We met in someone else’s kitchen. Not cute. Not soft. I was drunk, she was pissed off, and there was one cigarette left on the counter. We both reached for it.

She pulled back first, let me take it. Then turned around, grabbed my drink, sipped it like it was hers. No apology. No smile. Just this quiet, locked-in look like she was checking if I was going to make her leave. I didn’t.

She hooked up with someone else that night. Not me. I watched her walk upstairs with him, eyes half-lidded, phone clutched like a prop. I told myself I didn’t care. Two weeks later, she ended up in my passenger seat outside a party neither of us wanted to be at. She didn’t say why she got in the car, and I didn’t ask. I drove us to some 24-hour place and we ate fries without looking at each other.

She came back to mine that night. Didn’t even kiss me first, just pushed me onto the bed and pulled her top over her head like it was already planned. It was quiet. Slow. Weirdly intimate for two people who hadn’t even exchanged last names.

After that, it was never planned, but always expected. She’d show up with her hair wet. With my name half-typed in her phone. With some excuse about how her roommate locked her out or how her key was stuck or how the power went out in her building. All lies. I let her in anyway.

We didn’t talk about what we were doing. She didn’t kiss me in front of people. I didn’t ask where she went when she left. But she liked my room. She liked my shower. She liked my bed. She told me once that my mattress was the only one that didn’t hurt her back.

We did it everywhere. The back of my car. The stairwell in her building. Her friend’s guest room while a party raged outside. She used to whisper “don’t be loud” while she climbed on top of me, then cover my mouth when I made her break first.

I told myself it was just sex.

But I started noticing shit. The way she always tied her hoodie sleeves in a knot around her waist. How she hummed under her breath when she was brushing her teeth. How she picked at the labels on bottles and always smelled like mint and fabric softener.

And yeah, I started missing her when she left.

Now,

She’s in my bed again. Still warm from the shower, wearing one of my shirts like it’s hers. Her hair’s damp, and she’s got that lazy, glazed-over look she gets when she’s freshly fucked and trying not to fall asleep yet.

We just went at it hard. Lights off, my hands on her back, her teeth on my shoulder. One of those slow burns that gets messier the longer we try to keep quiet. Her nails are still red marks on my chest.

She rolls onto her side, half her leg still thrown across my waist.

I don’t mean to say it. It just slips.

“You can stay.”

She doesn’t move. Just blinks at me like she’s trying to decide if she heard right.

“Stay over,” I say again, like it’s no big deal. “You don’t have to leave tonight.”

She studies me. Doesn’t smile. Doesn’t speak. Just nods. Settles deeper into the blanket. Grabs the hoodie she left here three weeks ago and bunches it under her head.

I lie there like I didn’t mean it more than I’ve meant anything all week.