Page 25 of Friends to Lovers

When I turn back to Ren, he’s already looking at me.

“Yes?” I say after he’s watched me in silence for a minute. I scrub the back of my hand at the tip of my nose. “Do I have something on my face?”

“No,” he says, reaching up to lower my hand. “Just—” He tapers off, head tilting toward one shoulder. “ Are you tired?”

“Oh my god.” I slap both my hands on the bar. “Please. My mother is enough.”

“I’m not asking like your mother,” he says, bending his way into my line of vision. “You have been texting me at one in the morning a lot.”

“Why are you up at 1:00 a.m. to be texted?”

“You see, there are these things called time zones?” he says.

I knock his shoulder, roll my eyes as a smile creeps over my face, grateful that he seems to be coming back, engaging with me again.

“I’m also a bartender,” he says. “Ten o’ clock is when things slow down.” He leans in, arm pressing against mine, the warmth of it settling me. “But you used to be asleep by that time. At least on weekdays.”

I rotate my glass in a circle of condensation.

“I’m really okay,” I say. “Work’s just—” Never not busy , I want to say, but other people manage to leave at semireasonable hours.

I’ve just felt like I’ve had to prove myself since I moved to New York.

Like I need to show Ramona and the studio heads that I deserve my spot there, and maybe a better one; like I need to show everyone I can do this, that I’m not some fragile being that’s going to break at the smallest thing.

“There’s this movie,” I say. I lift a hand as if to erase that. It’s not actually a movie yet. It’s just an idea a few of us have been throwing around, and we need someone who’s actually in a management position to pitch it. “I’ve told you about it.”

Ren’s brow furrows, like he’s trying to remember. I scramble— have I told him about the movie? Why I’m working late every night and pushing myself even harder than I usually do? I’m sure I have.

“It’s not—” I say, but have to take a sip of wine when my voice comes out hoarse at the prospect that Ren doesn’t seem to recall what feels like the biggest thing in my life right now. “It’s just this project I’m excited about.”

“No, I remember,” Ren says, but his vague smile is distracted, far-off. “Just promise me you’ll try to get some sleep now and again, okay?”

“I will,” I say, but as Ren glances away again, back toward the room, I don’t feel better. The terrible thought that this weekend is him fulfilling some kind of obligation runs through my head. That maybe it isn’t just work and Amanda. Maybe our friendship really isn’t what it was before.

I spend the rest of the evening catching up with various family members, always looking for Ren over my shoulder, but when I can find him, he’s either dutifully chatting with my parents and whoever they’re with, or standing off to the side, on his phone or just observing the room, lost in thought that I can’t chase after.

It’s cooled down significantly by the time the rehearsal dinner is over. After saying good-night to my parents at their yurt, we walk back up the path to ours in silence. Ren’s shoulders are relaxed, his stride slow, while I’m anxious, crossing and uncrossing my arms, rubbing at my elbows.

Unfortunately, we were so focused on getting to the rehearsal dinner earlier that it’s not until Ren is holding the door open for me that I pause to actually take in the room.

We both seem to clock it at the same moment, glancing at each other and away quickly when we realize there is a singular bed.

Ren’s hand in my hair earlier comes back to me, and I hurry into the bath room, where I change into my pajamas, wash my face, brush my teeth.

When I come out, he’s setting up a makeshift bed on the floor with extra blankets and a pillow from the closet. “You take the bed,” he says. “I’ll sleep on the floor.”

“But you’ll be in so much pain tomorrow.

” I grab my water bottle from my backpack and turn on the faucet in the kitchenette, stick my finger under it until it runs ice-cold.

Ren doesn’t need to sleep on a concrete floor.

We’re adult enough to share a bed for one night.

I sit on the edge of the bed. “Come on. We’ve slept in the same bed before. It’s fine.”

Ren, who had been bending over the floor bed, straightens.

He’s rolled his sleeves above his elbows and plants his hands on his hips as he surveys it.

“I won’t be in pain,” he says, leaning down again and picking up one of the blankets, seemingly just to fold and unfold it again, the tendons in his forearms working.

“Ren—” I say.

“Aren’t we a little old for sleepovers?” he asks, the words snapping out of him. The water bottle I was lifting to my lips freezes in the air. He squeezes a hand to his temple. “I’m sorry,” he says. He flicks his eyes toward me. “I just— Can we do it this way?”

I screw the cap back onto my water bottle slowly, set it on the floor next to the bed. “Of course,” I tell him.

He watches me for a moment before grabbing his things and heading into the bathroom.

I climb under the blankets and stare at the pinprick stars that appear through the skylight above.

This is new territory. I’ve felt it over the last year: the ground beneath me slightly rockier the shorter the texts between us got, but I told myself it was nothing, was consumed enough by work that I could ignore it.

But in person this change between us feels different, more pronounced.

I scan through the skylight for the Summer Triangle, the trio of stars Ren first pointed out to me when we were fourteen, lying on our backs in the front yard of the beach house.

But I can’t find it.

Ren comes back into the room and rummages around in his backpack, pulls out a charger and plugs in his phone. He stands over it, tapping at something on the screen, then slides onto the floor bed, dropping out of my view.

I stare at the stars a moment longer before I’m leaning up on an elbow, looking down at him, something like determination firing in my chest. This can’t be how this weekend goes.

He has one hand tucked under his head, the other splayed across his chest.

“Is everything okay?” I ask.

“Of course it is,” he says, his voice flat. “Why?”

“Things have just seemed a little…off,” I say, nervous that if I say too much, he’ll pull even further into himself. “Between us. Tonight.”

At this, he turns his face up to fully look at me. “I’m sorry. Everything is really okay.”

I let my eyes drift over his features, searching for tension, for some kind of hint, but they’re as unreadable as his voice.

I wait there, hanging over the bed. I want the Ren that predicted we’d have a great time this weekend.

But he doesn’t say anything more.

“Good night, then,” I say. I turn off the light and flop back against the pillows.