Page 12 of Friends to Lovers

That night, while Ren is inside getting ready to go to sleep, I sit on the edge of my bed, toes tapping against the floor.

Thinking it might be more natural if I was already in bed when he walks back in, I slide under the blankets like I’m trying not to disrupt them, something I’ve never done in my life.

I usually toss and turn well before I fall asleep.

I last all of thirty seconds before the sheets feel like a straitjacket, and I flip onto one side, then the other, kick my legs around until the bedding is comfortable again.

I sigh, finally settling on my back and breathing steadily for a minute.

When that doesn’t work, I scroll mindlessly on my phone.

Ren knocks lightly on the door before he comes in.

I set my phone on my chest, glance up in a way that I hope reads somewhere along the lines of I was just intensely focused on an article about the five movies you need to see this fall and not fruitlessly trying to distract myself from the mere act of sleeping in the same space as you again.

“Hey,” he says. We seem to have had the same train of thought about sleeping attire: while I know Ren doesn’t usually wear a shirt when he sleeps, he has one on now, and I’ve put on a pair of shorts, determined to keep yesterday my only pants-less morning here.

He points at the light above the door. “You ready?”

“Mmm-hmm.” I nod, and he turns it off. It takes my eyes a minute to adjust, but I can still make out his silhouette as he climbs into bed.

I stare up at the place where the moonlight slants in through the gap in the curtains, spreads across the ceiling.

The only sound is the ocean rolling in, the wind sweeping through the treetops.

Years ago, before the house had central air, I could sometimes hear my dad’s snoring or the soft din of the soundscapes Sasha listens to so she can fall asleep.

She’d shush us from her window if Ren and I were talking or laughing too loudly.

But now, everyone on this side of the house sleeps with their windows closed.

“Ren?” I say after a while. It feels wrong to be out here together without speaking, like the ghosts of our former selves would be disappointed. That, and he did save me earlier, with Stevie on the beach. I want him to know I noticed, to have his good nature recognized.

“Yeah?”

“Thank you,” I say. “For covering for me earlier. About the sheets.”

“Anytime.”

“Did anyone ask you about it afterward?” I ask, worried he caught some flak for coming up early without telling anyone.

Ren is quiet, mulling his answer. “My mom asked me if I needed to get out of the city because I was disappointed Amanda wouldn’t be here this weekend.”

I hesitate, still not sure if this is a conversation this version of us should be having. “Are you? Disappointed?”

I can hear Ren’s head shift against his pillow. “I don’t think disappointed is the right word.”

I know it’s not my place to ask what the right word is, not anymore. I watch the shadows on the ceiling, picking over the day for other topics of conversation so he doesn’t feel pressured to answer just to fill the silence. “So you really don’t talk in your sleep anymore? Like, at all?” I ask.

“As far as I know,” Ren says. “Why?”

“I don’t know.” Something about the dark, about Ren not being able to see my face when I say it, emboldens me. “I always found it sort of comforting.”

“Did you,” Ren says.

I lean up on my elbows, looking in the direction of his bed. “I did. It was nice to hear when I couldn’t sleep anyway.”

Ren’s low chuckle is muffled, like he’s pressed his hands to his face. “That makes it so much worse,” he says. “Not only could you not sleep, but my babbling kept you up longer.”

“No,” I say. “I was already awake, and it was like… I don’t know. It’s stupid.”

Now it’s Ren who’s rolling onto one side, pushing up onto an elbow and twisting himself toward me. “I bet it’s not stupid. Tell me.”

I’m grateful, again, for the dark. I never told him this even when we were friends. “Okay, so I was already awake, and I would wish you were too, so we could talk. But then, it was kind of like you were talking to me anyway.”

“About nonsense, of course.”

“Of course.” I smile. “But it was mostly just you kind of muttering stuff. And it helped me fall asleep when I couldn’t.

” When he doesn’t respond, I worry that I’ve said too much, offered too much of myself up.

That whatever had thawed between us earlier today really was just for show.

I consider lying down again, ready to overthink my oversharing until the sun comes up.

But somehow moving right now seems worse.

The moonlight coming in just crosses his face, so I can see the moment he smiles back at me. “I can just talk until you fall asleep, if it would help,” he says.

I laugh lightly, suppress a yawn like his suggestion already has me tired. “I think we’re doing well,” I say.

“Well?” he asks.

“You know,” I say, without thinking much of it. “Making everyone believe we still like each other.”

Ren stills, the smile slipping off his face, a statue cast in shades of gray.

“Do you think we hate each other?” he asks softly.

His question is a punch in the stomach, knocking the wind out of me. Hate is never a word I could attribute to Ren.

“No,” I say, quickly, wishing I could take back what I said, explain it better, tell him I was joking, that it felt enough like old times for a minute that it seemed like something we were in on together. Isn’t it funny we have to make people believe we’re friends? Can you imagine?

“We just don’t like each other,” he says.

“I didn’t mean it like that,” I say. “Just—”

“We’re not friends anymore. I get it.”

He turns away and lies back down. I stare at the top of his head, trying to will the words out of me.

Suddenly, this tenuous civility between us feels like the most important thing in the world, something I need to be gentler with.

Ren was always better at that than I was, though, treating things with the reverence they deserved. Slowing down, paying attention.

I lie back myself, quiet until it occurs to me how I might make this better. “Ren?” I say. This time, I don’t wait for him to answer. “I would have been happy to see you. When you were in New York.”

He’s silent for so long I wonder if he’s fallen asleep. I try not to take it personally, try not to let it mean anything. One day doesn’t mean you’re friends again , I remind myself. There might be too much lost time between you for that to even be possible.

But it felt possible today, laughing at the winery and Ren having my back on the beach. Like some part of me had been unearthed, brushed off.

I’m adjusting my pillow, my cheek finding the cool side, resigning myself to the fact that he’s not going to respond when his voice comes out of the dark.

“I would have been happy to see you too.”