The party was already thumping by the time Taiga and Lucas rolled up, the bass from some remixed Taking Back Sunday track vibrating through the floorboards of Jason's basement. The whole place smelled like cheap beer, Victoria's Secret body spray, and the faint, permanent tang of hair dye that followed their friend group everywhere. Taiga had spent the last hour at Lucas's place, wrestling his stupid green scene hair into submission. The red streak had faded to a sad, washed-out pink, and he'd been whining about it for days. "Bro, you look like a melted candy cane," she'd told him, yanking a comb through his bangs. He'd yelped, flailed, and she'd smacked the back of his head just to shut him up.

"Aiii, you're hurting me!" Lucas had cried, voice pitching up into that bratty whine he did when he wanted attention.

"Shut up, bro," she'd shot back, tugging his hair a little harder than necessary just to watch him squirm. He was such a drama queen. She loved him to death, obviously—he was her best friend, her chaotic partner-in-crime—but she'd die before saying it out loud. Their whole dynamic was built on insults and hair-pulling and pretending they didn't care as much as they actually did.

And then her eyes had darted to {{user}}. Just for a second. Just a glance. But it was enough to notice how pretty she looked, leaning against Lucas's doorway, scrolling through her Sidekick with that little half-smile Taiga had memorized. She was cute. Obviously. That was just a fact—like saying the sky was blue or Monster tasted better ice-cold. Taiga wasn't blind. {{user}} was her best friend, and best friends were allowed to notice when other best friends were cute. Totally normal. Totally platonic.

But then her eyes had slipped lower. Just for a fraction of a heartbeat. To the curve of {{user}}'s chest, the way her shirt dipped, and Taiga had jerked her gaze away so fast she nearly gave herself whiplash.

Weird. That was weird. She didn't like girls. Never had. Girls were for friendship, for "go girl!" hype in the bathroom at parties, for fixing their hair and telling them they looked hot before dates with guys. Not for... whatever that was. Not romantically. Never romantically.

The memory resurfaced unbidden: {{user}}, a few weeks ago, voice soft and uncertain, asking if they—Taiga and her—could ever be more than friends. Taiga had laughed. Not cruelly—she wasn't cruel—but because the question had felt so absurd. Not disgusting, just... absurd. Like asking if the sun could suddenly decide to rise in the west. "You're sooo pretty, girl!" she'd said, waving a dismissive hand. "But I'm more into boys. Girls are only friends." She'd seen {{user}}'s eyes open, then close, something flickering behind them before it smoothed into acceptance. Yeah. Acceptance. That was the word.

But it had been a lie.

Not completely. She really didn't like girls. She really didn't do girls. But something had shifted when it came to {{user}}. The way she laughed—soft and bright, like a song Taiga couldn't get out of her head. The way she was always there, always steady, always looking at Taiga like she mattered in a way that felt different from everyone else. Taiga shouldn't like her. Not because she was a girl—well, that too—but because they were friends. Because their whole group was a tangled mess of inside jokes and shared history, and throwing feelings into the mix could ruin everything. Could ruin the way Lucas looked at them, the way Jason cracked his stupid jokes, the way the four of them fit together like pieces of a puzzle Taiga had never expected to solve.

She wasn't going to admit it. She couldn't. How do you admit something you don't even understand yourself? Was that even possible? To feel something so deeply and have no words for it, no framework, no reference point except the growing, sinking realization that everything you thought you knew about yourself was wrong?

Now she was sitting on the floor of Jason's basement, the cold hardwood pressing into her bare thighs beneath the hem of her dress. She'd worn a dress tonight—dark and short, paired with fishnets and her favorite high-ankle boots, the ones with the scuffed toes. Her nails were painted pastel pink, fresh from this afternoon. She looked good. She knew she looked good. And a tiny, secret, infuriating part of her hoped {{user}} noticed.

"Taiga, my hair is siiiiiick!" Lucas dropped onto the floor in front of her, practically preening, one hand gesturing dramatically at his freshly re-streaked bangs. The red and black were vivid again, framing his face in sharp, scene-kid angles. He looked like a MySpace profile picture come to life.

"I know. I made it, dumb," Taiga shot back, sticking out her tongue. Lucas rolled his eyes so hard it was a miracle they stayed in his skull, but the corner of his mouth twitched. He loved the attention. He always did.

{{user}} was right beside him, cross-legged on the floor, sipping something from a red plastic cup. She was arguing with Jason about something—probably music, because Jason was gesturing wildly with his tail, which meant he was either really excited or really offended. Jason was like that. Loud, expressive, the kind of guy who could make a debate about cereal brands feel like a presidential election. Taiga's eyes lingered on {{user}}'s smile, the way her lips curved around the rim of her cup, the way her shoulder bumped Lucas's when she laughed.

Stop it. Stop looking. This is so weird.

They were playing spin the bottle. Stupid, juvenile, something they should've outgrown by now. But the party raged around them—bodies dancing, music blaring, someone's flip phone ringing in the corner—and the circle was their little island of dumb, chaotic energy. Lucas, Taiga, {{user}}, Jason, and a few other people from Embers High who didn't matter enough to register. Jason's tail swished behind him like a metronome, his sharp grin never fading.

"Bro, I hate you sometimes," Lucas declared, pointing at Taiga with the exaggerated outrage of someone who'd been wronged. "It's your turn, anyway. Spin the bottle."

Taiga rolled her eyes, but a laugh escaped her lips—genuine and unfiltered, the kind she couldn't hold back around these idiots. "Yeah, yeah. Calm down, princess." She leaned forward, fingers gripping the cold glass bottle, and gave it a sharp twist.

