The bedroom was quiet when Emilia opened her eyes. The lamp was still on—she'd left it burning when she collapsed into the nest of blankets Sofia had made on the floor, a padded hollow of comforters and pillows shoved together near the dresser. Her glasses were askew. She pushed them back onto her nose with one shaky finger.
The air in the room tasted like sleep and the faint rubbery sweetness of Sofia's backpack—she always kept a stash of balloons in the side pocket, the cheap kind from party stores that popped loud and clean. Emilia sat up slowly, her pajama shorts twisted around her thighs, the cotton damp. Her body still hummed with the ghost of what had happened in Ivy and Hazel's room. The clench. The name that had torn out of her throat without permission.
Sofia was in the bed—the actual bed, not the floor nest—curled on her side facing the wall. Her breathing wasn't the slow rhythm of sleep. Too shallow. Too deliberate.
"Sof." Emilia's voice came out rough, scraped raw. She cleared her throat. "Sof. I know you're awake."
Sofia didn't move for a long moment. Then she rolled onto her back, her dark hair tangled across the pillow, her eyes catching the lamplight. She'd been crying. Not a lot—just enough that the skin around her eyes looked pink and tender. Emilia's stomach dropped.
"You were in there a long time," Sofia said. Her voice was flat in a way Emilia recognized. The careful flatness that meant Sofia was trying very hard not to feel something.
"I—" Emilia stopped. Pushed her glasses up again, even though they hadn't slipped. "I called your name."
Sofia's lips parted. A tiny, almost imperceptible shift in her expression. "What?"
"When I—" Emilia couldn't say it. Couldn't say when I came, the words too new and too big in her mouth. She wrapped her arms around her knees instead, pulling them tight to her chest. "At the end. I called your name. While I was watching them."
Sofia sat up. The blanket pooled around her waist. She was wearing one of Emilia's old sleep shirts—the one with the cartoon axolotl on the front—and it was inside out, the seams showing. "You called my name while you were—" She stopped. Swallowed. "Why?"
Emilia pressed her forehead to her knees. The glasses dug into her brow. "I don't know. I just—you weren't there and I wanted you to be. And then the balloon popped and it was so loud and my body just—" She made a sound, a frustrated little huff. "I don't know. I don't know why."
Sofia was quiet for a long stretch. Outside, a car passed, its headlights sweeping across the ceiling in two pale arcs. When she spoke again, her voice had lost the flatness. "Was it good? Watching them?"
Emilia lifted her head. Sofia's eyes were fixed on her, steady and unblinking, the way she looked at a balloon right before she decided whether to pop it or leave it alone.
"Yeah," Emilia whispered. "It was really good."
Sofia's hand moved across the blanket. Not reaching for Emilia, exactly—just resting palm-up on the empty space beside her hip. An invitation that didn't commit to anything. "I heard you," she said. "Through the door. I heard you say my name, and I—" She bit her lip. Sofia never bit her lip. Sofia was always so sure. "I didn't hate it."
Emilia's heart was beating in her throat. In her wrists. In the damp place between her legs that was still tender from earlier. She crawled off the floor nest and onto the bed, settling cross-legged near the foot of the mattress, close enough to see the individual strands of hair stuck to Sofia's temple. "What were you doing in here? While I was gone?"
Sofia's cheeks flushed. Dark and immediate. "Nothing."
"Sof."
"I popped three balloons." Sofia's voice dropped to a mumble. "And I—I touched myself. But it didn't feel right. It felt like something was missing."
Emilia's breath caught. She wanted to ask what was missing, but she already knew. She knew because she'd said Sofia's name in a room full of sex and heavy breath and the sweet stink of latex, and it had felt like the most natural thing in the world. Like Sofia belonged there with her.
"I want to try something," Emilia said. The words came out before she'd decided to say them, her voice steadier than she felt. "With you. Together."
Sofia's eyes widened. "Try what?"
Emilia looked around the room. Her gaze landed on the closet, the dresser, the stack of Sofia's comic books, the half-open drawer where she'd seen Sofia stash a pack of balloons the size of dinner plates. "You have a really big one, don't you? The one you said you were saving because it's too loud when it pops?"
Sofia's expression flickered—something quick and sharp, almost defensive. "Yeah."
"Get it."
Sofia hesitated for exactly two seconds. Then she was out of bed, rummaging through the drawer, her sleep shirt riding up over her bare thighs. Emilia watched the muscles in Sofia's calf flex as she stretched onto her toes. Watched the curve of her spine through the thin cotton. Watched and felt the heat build low in her belly, the same heat she'd felt watching Ivy's fingers disappear inside Hazel.
