Once I've wrung all the water I can from my locs, I grab the slightly bloody condom from the shampoo caddy and step out of the shower. I throw the condom in the rubbish and wash my hands before I grab my towel; after the cold water I rinsed my hair with, even the air outside the shower is comfortingly warm.

Joe seems to disagree; she dances some sort of jig as she brushes her teeth in her underwear. Her towel is a puddle at her feet where it fell but she brushes with too much focus to pause and pick it up. I think she's counting the seconds the electric brush buzzes on each tooth.

I pick it up for her, wrapping it back around her.

'I got ya these pads,' I say, opening the cabinet to show the packets, the night ones and regular ones. 'So you won't have to worry about bringing them with you next time. I saw that these are the ones you have at home so...' I glance at her for confirmation and she smiles around the brush. 'I can get some tampons too.'

Joe shakes her head. When the brush whirrs the two-minute timer, she spits out the toothpaste and says, 'I heard about toxic shock syndrome once and got so terrified I had an anxiety attack the next time I tried to use a tampon.'

'Right.'

'It's scary!'

'I'm pretty sure you'd be more likely to get electrocuted by that toothbrush.'

Smiling, I move behind her so I can see myself in the mirror as I oil my scalp. Our height difference is perfect for us both to fit in the reflection.

Every time I catch a glance of the dish where her rings and eyelash extensions are, my insides flutter. I forget my tooth brushing as I watch her massage moisturiser into her plump cheeks and her eyes meet mine in the mirror with a knowing glint.

I duck around her to spit the froth out so I can brush my tongue but Joe blocks me. 'That was not two minutes.'

I can't get out more than a gargled "wha?" before she grabs the handle and continues to brush my teeth for me, explaining all the while about the importance of using the right angles and motions—gum disease is not a joke.

It don't stop there. She sits me onto the toilet so she can floss for me, her knee pressed between my thighs. 'Always remember that you don't floss one gap, you floss two teeth. You have to go on both sides of the gum.'

The way Joe smiles down at me after makes the humiliation of her brushing my teeth worth it.

Joe shivers the moment I open the toilet door and the actually cold air swarms in, annihilating the remnants of our shower-sex humidity. She races past me and by the time I get to my room, she's already dressed in her Jorja Smith tee and pyjama trousers. Joe owns a lot of tour merch, I've discovered.

She watches as I wrap my locs in an old t-shirt rather than my usual bonnet since it will soak up any leftover water better. With my arms raised, Joe is happy to take the opportunity to admire the view.

'You know, you're well fit.'

I chuckle at the directness. It's not the same kind of bumbling lack of filter I've got used to over the past few months but a confident bluntness. 'I don't go to the gym four days a week for no reason.'

She snorts. 'I thought you wanted to be healthy.'

'No, I wanna be fit. Call me superficial if you want, but I am honest.' I hook my grin up though it fades as I pull on underwear and pyjama trousers.

When I were seventeen, coming out of painfully awkward puberty, just learning to style and accessorise within the limited budget I had, being desired for my looks put me on cloud nine. By twenty-four, though, it's starting to hurt.

Not that Joe is like that. She's– Well... When this ends and I have to back to that, it'll break my heart all over again.

I grab my hoodie but don't get the chance to put it on before Joe is at my side, close enough for it to be hazardous. She traces the tattoo over my ribs. I've only been able to afford two, that one and a tiny orchid above my hip on the other side.

'What is it?' she asks with a tone that reveals she has wondered about it before but not dared to ask. 'I mean, I can tell it's a butterfly... I think?'

'It's the first drawing my brother ever gave me.' I smile at the ink. 'They drew stuff before but that was the first one he gave me.'

Even as a kid, Cece worked through paper and crayons at a pace that irked our parents. Not that there were owt he could've done that wouldn't've irked them; drawing is about as quiet and independent as it gets. The Jenkinses, his first semi-permanent placement and one of the few foster homes he seemed happy at, had to bribe them into doing their chores and homework by promising him ten pieces of paper per completed task. It didn't take long before he were begging for extra chores.

My brain slowly registers Joe's gaze on the side of my face and I flush. This is probably sappier than she wanted. Casual. This is casual–

'That's adorable.'

I don't have a ceiling lamp in my bedroom; the only source of light is the desk lamp on my bedside table. Its amber glow reflects in her eyes, glazing them with honey. She don't sound sarcastic and my overly emotional brain takes it as an invitation.

Dumping my hoodie onto the bed, I wheel a plastic storage box from under it. Joe joins me as I open it.

The top page is covered with scribbles in blue and red. The drawings continue like that for a while and I pile them back-to-front on my lap. The sheer quantity of them makes me laugh and simultaneously furious.

Mamá and Papá didn't take any with them when they left. How dare they not take even one? They've no idea what they've missed out on—they have no fucking idea.

The scribbles develop into more decipherable shapes until I uncover the one that's my tattoo: a child's butterfly that mostly resembles an uppercase B reflected vertically. Antennas poke out between them, each ending in a circle. On the top is writing that starts with an N and then becomes a squiggle.

Joe points at it. 'Is this supposed to be your name?'

'I think so.'

She coos, lifting the drawing to compare it side by side with my tattoo. 'The artist must've wanted to marry you immediately when you brought this in.'

'I highly doubt that.'

'If I was a tattoo artist, I would've married you on the spot. You having kept the first drawing your brother ever gave you, wanting that to be your first tattoo—that's the cutest thing I've ever heard.'

Joe places the drawing onto the pile and lifts the next one from the box. I watch the care she handles them with and the string of hearts in my chest buds new leaves, winding itself around even my twelfth rib.

I doubt I'd be able to untangle it anymore even if I did try. Not that I plan to try any time soon—as much as it'll hurt when it shrinks and wilts, when she tears it out, the flutter of it now, the lightness it brings, is too lovely of a feeling.

I've missed being in love with someone. I've missed getting through my whole day at the mere thought of seeing them, finding reminders of them in the most mundane of things, yearning for them and not just a vague "someone".

But this is different than it usually is. Usually, love is a riptide that drags me under and I've no choice but to drown in it. But this, this affection for Joe, is summer rain. It's refreshing and nourishing and rather than drown, it makes me bloom. I dunno how to contain it, how not to let it turn all of me into a garden.

But I have to. Contain it, that is. I promised Joe casual.

Reminder: The garden will rot soon enough. Reminder: I'm incapable of loving people the right way.

She's none the wiser to the war I'm battling in every muscle to not lean into her, to kiss her temple as she looks through the drawings and explain each one to her, even the squiggles. I wrote dates in pencil onto all of them until Cece got old enough to do it himself.

As Joe continues to card through, they slowly become more and more recognisable shapes. We get to one of a family and a house, a yellow sun at the corner of the page.

'This is your family?'

Take a shot.

'Yep.'

Though Joe keeps studying it, I divert my eyes to the stack in the plastic box. Most of them are of different coloured butterflies and birds, a few frogs. I freeze at another one with people—just me (name written as NiKiLAs) and them (name written SEEsEELo).

'Take this back.' Joe flicks the family drawing at me. 'You're giving me baby fever.'