skin. From the kitchen came the sound of the fridge opening, the clatter of the egg carton on the counter, a drawer sliding. A pan set down on a burner. He moved around out there like he'd done it a thousand times at two in the afternoon with a girl in his bed.

She set the glass on the nightstand and swung her legs over the side of the mattress.

The floor met her feet and her knees said no.

It wasn't a wobble. It was a full, humiliating collapse, her legs folding under her like wet paper, her hip catching the edge of the mattress on the way down, her hand grabbing at the blanket and finding nothing that would hold. She had time for one short, undignified yelp and then the floor was coming up fast.

His hand closed around her arm.

Not the elbow this time — higher, his fingers wrapping her bicep, and he hauled her up out of the fall like he was picking up a bag of groceries. Her feet found the floor again. Her shoulder hit his chest and stayed there because there was nowhere else to go, and he was warm and solid and his other hand came up to her waist to steady her, fingers spread wide over the gray cotton of his shirt.

She could hear her own breath, fast and shallow, and the eggs sizzling in the pan behind him.

"You okay?"

"Your fault," she said, into his collarbone.

His chest moved under her cheek. Not a laugh, exactly. Close.

"My fault."

"You—" She lifted her head to look at him and the room did a slow tilt. "You did this. You did all of that to me and then you walked out here like it was nothing and expected me to just— follow. On legs. Regular legs."

His face was doing the flat thing again, the one she'd watched from across the chem lab for a whole semester, the one that said he'd already decided this conversation was beneath him. But his ears had gone red. Both of them, the flush creeping down the side of his neck, and he was looking somewhere past her shoulder like the wall had suddenly gotten very interesting.

"You should sit down," he said.

"I'm fine."

He didn't let go of her arm. His grip was careful now, not the iron thing it had been when he'd pulled her off the mattress. His thumb had found the soft inside of her elbow and it sat there, a small warm pressure, and she was suddenly and completely aware that she was standing in his kitchen doorway in nothing but his shirt with her hair a disaster and her thighs still slick and her legs trembling like a newborn animal.

"You're shaking," he said.

"I'm cold."

"It's eighty degrees."

"I'm cold, Jaehyun."

He looked at her then, really looked, and something in his expression shifted — a crack in the wall, the same one she'd seen right before he'd pushed inside her, that flicker of a person underneath all the cool. He swallowed. His jaw worked once.

"Come here," he said, and it wasn't the low voice from the bedroom. It was quieter. Almost reluctant, like the words were being pulled out of him against his will.

He steered her back toward the bed, one hand still on her arm, the other at her waist, and she let herself be steered because her legs had apparently filed a formal complaint and she was no longer in charge of them. The backs of her knees hit the mattress and she sat down hard, and the springs gave a soft creak under her.

He crouched in front of her.

That did something to her, him down there on his heels with his knees apart and his hands hanging loose between them, looking up at her from a whole new angle. His hair had dried funny on one side. There was a faint red line on his neck where she'd scratched him and she hadn't even noticed doing it.

"Better?" he asked.

"I hate you," she said.

"No, you don't."

"I do. I hate you so much." She pulled the hem of the shirt down over her knees, which was pointless, because he'd already seen everything. "You've been ignoring me for weeks. Weeks, Jaehyun. I stood outside your stupid basketball game for forty minutes one time and you walked right past me with your headphones in."

He was quiet for a second. Then: "I know."

"You know?"

"I saw you." He looked down at his own hands. "I was going to text you back. I just—" He stopped. Started again, slower. "I don't do this. People come up to me all the time wanting something. A study guide. A recommendation. A favor. I say no because it's easier than figuring out who actually means it."

"And I meant it?"

"You showed up four times." He looked up. "Nobody shows up four times."

She didn't have anything to say to that. Her throat had gone tight and stupid and she was absolutely not going to cry in front of him, not after everything, not over that.

The smoke alarm went off.

Jaehyun's head snapped around. "Shit."

He was up and across the kitchen in three strides and the pan was smoking, the eggs gone brown and crisp at the edges, and he grabbed the handle and yanked it off the burner and the alarm kept shrieking its high, flat note. He reached up and twisted the thing off the wall and it cut out mid-wail.

Silence. The eggs sizzled and popped in the pan.

"That's a first," he said, to nobody.

Aliyah laughed. It came out before she could stop it, a real laugh, loud and a little unhinged, and she clapped a hand over her mouth and it didn't help. He turned around with the pan in one hand and looked at her like she'd grown a second head.

"What."

"You—" She was wheezing now, bent forward over her knees. "You just had your whole entire— your whole thing, the whole cool guy thing, and then you burned the eggs. You burned the eggs, Jaehyun."

He looked down at the pan. The eggs were a brown, rubbery mass, curled up at the edges, and one of them had a black crust on the bottom.