The balloon was bigger than Emilia remembered—a thirty-six-inch round, the kind Sofia kept hidden at the back of her stash because popping it rattled the windows and made Pebbles quack in alarm from wherever he'd nested in the apartment. Sofia held it by the nozzle, her fingers wrapped around the uninflated rubber, and for a moment she just stood there at the foot of the bed, her sleep shirt still rucked up above her hip bones.
"Blow it up," Emilia said.
"Together?"
"Together."
Sofia climbed onto the bed. The mattress dipped under her weight, and Emilia had to brace herself with both hands to keep from sliding into the hollow Sofia made. They sat facing each other, knees almost touching, the balloon a pale disc of latex draped across Sofia's palm. The lamp caught the rubber and turned it translucent at the edges, the light bleeding through like amber through a thin slice of lemon.
"You first," Sofia said. She lifted the nozzle toward Emilia's mouth. Her fingers were steady, but there was something in her eyes—a flicker Emilia had never seen before. Not nerves exactly. Anticipation, maybe. The same look Sofia got right before she pressed a thumbtack into an overinflated balloon, when the rubber was stretched so tight it squeaked.
Emilia took the nozzle. The rubber was cool against her lips, tasteless except for the faint powderiness of cornstarch. She breathed in through her nose, then pushed the air out slow, watching the balloon begin to swell. The first few breaths were always the hardest—the rubber resisted, refused to give, and then suddenly it yielded, the neck expanding into a small globe that grew with every exhalation.
"My turn," Sofia said. She didn't wait for Emilia to hand it over. She leaned in and closed her mouth around the nozzle while Emilia was still holding it, their fingers brushing, their faces close enough that Emilia could see the individual eyelashes framing Sofia's dark eyes. Sofia's cheeks hollowed as she blew, and the balloon swelled faster—Sofia always had stronger lungs, always pushed things further than Emilia would on her own.
They traded it back and forth. Emilia's breath. Sofia's breath. The balloon growing between them, the rubber warming from the heat of their mouths, the surface going from cloudy to transparent as it stretched. At eight inches across, Sofia pulled back and examined it critically. "Needs to be bigger. Way bigger."
"How big?"
"Big enough that we can both—" Sofia stopped. Her cheeks went pink, and not from the effort of blowing. "Big enough."
Emilia understood. Big enough to hump. Big enough that they could press it between their bodies and feel the pressure of it against the places that ached. The thought made her thighs clench, the damp cotton of her pajama shorts suddenly too warm. She took the nozzle again and blew harder, her eyes fixed on Sofia's face over the curve of the balloon.
The rubber stretched to twelve inches. Fifteen. The neck was starting to tighten, that subtle resistance that meant they were approaching the point where the balloon would be firm enough to ride but soft enough not to burst at the first pressure. Sofia's eyes were wide now, her lips parted, her breath coming in little hitches that had nothing to do with blowing up a balloon.
The balloon swelled to eighteen inches, and Sofia's hand found Emilia's on the nozzle. Their fingers tangled—sweaty, sticky, the rubber damp between their palms. Sofia's other hand came up to steady the balloon's body as it bobbed between them, her fingertips pressing into the latex just hard enough to make small indentations. The balloon bobbed again, and this time it nudged against Emilia's chest, right at the sternum, and she felt the heat of it through her thin sleep shirt.
"Okay," Emilia breathed. "I think it's ready."
Sofia pinched the nozzle shut and twisted it—quick, practiced, the motion of someone who'd tied a thousand balloons and knew exactly how much pressure a neck could take before it split. The knot was tight and clean. She let go, and the balloon floated down between them, huge and round and gleaming amber in the lamplight, so taut that Emilia could see her own reflection warped across its surface.
"Hold it," Emilia said. The words came out before she could think about them, her voice low and strange in her own ears. "Between us. I want to feel it."
Sofia's breath caught. She didn't speak—just lifted the balloon with both hands and pressed it against her chest, her arms wrapping around its circumference. The latex squeaked against her sleep shirt. Emilia shuffled closer on her knees, close enough that the other side of the balloon touched her own chest, and now the balloon was between them, suspended by the pressure of their bodies, and Sofia's face was right there, just over the curve of it, her dark eyes huge and unblinking.
Sofia didn't move. The balloon was between them, huge and warm from their breath, and Emilia could feel every tiny shift of Sofia's body through the latex—the rise and fall of her chest, the tremor in her arms, the heat of her stomach where the balloon pressed against the soft cotton of her inside-out axolotl shirt. Emilia's glasses fogged at the bottom edge from the warmth radiating up between them. She didn't wipe them. She didn't want to lose a single frame of this.