We went to bed with our backs facing each other like two people who had signed a formal treaty of non-interference.
The mattress was wide enough that we did not touch. I stayed on my left side. She stayed on her right. The blanket was pulled up to our shoulders in perfect symmetry. If someone had walked in they might have thought we were strangers forced to share a hotel room for one night and determined to survive it with maximum dignity.
Dignity lasted approximately forty minutes.
I stared at the wall and counted the faint shadows from the streetlight outside. My body was tired but my mind refused to shut up. Behind me I could hear Wen Xiao breathing in the carefully controlled way of someone who was also very much awake and pretending not to be.
I shifted slightly. The mattress dipped.
She shifted a second later.
I sighed through my nose.
“Are you going to keep moving all night?” I asked the wall.
There was a short pause.
“I was going to ask you the same thing,” she answered the opposite wall.
Silence settled again, thinner this time.
Another minute passed before her voice returned, quieter.
“How was the interview?”
I opened my eyes wider in the dark. The question was ordinary. It still surprised me.
“Fine,” I said. “They want me to start next week. Evening shifts.”
“Music store?”
“Yes.”
“You will be around instruments the whole time. That seems dangerous for your bank account.”
“I have self-control.”
“You bought three new picks last month and already lost two of them.”
I almost turned around to glare at her. Instead I kept my back firmly in place.
“At least I do not use household objects for personal recreation.”
The mattress went very still.
Wen Xiao’s voice came out low and strained. “We are not talking about that.”
“You brought up my picks. I am simply continuing the conversation about poor decisions.”
“Linling.”
“Yes?”
“Go to sleep.”
“I cannot.”
“Try harder.”
I smiled at the wall. The mild enmity between us still lived in the sharp edges of our words, but it felt less sharp than usual. Almost playful. Almost safe.
A few more minutes of silence passed. Then I decided to be cruel.
“What were you thinking about?” I asked.
“What?”
“Earlier. When you were fighting the furniture. What were you thinking about?”
The temperature in the room seemed to rise by several degrees. I could practically feel her mortification radiating across the mattress.
“I am going to pretend you did not ask that,” she said.
“Too late. I already asked.”
“Linling.”
“Was it something embarrassing? A celebrity? A random teammate?”
She made a sound that was half groan and half threat. Then the mattress shifted hard. I felt her turn over. When I glanced back over my shoulder she was facing me in the dark, eyes narrowed, face definitely red even in the low light.
“I thought about the bathroom,” she said, voice flat with residual humiliation. “And the night I was in rut.”
I turned back to the wall so she would not see whatever expression had just taken over.
“Oh,” I said intelligently.
“You asked.”
“I did.”
“Happy now?”
“I am processing.”
“Process quietly.”
I pressed my lips together to keep from laughing. The image of her earlier humiliation mixed with the knowledge of what she had actually been thinking created a very dangerous warmth in my chest. I hated that it worked on me. I hated that I wanted to hear more. I hated that the enmity between us suddenly felt thinner than the blanket we were sharing.
“You have terrible taste,” I muttered.
“You were there for both of those memories,” she replied. “So your taste is also under review.”
I had no good answer for that.
We lay there in the dark, no longer back to back, not quite facing each other either. The silence that returned this time was different. Less hostile. More charged. I could hear every small breath she took. I was fairly certain she could hear mine.
Eventually I spoke again, softer.
“Next time lock the door.”
“There will not be a next time.”
“There will. You have no self-control and the sofa cushion is still recovering.”
Wen Xiao made another frustrated noise and pulled the blanket higher over her shoulder.
“Go to sleep, Linling.”
“I am trying.”
“Try without talking.”
I closed my eyes and failed to hide the small smile that kept pulling at my mouth.
The enmity was still there. Mild. Familiar. Comfortable in its own strange way.
But the space between our backs felt a lot smaller than it had at the beginning of the night.