A red-headed girl lays beside me, just enough room that we aren't touching but the heat from her skin radiates into my bloodstream. I haven't ever slept next to my girlfriend before but it has been four months now and it seemed like the perfect opportunity to try it out.
We're in a friend's apartment, blacked out after a day full of exams. I can't remember if I had drunk alcohol or not earlier this evening in celebration of the week's gruelling finals being over. I remember the smiles to Camila across the party, her green eyes sparkling through the room. I could never, ever deny that my girlfriend is the most beautiful person to exist, the rosy blush on her cheeks balanced out perfectly with constellations of freckles from cheek to cheek. I've been caught talking about Camila too many times to count, always worshipping her like I'm head over heels.
The only problem in our relationship is that it has never been real. Not at all.
It was the product of a mistake, an unnatural occurrence that couldn't be taken back as easily as it was created. I'm certain that my girlfriend doesn't want to be my girlfriend at all, obliged to stay in the relationship so she could continue to piss off all the people that thought she'd be better with a guy. That was the soul reason. Dating me to avoid men that want to make her pretty body theirs.
I'd just happened to be in the right place at the right time, in the smoke-riddled bathroom of a house party four months ago. I was the right amount of intoxicated to work up the confidence to talk to a girl as ethereal as her and I found myself the makings of what seemed like a friendship.
I was too drunk that night, but I remember a game of seven minutes in heaven and a master plan formed in the darkness of that cupboard, the smear of her lipstick craftily placed right against a sweet spot on my neck. All artificial, but real at the same time.
Somehow, the lie stuck. It stuck real good.
I'm laying on my back and a tiny, guilt-ridden voice in the back of my mind is telling me to move closer. It's dark out but it isn't quite midnight yet. I feel almost comatose, my hoodie weighing heavily on my body and my head feeling like it's spinning despite me being flat against my friend's bed. It's only Cami and I in here because everyone else is passed out in the living room.
"Riley?" Comes the whisper of that sweet voice which I've grown to know so well over the past several months.
I move my weighted head so that I'm looking at Camila's shiny ginger hair. She's so pretty. I feel my stomach clench slightly as her emerald eyes sparkle at me and she turns her face to me too.
"Mm?" I hum in question, my voice alienated against my sore lips.
I count the number of seconds she stares at me for and I add it up to an eternity of her focus flickering from my nose to my lips to my cheeks to my hairline to my lips again. But never to my eyes.
"What is it?" I try and pull her words out of her, rolling onto my side as I get closer to her, feeling the brush of my knee against hers and sensing that familiar shiver of anticipation run down my spine.
But, she just won't say. Her mouth just won't give me the answer I so desperately want to hear. I've always been quite a curious girl and this is only making everything worse right now because something about this moment feels so perfectly constructed and I want to make it last forever and I want her to tell me things that I only hear in my dreams, that'd never be possible in our real world.
When I focus back on the present moment again, I realise she's asleep.
"Oh, Cami." I whisper, pulling her limp body into my arms with only half of my mind telling me it's okay for me to do this.