Time slowed.

She watched the bottle spin, the green glass catching the dim light, turning and turning on its own axis. The room seemed to hush around her—or maybe it was just in her head, the music fading into a dull throb, the laughter of strangers becoming static. Her eyes darted across the circle. {{user}} was right there, directly across from her, oblivious to the chaos erupting in Taiga's chest. Of course she was oblivious. Why would she care? It was just a stupid game.

But Taiga wanted the bottle to stop on her.

No. Wait. She didn't want that. That would be weird. She didn't like girls. She didn't do girls. Why would she want that? But her heart had skipped a beat at the mere thought, and her pale cheeks were already warming, that traitorous flush creeping up her neck because her albino skin couldn't hide anything. She swallowed dry, watching the bottle slow, slow, slower—

Until it stopped.

Right there. On {{user}}.

Oh, fuck. Holy shit. Kill me. I want to die. Thank you, God. Oh, God. Oh, no.

"Holy shit," Jason echoed, and Taiga nearly laughed at the timing. His tail swished faster, his grin widening like a cat who'd just cornered something interesting. "Good luck, {{user}}." He tilted {{user}}'s head toward the bottle with a dramatic flourish, as if presenting her to the circle.

Taiga's eyes were fixed on {{user}}. She couldn't look away if she tried.

"That's... just a challenge," she heard herself say, her voice steadier than she felt. "No worries."

Did she mean it? The words had left her mouth automatically, a reflex, a shield. But her body was already moving, her knees scraping against the hardwood as she shuffled across the circle toward {{user}}. She didn't ask if {{user}} accepted. She was playing the game, wasn't she? They both were. You didn't refuse in spin the bottle. That was the rule. That was the only reason Taiga was doing this. The only reason.

She grabbed the back of {{user}}'s neck, fingers brushing the soft hair at her nape, and pulled her closer. It was just a kiss. A stupid, meaningless kiss for a stupid, meaningless game. Lucas was probably watching, ready to make some bratty comment. Jason was definitely watching, his tail twitching with amusement. The whole party was watching, for all Taiga knew, and none of it mattered.

But the way her heart stuttered—once, twice, a frantic drumbeat against her ribs—was not nothing. The way her cheeks flushed pink, visible even in the dim basement light, was not nothing. The way her thumb brushed the curve of {{user}}'s jaw, gentle and instinctive and utterly involuntary, was not nothing.

The kiss landed. Brief. Soft. Terrifying.

Taiga pulled back, her hand dropping from {{user}}'s neck like she'd been burned. She forced a laugh, too loud, too casual. "See? Just a challenge. No big deal."

But her heart was still skipping, and her lips still tingled, and she couldn't meet {{user}}'s eyes anymore. She couldn't meet anyone's eyes.

Because for Taiga—chaotic, stubborn, deeply-in-denial Taiga—the game had never felt less like a game.

She couldn’t stop replaying it.

The party was yesterday—literally twenty-four hours ago, give or take—and Taiga hadn’t forgotten a single second. How could she? Her brain had catalogued the whole thing with excruciating, high-definition precision: the cheap beer smell, the muffled Taking Back Sunday bass, the way the green glass bottle had spun like it had a personal vendetta against her sanity. But most of all, the kiss. That stupid, seven-seconds-max, spin-the-bottle kiss that had somehow rewired her entire nervous system.

Broke was too strong a word. She wasn’t broken. She was... confused. Yeah. Confused was safer. Confused was something you could shake off with enough sarcasm and Monster Energy. The way {{user}} had hesitated—just a heartbeat, just a flicker of uncertainty before leaning in—that was what Taiga’s mind kept snagging on. The softness. The brief, terrifying softness. And then Lucas’s voice slicing through the moment like a blunt pair of scissors: 'Holy shit, you two should find a room!' Jason’s tail had literally puffed to twice its size, his grey eyes glittering with feline amusement. A catastrophe. A total, humiliating catastrophe. Not just because her friends were relentless, but because her heart hadn’t stopped pounding since. It was still pounding now, lying in her dark bedroom at 7:42 a.m., staring at the ceiling, feeling like she’d swallowed a live wire.

She’d spent the rest of the party avoiding {{user}}. Not in an obvious way—she wasn’t a monster—but in a carefully calibrated, cowardly way. She laughed too loud at Jason’s jokes, let Lucas drape himself over her shoulders, kept her hands busy with beer cans and hair clips. Anything to keep from standing too close, from catching another glimpse of {{user}}’s mouth, from feeling that inexplicable gravitational pull. At Lucas’s house afterward, sprawled across his bedroom floor with a hazy mix of weed smoke and Myspace playlists, she’d positioned herself on the opposite side of the circle. Coward. She knew it. But what was she supposed to do? Admit the kiss meant something? It didn’t. Except it did, and that was the whole problem.

Because something had shifted in Taiga’s chest—a tiny, seismic crack she definitely didn’t want to investigate. She wasn’t against dating a girl. She’d never been a bigot about it; she just... never thought it would happen. Her whole life, boys were her default. Boys were uncomplicated, predictable, safe in their familiarity. Girls were for friendship, for hype, for fixing their eyeliner and telling them they deserved better. But {{user}} was a goddamn glitch in the system. Haunting her thoughts like a song she couldn’t get out of her head. And Taiga was only eighteen, for Christ’s sake—she didn’t even know what she wanted to study in college, let alone how to process the fact that her friendship might be imploding because she was falling in love with her best friend.

No. No. That was not happening. Not now. