NIKKI & JOE, CASUALLY | updates every monday

49: how to be delusional 101

            Sleep is rocked out of me. I'm vaguely aware of the hand on my chest, the pressure that comes in beats, someone whispering my name... I jolt upright.

Joe is sitting too and I grasp for her. Her eyes glint in the dark, widened but soft.

'Are you hurt? What's wrong?'

Blood rushes through me, electric. Joe draws out a long "um" as I inspect her for wounds, scraping my fingers along her skin and squinting for crimson in the dark. 'Nothing.' My eyes zap to hers. Her brow is furrowed. 'I just wanted to ask if I can go to the toilet.'

'You...?'

I exhale. My heart stops bruising the inside of my ribs though my chest continues to ache from the stress. As soon as panic fades, confusion takes over. 'Why would you–?' I cut myself off and gesture at the door. 'Yeah, of course, you can.'

Joe smiles and clambers off the bed. As her footsteps retreat down the corridor, I fumble for the light switch which magically retreats into the fourth dimension for several seconds before I get the reading lamp on.

Staring at the circle of amber light stamped on the ceiling, I press a hand to my chest. My heart is still racing. Memories try to resurface, clambering out of the soil like hatched fungus gnats, and each time I blink, I'm convinced Cece is swaying at my bedside, pushing me awake, with a knife jutting out of his leg. All the times they cut too deep and the bleeding wouldn't stop like it were supposed to, all the times sharp objects found their flesh and not whatever hallucinations they were tryna kill.

He were never fazed by it, his face just as expressionless as it always were. They'd shrug. "I think I have to go to the hospital..."

When we were kids and still lived with Mamá and Papá, he woke me up at least once a week from nightmares. At what point did they stop being "just nightmares"?

I should know. I would know if I'd cared to check in more often, make sure they actually spoke to me rather than settling for their teenage sarcasm because I couldn't be bothered to look under it. It's easy enough to balance parties and good grades, but there's no way to add a third corner. How could I ever choose parties and meaningless sex over my own kid brother?

Rapid footsteps pull me back into my room and I crane my neck to watch Joe sprint through the door. Rather than going around the bed, she leaps over me to get to her side and burrows under the duvet. 'Cold!'

With the blanket pulled up to her chin and her round cheeks puffed up, she's so adorable I want to kiss her nose. But that would probably breach the increasingly blurry line of our friends-with-benefits arrangement.

Joe worms closer to warm up. My skin tingles even with both of us wearing hoodies. I wrap an arm around her to tuck her into me.

I need to be as close to her as I can when I have the chance. I won't for much longer. We've had sex enough times now that it must have "fixed" her "sex problems"—she definitely don't seem to be having any problems. Joe will be happily engaging in casual no-strings sex with other people as soon as she realises that our thing has fulfilled its purpose.

'I'm sorry that I startled you.'

'That's alright. I just thought...'

'Something was wrong with your brother,' she supplies when my chest caves in.

I pry my attention from the ceiling to turn to her. 'You ain't ever gotta ask for my permission for owt while you're here.' My voice balances between a whisper and regular talk, hoarse through my throat. 'If you're hungry, go eat. Etcetera.'