"They're fine," he said.

"They are not fine."

"They're crispy."

"They're dead."

He set the pan back on the burner and turned the heat off and stood there with his hands on his hips, staring down at the ruined eggs, and the tips of his ears were red again and his mouth was doing something complicated, trying to hold flat and losing the fight. She watched him lose it. Watched the corner of his mouth twitch and pull and then he laughed — short, surprised, like it had gotten out of him before he could slam the door.

She'd never heard him laugh. Not once, the whole semester. It was low and rough and it changed his whole face.

"Okay," he said. "Cereal."

"Cereal."

"Cereal." He pulled open a cabinet. "I've got three kinds. None of them are good."

"Which one's the least bad?"

He held up a box of something brown and fibrous and another box of something bright and sugary and looked between them like it was a real decision. "Depends what kind of person you are."

"The sugar one. Obviously. What kind of question is that."

He put the brown one back and set the sugar one on the counter with a soft thunk, and then he pulled two bowls down from the shelf, and she watched his shoulders move under the t-shirt he'd thrown on, watched the way he poured without measuring, filling both bowls almost to the rim. The milk went in next, cold and white, and the cereal crackled and popped.

He brought her bowl over and set it on the nightstand next to her water and then he sat down on the floor with his back against the bed frame, his bowl in his lap, one knee up. Close enough that she could have touched his shoulder if she'd leaned over.

The spoon was cold. The first bite was so sweet it made her teeth ache and she ate it anyway, and they sat there in the quiet with the fan humming somewhere and a car going by outside and the smell of burnt egg still hanging faint in the air.

"So," she said, around a mouthful. "The bet."

His spoon paused halfway to his mouth. "What about it."

"Your brother's friends. When do you tell them?"

"I don't." He ate. Chewed. Swallowed. "I don't tell them anything. They'll find out or they won't. Dae will be insufferable either way."

"Dae's your brother?"

"Older. By four years. He thinks he's funny."

"Is he?"

"No." A beat. "Sometimes."

She scraped the bottom of her bowl and got the last of the milk and drank it straight from the bowl, which was maybe not the most dignified thing she'd ever done, but she was past dignity at this point. When she set it down he was watching her.

"What?"

"Nothing." He looked back at his bowl. "You're just— different. Than I thought."

"What did you think?"

He didn't answer right away. His spoon went around and around in his bowl, chasing the last of the cereal, and when he spoke it was to the floor. "I thought you were loud. And that you'd give up after the second time."

"I'm not a quitter."

"I know." He set his bowl down. "That's what I'm saying."

Her phone buzzed on the nightstand. Then again. Then three times in a row, a rapid-fire little cluster, and she picked it up and the screen lit her face.

Maya. Four messages, then a fifth coming in as she watched.

Where are you

You didn't come home last night

Aliyah I'm not playing

Answer me

If you're with those girls I swear to God

Her stomach dropped all the way to the floor. The cereal she'd just eaten sat in it like a stone.

She stared at the screen until it dimmed, then woke it again with her thumb, reading the messages over like a second pass would change any of the words. It didn't. Maya's texts had that particular flatness her mother got when she was scared — no punctuation, no emojis, no softening. The same voice that told her at nine years old that the world would not wait for her to be ready.

"Hey." Jaehyun's voice came from the floor, low. "You're doing the thing."

"What thing."

"The thing where your face goes somewhere else." He was still sitting with his back against the bed frame, empty bowl balanced on his knee, and he hadn't moved to look at her phone, which she appreciated more than she could say. "Is it bad?"

"My mom." Aliyah set the phone face-down on the nightstand, then turned it over again. "I didn't go home. She's— she's not going to be chill about this. She's never chill about anything, but this is a whole new category of not chill."

"How long has it been?"

"Since when?"

"Since you were supposed to be home."

She did the math in her head and the number was bad. "Like fourteen hours."

He didn't say anything for a moment. Then he pushed himself up off the floor, unfolding in that easy way he did everything, and set his bowl on the counter. "You need to answer her."

"I know I need to answer her." She was already typing, deleting, typing again. I'm fine, I'm at a friend's, I fell asleep studying — no, that was a lie that would collapse the second Maya asked which friend. I'm okay, I'll explain when I get home — that one had teeth. That one would make her mother call back in four seconds flat.

"Don't lie to her," Jaehyun said, from the kitchen, like he'd read the screen over her shoulder from ten feet away.

"I'm not—" She stopped. "Okay, I was going to lie a little."

"Don't." He turned the tap on, ran water over his bowl. "She'll find out. She always finds out. Then you've got the thing you did and the lie about the thing you did, and the lie's the part she'll actually be mad about."

Aliyah stared at the back of his head. "Since when are you a parenting expert?"

