The Best Friend Facade | JHOCEY

ONCE

"I'll sleep on the floor," Jhoanna said quickly, hurrying towards the bed and fussing with the pillows, moving to arrange them on the floor into a makeshift bed. "I've heard it's good for you anyway, so—"

She began frantically trying to make a comfortable space for herself on the floor. It was not strange for the two of them to be sharing a bed, having had numerous sleepovers, however, with the new feelings that Jhoanna was still discovering, sharing a bed was not an option.

"Jho, stop," Stacey said. She dropped the bags on the floor and moved towards her, picking the pillows back up and throwing them back onto the bed. "It's ridiculous for you to sleep on the floor for two weeks. We can share a bed. It's fine."

Jhoanna stilled. "Are you sure?" she began to gabble. "Because I can sleep on the floor, it's fine, I don't mind, I can't believe we didn't think of this, I'm sorry—"

"Jho," Stacey said, a little louder this time. "We can sleep in the same bed. We already had before, mind you. No one's going to mind, though, your parents may think differently."

Jhoanna closed her mouth, her heart beating hard in her chest. She's not sure she can do this–she couldn't do this.

It was one thing to casually hold Stacey's hand, or have her arm around her waist, or kiss her on the cheek but the idea of being that close to her all night was doing funny things to her stomach.

"Are you sure?" she repeated, her face like a rabbit in the headlights.

Stacey rolled her eyes. "Yes. I'm sure," she said, scrabbling through one of the suitcases to find her wash bag and taking it over to the en-suite, arranging her things on the empty shelf above the sink. Then she poked her head around the door, with an afterthought. "Just don't get any genius ideas, yes?" she said, jokingly.

Jhoanna turned bright red and spluttered, her hands covering her face. "No– I wouldn't– You know– We don't—"

Stacey came back into the room and cackled. "I was just kidding, Jho. Calm down."

She dropped herself onto the bed and stretched herself out, staring up at the ceiling. Jhoanna hovered between the door and the bed, but after an internal war with herself, she joined her on the bed and stared up with her.

There was a set of stickers shaped like stars stuck up on the ceiling, all of them arranged into different shapes, peeling in the corners with age.

Stacey pointed at them. "Are those all in actual constellations?"

"Yeah," Jhoanna said, pleased to finally have her voice back after the incident earlier. "I did it all one day in the summer when it was raining and I thought it'd be cool to have the night sky on my ceiling. It took me ages to look up the exact constellations."

"Nerd." she said, playfully nudging her in the shoulder.

Jhoanna grinned, "They glow in the dark."

"I bet that impressed all the people you brought back here."

"Yeah," Jhoanna coughed. "Everyone that I brought back here. The boys I brought here. The girls. This is the room where I brought everyone."

Stacey sniggered.

"What, did you have people falling at your feet in high school?" Jhoanna muttered, folding her arms indignantly.

"Yes, actually," Stacey said, with a smug grin. "I was very popular."

"I guess with your looks, I wouldn't blame them."