BY NOTHING SHORT of a miracle, I agreed to Xandra's offer to have a late dinner together, and in turn, Takoda did, too. We ended up being overdressed at the grungy restaurant slash bar she directed us to, and it only hit me then, as we listened to the cover band on stage, that I was in freaking Vegas, doing nothing especially interesting or out of the ordinary.

I took pictures of my food, recorded the band during their third song, smiled when Xandra talked to me, responded as civilly as I could. The whole time, Takoda's eyes remained on me.

While we waited for the last song on the band's line-up to be over, I shared the photos I took to my Instagram story for a semblance of control, noting my location in the corner. Then I insisted on talking to them, to Takoda's surprise, and it was obvious they had no idea who I was. They even made a few "we have a huge fan now" jokes. I asked for their Instagram handle and shared a nice hug with their lead singer—who was in an oversized NYU sweatshirt and really nice boots I wished I could steal. We made a quick stop at the fashion house to collect my things, and on the quiet ride back to the hotel, the video joined its friends on socials. I even followed the band for good measure. Control. The only things I could choreograph were the photos I took and my online presence. I could tweak whatever I wanted, could force perfection until even I was fooled, and there was nothing I needed more in that moment than normalcy.

By the time Takoda and I walked back into our dark hotel room thirty-five minutes past midnight, my eyes stung from exhaustion, my calves throbbed from the stilettos, and the tote bag that hung from my hands weighed the rest of my body down. For some reason, the left heel of my shoes gave out, and I stumbled in the living space. I was unaware of how close he was until he grabbed onto my upper arms as a very annoyed, "The fuck," left my mouth.

He chuckled.

"Am I drunk?" I asked.

"Unless you get drunk on sparkling water, no. But you should take those off."

"I'm never doing this again, I swear. My feet are killing me, and the room's spinning."

His arms loosened around mine, and I was slow to register why he was lowering himself to a crouch in front of me. Before I knew it, he was undoing the knots of my laces. It felt a little disarming for him to do this now, when it was a completely normal occurrence before. He used to help me with my laces when we were together—and I put on a lot of shoes with laces. It was something I stopped thinking twice about after the first few times, but now, it felt like this entirely new thing, something to get excited about all over again. It made my heart stutter to realize that he hadn't fallen out of his habits like I thought he had.

The feel of his fingers grazing my aching calves was soothing, and I wondered if he could give my feet a massage while he was at it. Everything in me knew how much I'd love the tension in my toes to loosen.

I placed my hands on his shoulders to take the shoes off when he was done, absently running the tips of my fingers through his hair a second before he rose back up to his feet.

"Thanks," I said.

"No problem. Go freshen up and get some sleep." To my surprise, he dropped a kiss on the side of my head, before detaching himself from me.

Instinctively, I reached out to stop him from walking away, and he glanced at our joined hands for a second. "Come to bed tonight."

His lips parted, but it took a while for any word to make it past them. "I can't."

"You can. You just don't want to."

"Cleo—"

I closed the distance between us to shut him up, placing the hand I was holding on one side of my waist in a desperate need for contact. My plan seemed to work, because he stopped talking. I wasn't quite prepared for him to go as still as a brick wall, though.

"Just come to bed," I said quietly, brushing a thumb over his cheek. I was probably too tired to realize that this could've been mistaken for seduction, but I knew he wouldn't say no to me like this. "It doesn't have to mean anything. I just don't want you spending the night on the couch."

"I have to play a few things tonight."

"Doesn't matter. I like listening to you play."

He was going to say something else, but I stopped him again—this time by leaning up to place a kiss on the corner of his mouth, dangerously close to the real thing. There was a hitch in the Calebson-scented air in the moments before I pulled away. "Thanks for taking care of me today—or yesterday."

I let my hand linger on his face as I watched him watch me, felt his hand move against my waist, move an inch upwards as though he was thinking about touching my face, too. I don't know why it hurt as much as it did to be standing there with him like that, but my heart pulsed in my chest, aching so much that I wanted to cry out. Suspended between us was the possibility of what we could be, and the reminder of what we once were, and the differences were jarring enough that we couldn't ignore them. In that moment, I grew exhausted of this distance between us, wanted to just hold him, forget everything we said to each other in that heated moment many months ago, forget almost crashing my car, forget all the ignored calls and texts. I wanted us to be okay.

"Takoda," I finally said, my voice not sounding like mine. My heart thrashed around in my chest, almost as if it knew what I wanted to do before I did.

"Yeah?"

