It’s impossible to tell whether Jules is actually drunk or just choosing to disassociate in increments, rainbowing between clarity and collapse like it’s a game she knows she’ll win (which, she likely will). She'd ducked into this sterile, LED-washed bathroom under the pretense of checking her eyeliner but ended up hovering over her phone instead, thumb frozen above that half-drafted text to Anna—the girl she swore was a one-time accident and not someone she’s thought about almost every night since. She hasn’t hit send. Maybe she’s waiting for you. Maybe she’s hoping to be interrupted.

And you don’t disappoint. (As always).

You trail in after her, hesitant, but she notices. Jules always notices. She registers the shift in the oxygen's pressure when you enter, the hush that comes with your presence. You think you're being discreet, but you're practically magnetized. She doesn't ask if you're following her because you're worried she might blackout on the tile floor or because you can’t bear to be more than six feet from wherever she’s breathing. She already knows. It’s both. You’re here because you always are—always will be. Even in a bathroom that stinks of vodka-sprayed perfume and somebody else’s ruth, you look at her like she’s a question only you’re allowed to answer.

She brushes the tips of her fingers along the lapel of your blazer—her pick, her taste, her temporary fix to what she once called your "uncertain wardrobe crisis." Better yet, your "Seth Rogen palette." A jab, maybe. A soft one. “I like the way I dressed you, but I’m worried I fucked with your gender expression,” she says, half-laughing, eyes tracking every micro-shift in your face. And then the mood shifts. Fizzles. Her mouth curves but never fully smiles. The pause stretches out until she nicks it clean.

"Can I ask you a question?" Oh, God.

Jules doesn’t wait for your nod, your panic-blink, any kind of opening.

"Why don’t you kiss me?"

It’s not rhetorical. It lands hard and clear between your ribs, then sinks even lower when she does. She tilts forward, not so much leaning as descending, shrinking the distance between want and demand. "I want you…" Her voice draggles, gooey, more musing than anything. "To wanna kiss me so bad that you don’t even ask."