"I'm not. I just know how my mom was." The water cut off. He set the bowl in the drying rack with a small ceramic clink and didn't turn around. "She'd rather have the ugly truth than a pretty lie. Every time. She used to say the lie was the disrespect."

Her thumbs hovered. Then she typed, slow and deliberate, I'm safe. I'm sorry. I'm coming home soon and I'll tell you everything, I promise. Please don't be mad until I'm there to explain. She read it twice. It sat in her chest like a swallowed stone, honest and awful. She hit send before she could take it back.

The reply came almost immediately. You have one hour.

"One hour," she said out loud, and it came out thin.

Jaehyun turned around, leaning back against the counter with his arms crossed. "That's more than I expected."

"She's giving me an hour because she's deciding whether to ground me for a year or two." Aliyah swung her legs off the mattress again, more carefully this time, planting both feet flat and pressing down before she trusted them. The mattress creaked. Her thighs ached in a deep, used way that made her face hot. "I need to get dressed. Where are my—" She looked around the room and found her jeans in a heap by the bathroom door, her underwear somewhere under the chair, her hoodie draped over the back of it like it had been placed there. Which it had, she realized. He'd picked up her clothes while she was asleep. Folded the hoodie over the chair back. It was such a small thing and it made her chest do something complicated.

"I'll get them," she said, and stood up.

The room tilted hard to the left.

Her knees went first — that same wet-paper feeling, her thighs giving out from under her, and she got one hand out toward the chair and missed it by a foot. The floor came up fast and her hip caught the edge of the mattress on the way down and then his hand was there, closing around her arm, and he hauled her upright again with a grunt that sounded almost annoyed.

"Okay," he said, holding her at arm's length. "We're doing this differently."

"I can walk."

"You just proved you can't."

"That was one time." She was gripping his forearm now, both hands, and she could feel the muscle and tendon under the skin and the heat coming off him. "That was— my legs were asleep. That's all. They were asleep and then they woke up at the wrong moment."

He looked at her. That flat look, the one that missed nothing, and she watched it land on her knuckles gone pale where she was holding onto him, and on the way her hip was still canted against the mattress because her right leg was not fully committed to the plan.

"Your legs weren't asleep," he said.

"They were."

"Aliyah."

"They were asleep, Jaehyun."

"You're shaking again." He said it quietly, and there was no mockery in it, which was somehow worse. "Sit down. I'll get your clothes."

She sat. The mattress took her and she hated how good it felt, how her whole body sighed into it like it had been holding itself up on borrowed will. He crossed the room and gathered her jeans and her underwear and came back and set them on the bed beside her, and then he stood there with his hands loose at his sides, not looking at her, giving her the small mercy of not watching.

She pulled the jeans on under the hem of his shirt, one leg at a time, slow. The denim was cold and stiff and she had to lift her hips to get them over her ass, and every inch of movement sent a fresh ache through her, the good kind and the sore kind braided together. The button and zipper took her a second. She was aware of him the whole time, a shape at the edge of her vision, and she was aware that he was being careful about where his eyes went.

"The hoodie," she said, and he handed it to her, and she pulled it over her head and her hair came loose from the puff in the process and she didn't care. It smelled like her. It smelled like the party she hadn't gone to and the dorm she hadn't slept in and a whole other life she'd stepped out of fourteen hours ago.

She stood up. Her legs held this time, mostly. A tremor in the left knee that she ignored.

"See," she said. "Fine."

He was looking at her with an expression she couldn't name. Not the flat thing. Something underneath it, moving around. He opened his mouth and closed it again.

"What," she said.

"Nothing." He picked up his bowl from the drying rack, set it back down. "You should eat something before you go. The cereal wasn't—" He made a face. "It wasn't a meal."

"I have an hour."

"Then you have time for a piece of toast." He was already at the bread bag, pulling out two slices, dropping them in the toaster. "Sit. Please. Just— sit down before you fall down again and I have to explain to your mother why you have a bruise on your hip."

She sat. On the edge of the bed, her hands in her lap, her hoodie sleeves pulled down over her knuckles. The toaster clicked on. He leaned against the counter with his back to her and his shoulders were still and his ears were still faintly red and she watched the small muscles in his jaw work.

"Jaehyun."

"Hm."

"Last night." She said it to his back, which was easier. "Was it— did you—" She didn't know how to ask it. Whether it had been real, whether it had meant anything, whether she'd been a bet and a body and nothing else. The words sat in her throat and wouldn't come out in the right order.

He turned around. The toaster popped behind him and he didn't move.

"It wasn't nothing," he said, and his voice was quiet and careful, like he was testing each word before he let it go. "I know I made it— I know how it started. But it wasn't nothing."

The toast popped up, brown and steaming, and the smell of it filled the whole small kitchen.