Beside

7 - electric

"Fox, this sticker has a shield. Here."

"For my collection?"

"For protection. From the dragon."

"You...know about the dragon?

"I listen, Fox. I know about the dragon."

ᖴO᙭

She's avoiding me. Has been for... five days now.

And it's fucking adorable.

It's like I'm living with a doe, one that tiptoes around the apartment, making herself invisible until the coast is clear. I swear, if it weren't for the thin walls between us, I'd think she disappeared altogether. Sometimes, I catch her voice—high-pitched, panicky, always a little frantic—mumbling into the phone late at night. Girlfriend? Probably. Maybe some secret sisterhood cult.

But hey, for all I know, she's got a boyfriend and she's just as rotten as the rest of them. Wouldn't be the first time.

I don't think too hard about that. I roll over on my mattress, hands clasped behind my head, listening.

A game. That's what this is. One I'm not even sure she knows we're playing.

Day six. Not much has changed.

I brush past her on the way to the kitchen, just to see how fast she'll scramble away from me. She jumps like I've electrocuted her as I pretend to be engrossed in the fridge contents. Her scent—fresh like lavender or some other flowery thing—lingers in the air. I smirk at the bottle of carbonated water, twisting the cap off slow, letting it hiss.

"Morning, Chris," I say.

She fumbles with her mug, the ceramic almost slipping from her fingers, and my eyes slip to her lips. She's biting down hard on the bottom one, pink and plush, and I wonder what it'd be like to—

No. I don't have to wonder.

That's worse.

"Morning," she squeaks out, and then she's gone, vanishing into her room like a rabbit diving into its hole.

"Fuck was that," Noah mumbles, rubbing sleep from his eyes at the top of the spiral stairs.

"Couldn't tell you."

By day seven, I'm convinced I'm losing my goddamn mind. Every time I walk into a room, I expect to see her. And when she's not there, I feel weird. It's starting to piss me off.

She eats the same thing every morning—Cheerios with bananas, sliced thick, not thin. How do I know? Because I keep catching her pouring the milk, humming under her breath.

She's got this habit of tugging on her earlobe when she's nervous. Found that out when she bumped into me by the bathroom door. I stood there, half-naked with a towel around my waist, and she was frozen, fingers twisting that little piece of herself until it went red. She fled before I could say a word.

What is it about her that's got me on edge? The way her hair looks when it's wet, dripping down her back, dampening her shirt after a shower. Or maybe it's how her voice drops when she's talking to Charlie and thinks no one's listening, all soft and sleepy, whispering secrets to him.

And the humming—don't even get me started. Every night, like clockwork, I hear her humming some tune I can't quite place while she gets ready for bed in the bathroom that shares a wall with me. Something old and slow. Sometimes, she sings. Soft, so fucking soft, but I hear it.