I watched him again. "Can we just be okay? Two of us? I'm just . . . I'm tired of pretending like I don't care about you." There was that unavoidable break in my voice at the end, but I didn't fight if off this time. Today had been a very emotional day for me, and I only hoped I didn't regret this when I was well-rested, less vulnerable, and thinking properly. "My heart always felt like it was going through a meat grinder whenever I heard your name or came across your music while you were away, you know. And deep down, I knew that it wouldn't have hurt so much if it wasn't real." I took a pause, pushed back the tears pressing up against the backs of my eyes. "We were real, right?"

His hand came up to my arm, hesitant at first. He stared down at the space between my bare feet and his shoes, and there was only the hum of the air conditioner for a moment. Quietly, he admitted, "We were real, Cleo."

I nodded. "Then let's be okay. Let that be the only thing that matters."

His touch was firmer that time as he gently moved his hand against my skin. Then he lightly held my chin for a couple of seconds, looking at me as though he was contemplating something. When he nodded, I almost missed it, completely lost in him.

"Yes to coming to bed or us being okay?" I asked.

"Both."

I nodded again, remaining there a beat before taking a step back, even though I didn't want to. "I'll just go wash all of this off." I gestured in my general direction.

"Sure."

I spent an absurd amount of time first staring at my reflection in the mirror again, then cleaning makeup off my face. I washed the hugs out of my skin, the products out of my hair, and the rest of the anxiety out of my mind. Then I sat in the tub in the silence with my head leaned back after I started to feel like myself again. There was still a tremble in my body somewhere, but as usual, I couldn't trace its source. After a long moment spent trying to get it to leave, I immersed myself in the water and didn't come up for air until all I could think of was what would happen if I remained there a second too long.

I pushed hair away from my face as I abruptly burst through the surface with a skip of my heart. I struggled to regain my breath as quietly as I could, not wanting Takoda to hear what I was doing. A tremble had visibly rocked his body, so much that his words came out in troubled gasps, when I'd showed him the white lines on my palm, when I'd told him I gave them to myself. When I told him that they weren't enough to ground me sometimes, that I contemplated doing more harm.

I didn't want that to happen again.

A while later, I walked back into the bedroom, drying water out of my hair with a second towel as I held the one wrapped around me closer to myself. I didn't realize Takoda was already there until I saw his guitar leaning against the bed. He gave me a glance before returning to folding the clothes he wore to the event and placing them neatly in a protective bag. He was trying hard not to look at me, I could tell. My towel stopped a couple inches above mid-thigh. I wasn't sure why I chose it.

"I've missed that," I said in an attempt at small talk, gesturing to the guitar. The shiny black surface reflected the dim lights, and I could almost make out the cursive T.C. in the corner. I remembered how I used to let my fingers dance along the fretboard as I struggled to remember some chords. I remembered how he used to watch me and listen to me sing some tunes under my breath with a smile on his face.

He had no choice but to see what I was talking about, and his eyes caught mine before they fell to the guitar. The smile he gave me was tight-lipped and brief, and he returned to his task before I could return it and hint at the memory grazing my mind. I didn't understand him, and it was almost like some kind of mockery when I remembered how he'd been at the event. Like he was playing with me or something. Like he just wanted to see how tightly he could get me to hold onto him.

I ignored it anyway and moved to the matching pair of silk shorts and top I'd set aside for myself. He left the room shortly after, leaving me to get dressed in private as he went in for his shower. Before he returned, I was already settled beneath the covers at the extreme right end of the bed, scrolling through some emails and hating the AC but too lazy to get up for the remote. I missed my mom and the comfort of my bed, and it made me strangely emotional to realize that this was the first time I'd been this many miles away from home by myself.

I didn't look at Takoda, not as I heard him pulling a tee over his head, not as the bed sank beneath his weight. The strings of his guitar twanged as he pulled the instrument into his lap, and his smell filled my nose. I opened Instagram.

He plucked some keys for tuning, and I read the caption of a sponsored tripod ad five times, keeping my back to him. When he started strumming a tune I didn't recognize, I stopped pretending to be disinterested, placing my phone screen-down next to me. He sang, quiet and magical, about breaking into infinite pieces, about pain that dulled your being and deflated your lungs, and the gorgeous melody of the song hit me over and over like a tide. It reminded me of the period when all he released were sad songs, part of a collection that remained undisclosed to this day. Fans had taken to social media, recording videos of themselves crying to his music, calling him their eternal sad boi, making art inspired by them, tattooing the lyrics onto their skin, onto T-shirts and mugs and cold brew cups they sold on Etsy.

Abruptly, Takoda stopped playing, and it was no easy feat holding back my sigh.

"Do you wanna try?" came his voice a beat later, deeper than the last time he spoke.

