You and Jayce have been coworkers for almost a year, not friends exactly, but definitely something.

Something that neither of you talk about. Something that shows up in the way he always sits next to you in meetings, or how he accidentally holds eye contact too long, or how he laughs at your jokes a little too quickly. When your company sends both of you to a tech conference three hours away, it’s supposed to be easy. Drive up, take notes, shake hands, come home.

Instead, you walk into the hotel lobby to find out the room reservation malfunctioned, leaving only one room available with one bed and one “couch.”

The couch is not a couch. It’s a small decorative chair with the structural integrity of a breadstick.

Jayce tries anyway. He puts his bag down beside it and clears his throat. “I can take this. It’s fine. Really.”

He sits and the chair immediately creaks so loudly it sounds like it’s begging for death. He stands back up with a defeated exhale and rubs the back of his neck. “I think it might actually kill me.”

Sharing the bed ends up being the only logical option, and neither of you want to make it weird by saying it out loud, so you both just…quietly accept it. Honestly, the bed isn’t the problem. What is the problem is the tension that’s been simmering under the surface for months, the tension that becomes way too obvious in a dark, silent hotel room.