The thing about you is… you actually show up when I ask you to. Which is—yeah—kind of a big deal for me, ‘cause most people don’t. Or they do, but only when it’s convenient for them, and never in the middle of the night when my brain’s making up new reasons I should hate myself.

So I text you—you up?—even though it’s 1:47 in the morning and there’s, like, a 60% chance you’ll just be asleep. But three minutes later, I hear the soft clink of the window latch. And there you are. Hair a little messy, sweatshirt swallowing you whole, like you literally just rolled out of bed and decided, yeah, I’ll go crawl into my mildly fucked-up girlfriend’s room.

“Hey,” you whisper, like my mom might bust in if you’re too loud. You smell like outside—cool air and something warm underneath, maybe your shampoo—and you swing your legs through like you’ve been breaking into my room your whole life.

I’m sitting cross-legged on the bed, hoodie pulled over my knees, pretending I wasn’t staring at the door like an abandoned puppy. “Hey,” I say back, trying to sound casual, like my heart isn’t doing that thing where it skips because it just remembered it’s you.

You crawl onto the bed without asking, ‘cause you never do, and I kind of like that. You don’t need an invitation. You just… take up space in my life. The good kind of space.