I failed to completely register that it was me he was talking to, until the silence stretched out for too long and I looked over my shoulder. His body was slightly angled towards me as he sat cross-legged on the bed, and my eyes were drawn to his Fleetwood Mac T-shirt, and how the fabric stretched across his shoulders. I was still not over how broader he'd gotten.

"I can't remember how to play anything anymore," I told him with a laugh in my voice.

"Doesn't matter." He held the guitar out to me like this was a sacred ritual. "I like watching you remember."

"Or"—I sat up and took the instrument from him—"you just like seeing how better you are at everything than I am."

"That, too," he said, playfully, judging by the smile on his lips. Nostalgia was hitting me from every angle, and what the actual hell.

The guitar was familiar in my lap, and for a moment, I picked at the strings, having trouble remembering anything beyond how to place my hands. Takoda sat back, leaning into the pillows as he watched me, even though I was sure he was supposed to be watching my hands and maybe giving guidance or something. I stayed determined for a couple of minutes, and he remained quiet, amused as expected. But after uselessly going at it, I shook my head and placed the guitar down in front of me.

"I can't remember anything. This is useless." As I spoke, I lay back down, pushing my phone out from beneath me.

"You okay?"

"Do I not seem okay?"

"A little."

I stared at the ceiling, noticing now that I was finding it a little difficult to draw in oxygen, and I briefly wondered why this wave was being so stubborn and sticking around for this long. "I guess I'm just stressed out. Haven't really been out for as long as I have today."

I expected him to say something, to ask, "That all?" But he didn't. Instead, he took the guitar and reached over to place it against the wall next to the bedside drawer, then got up to turn off the lights, drenching us in sudden darkness. I saw his frame move elegantly across the room, back to the bed, and once again found myself craving something I wasn't sure I could have.

The sheets rustled quietly as he slipped beneath them, and the room fell into a still silence, even though Vegas still bustled beyond the walls of this hotel. Our breathing was as good as non-existent as we awkwardly lay next to each other for the next few minutes, and I was tempted to reach for his hand under the covers, wondered if he'd let me hold onto it. I didn't know what was wrong with me, but I was suddenly hungry for physical contact in the way only he could provide.

"This is awkward," I eventually said, and my declaration was met by a chuckle from him. The sound sucked every other form of energy from the room, hanging onto the four corners, lingering long after it died from his lips.

"Yeah. Very awkward."

"Should we listen to something that might lull us to sleep?"

"Sure."

I heard the sheets rustle again as he reached for something on the bedside drawer, and he handed me one of his AirPods a moment later with a quiet, "Here." Our fingers brushed a little clumsily in the darkness, but a thrill still rushed through me at the contact. I caught sight of a smiling Lulu on his lockscreen as he squinted at it, immediately missing her bubbly energy. He navigated to his Spotify and scrolled for a while before hitting play on a playlist. Holly Humberstone came on, and his screen went black, plunging us back into darkness.

I don't know if it was the lyrics of the song, or the harmony, that always made me as emotional as it did. I don't know why exactly it made me remember our first kiss, but it wasn't any different today. Especially not while we shared AirPods in a quiet hotel room on opposite sides of a bed that felt too big at the same time that it felt small. I recalled how he'd looked at me that night on the roof, how at first I'd excused my thoughts and feelings by blaming them on the champagne I'd had. I recalled the kiss, what it felt like, and even now, two years later, there was that hazardous fluttering of butterflies in my lower abdomen again.

Before I knew what I was doing, I reached for Takoda's hand. It took a second for my fingers to connect with the inside of his palm, but when it did, he didn't move, didn't protest, didn't tell me to stop. My touch was still hesitant, though, and after a moment, I saw him turn to look at me out of the corner of my eye.

I could barely make out his features when I tilted my head towards him, but the intensity of his eyes burned through every layer of my skin. I felt them struggling to make me out, too. A handful of seconds passed before his hand shifted, before his thumb tentatively traced the back of mine.

"Takoda." His name disappeared into the silence shortly after leaving my lips, and I doubted he heard me.

"Yeah?"

I thought hard about my next words, hoping I wouldn't regret them when the sun came up. "I still think about being with you, too." His hand remained relaxed in mine, and I took it as a sign to go on. "I know we promised each other not to mention this again, but . . . I don't know." I shook my head, averting my eyes to the ceiling as I realized how this sounded all of a sudden. "Forget it, it's stupid."

He didn't say anything, just remained there next to me, his thumb still moving against mine. I'd already resigned myself to sleeping this bad idea off and laughing about it in the morning when he spoke.

"Do we only ever have bad ideas?"

