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Jade watched as she sank farther into the couch, contorting her body until she was in the perfect position. Knees bent, socked feet tucked halfway between two of the cushions until her head of dark hair was barely visible beneath the blanket. They were both silent for a few long seconds. When Jade spoke again, it was only because she figured Lim had finally fallen asleep.

“Maybe it’s just easier this way.”

“Uh-uh.”

The quiet voice shocked Jade, but not enough to make the embarrassment of her admission fade away.

“You’re just scared is all,” Lim said.

“I’m not scared of anything.”

There was that giggle again. “Sure you are. You’re scared of what people think. And you’re scared that I’m not as awful as you try to convince yourself I am.”

Jade only sniffed, not allowing those words to rest in her head for any longer than it took to bully her brain into trying to forget them.

She expected Lim to reply again, this time waiting for longerthan a few seconds of silence. When it was clear that she was finally asleep, Jade ventured into the kitchen.

Soon she’d call Miri or Olivia and beg one of them to pick her up and drop her back off at the school so she could get her car. But first she’d at least make sure Lim had something to eat when she woke up.

Lim’s kitchen wasn’t scant, but Jade could see that she wasn’t much of a snacker. It was also clear that they had some very obvious culinary differences. The ingredients Lim had intrigued her, like perilla seed oil and gochujang, a red chili paste, but she didn’t want to try something new to her and end up making something inedible (though she did jot down a few things in the notes app on her phone for later). Instead, she found everything she needed to make a quick pot of red rice and smoked sausage.

It would be a complete, hearty meal that Lim could get full on and still eat for a couple of days if her migraine stuck around. Jade tried not to think too hard about why she was doing this as she prepared the dish, humming to herself as she fried up some bacon and sautéed some onions and garlic. All in all, it took her under twenty minutes before the tomatoey rice dish was popped into the oven to cook.

She had about forty minutes to kill before the food was done. In lieu of sitting quietly at Lim’s little two-person dining table with her eyes on her phone and anxiety in her chest, Jade decided to tackle a few of the dishes that had been left in the sink. She needed something to do with her hands to distract herself from her current reality. Jade was not supposed to like this woman. In fact, she was supposed to be trying her hardest to hate her, to keep the fire in her belly burning. Instead, here she was cooking for her and doing her dishes.

She tried to convince herself that it was guilt egging her on. If she hadn’t come up behind Lim, the other woman wouldn’t have nearly knocked herself out. It wasn’t a theory that instilled any confidence.She’d had no reason to approach Lim earlier that day after the game. Hell, her car was parked all the way on the other side of the lot, and there she had been, head full of some half-baked statement that she hadn’t even gotten to spew out.

Except, on some level, she knew that wasn’t it—and that she wasn’t ready to acknowledge the truth. Because if she were honest, she’d gone out of her way the entire day for the simple reason that she liked…

Jade shook her head hard enough to make her brain rattle around in her skull. No. She refused. She would not entertain thoughts like that. Certainly not about the woman sleeping on the couch one room away.

Jade started humming again as she finished washing the dishes, not loud enough to disturb Lim but with enough volume that it helped her quiet her own thoughts, until finally she was relieved to hear the oven timer go off.

The sound seemed to wake Lim up, because the moment Jade pulled the hot glass pan from the oven, she heard feet shuffling into the kitchen.

“You cooked?” Lim’s voice was decidedly groggy. Jade guessed that if she’d turned around, she probably would have seen the woman rubbing tiredly at her eyes. Even just the image in her head was adorable, so Jade made sure to keep her gaze fixed on the food, deciding to go ahead and serve it up before she left.

“Not much,” Jade said. “I just figured you hadn’t eaten in hours, so…”

A chair scraped against the linoleum, and then Jade nearly dropped a plate at the almost breathy groan Lim let out as she took a seat at her little dinette table.

“I just made some Charleston red rice with those smoked sausages you had in there. Have you ever had it?”

Lim shook her head, but the look in her eyes was hungry as she gazed at the steaming plate in front of her. “Did you go shopping?” she asked Jade.

“No, you had basically everything I needed.”

There was a long stretch of silence as they sat across from each other in the quiet room. The tentative scraping of Franny’s fork on the plate.

“This is really good,” Lim murmured.

Jade nodded. “We eat it all the time around here. You’ve really never had it?”

“No, but I appreciate you making it for me; you really didn’t have to.”

Jade looked up and caught Lim’s eye. Even though her face was clearly tired, her eyes remained bright. Dark brown, they were endless pools of warmth. As much as she knew that she shouldn’t sit there and stare at the other woman, she couldn’t help it. There wasn’t a single part of her that wanted to look anywhere else in that moment.

“It’s, uh—” Jade stammered a bit. “It’s not a big deal. Didn’t even take an hour to get it all put together.”