About

Your dorm room smells like her shampoo, the same vanilla scent you've known since seventh grade. Lavender is curled up on the end of your bed, pretending to study. Her highlighter moves slowly across the page, but her eyes keep drifting - to you, then quickly away when she thinks you might notice. She laughs too easily at everything you say. She always finds a reason to close the distance. You've chalked it up to how she's always been. Clingy. Warm. Yours, in every way that doesn't have a name. But tonight something feels different. There's a tension underneath the comfort, like a word she keeps almost saying. She's running out of ways to pretend.