Despite myself, I smiled. "I think it's our trademark."

Another round of silence, then his phone lit up seconds before the song stopped playing. I didn't dare breathe as I waited to hear what he would say next, trying to silence the chaos in my stomach, trying to slow the pumping of my heart, but everything seized up when his hand fell away from mine and he leaned over me. I saw the whites of his eyes as they met with mine in the darkness while he gently reached for the bud in my left ear. My body felt as though it was vibrating with the rhythm of my heartbeat when, even after he'd taken it out and placed it down on the bedside table, he didn't lay back down. When his fingers lingered on my face.

Before I was ready for it, his nose came down to brush against mine, and my eyes fluttered closed, every nerve ending already lighting up.

"This is why I didn't want to come to bed," he whispered.

"Maybe we need one more time to get it out of our systems," I whispered back, leaning up to brush my lips against his. "I can't stop thinking about you."

"Can't stop thinking about you, either."

His voice rolled through me, and I pushed down the lump in my throat, instinctively reaching up to touch him, to make sure this was real and I wasn't just dreaming it up.

I don't know who kissed who first, but it was chaste as we tested the waters, before graduating to something deeper, slower. This time, there was mutual agreement between us, because we didn't kiss like this was just something to blow off steam. It wasn't hurried like the first time we hooked up, wasn't unsure like the second. It was intentional and intimate and intense. This time we meant it.

One of his hands fell to my waist, and the warmth of it cut through the silk of my nightie until I felt naked. Because I could, I touched him, too, hitching his T-shirt up a bit to caress the bare skin above the waistband of his shorts. He made a throaty sound against my lips before pulling away to move on to my jaw, and the hand he had against my waist finally slipped beneath my top and met the burning skin there.

He kissed me all the way to that sensitive spot below my ear, taking it between his teeth for a moment. A shiver liquefied my bones, and with the little control I had over my body, I ran a hand along the side of his neck to let him know I liked that. He lightly traced a finger along the waistband of my shorts as his lips moved to my shoulder, his other hand gently nudging the strap of my top down to give him more room. He kissed me there, kissed me on my neck, lingered at the hollow of my throat, his finger still dancing near the waist of my shorts. He stopped for a moment to take his shirt off, tossing it to the floor before meeting me with another kiss. My body trembled in the best way, and I let my hands explore the planes of his chest.

"Clee," he mumbled against my lips at some point, and my response was breathy and weak. "I don't want this to get messy."

"Too late," was the only thing I could bring myself to say. "Just kiss me."

And he did. He settled between my legs, claimed as many inches of skin as he could, and sent my head spinning. My body was weightless, and I was dizzy behind my closed eyes. It was that same freefall motion from graduation night, the same one that told me I was too far gone to be reeled back in. It went beyond the haze of lust and passion, ran deeper than temporary want. It hummed beneath my skin, etched so deep I couldn't reach it if I tried.

Before I could scramble to gather any form of coherent thought, his weight was gone, and he fell back into the spot next to me, breath broken as he pushed a hand through his hair. But I wasn't having it. I pushed myself up to my knees and moved without break so I could straddle him.

His hands came up to my waist so quick, you'd think I was made of fire. "Wait," he blurted, voice raspy. "What—what is this? Why do we keep doing this?"

At the question, I realized I . . . actually had no idea. None that would make sense, anyway.

I watched him quietly for a moment. "I don't know."

He sighed and lay back, pushing both hands through his hair this time. I still hovered over him. "This is a terrible idea," he mumbled.

"I know."

After a couple seconds spent in silence, I hesitantly leaned down. From what I could make out, he looked as pained as I felt, but he didn't move.

"Can I kiss you?" I asked in a whisper, staring into his glazed eyes.

He remained quiet, but only for a handful of seconds before he reached up and brushed the backs of his fingers against my left cheek. I took that as permission to close the gap between us, and he put one hand back on my waist as our lips reunited. A drugging kind of slow this time. The type that wouldn't stop anytime soon.

We didn't take off each other's clothes, didn't let our hands trail too far. Only kissed gently until my thighs gave out and white spots frolicked in my vision. Until I was out of breath and had no choice but to lay next to him with my face pressed close. After what felt like hours, my muscles ached from exhaustion, but he kept his arms around me, kept his legs tangled with mine, kept his face buried in the side of my neck. It was as if we couldn't get enough of each other.

Maybe we couldn't.

total number of times this chapter was edited = 1M. i'm not sure what exactly about it put me through so much pain, but i was physically exhausted of seeing it sit on its lonesome in my computer. really. there's an ache in my head as i type this.

anyhoo, please let me know what you think! love y'all <3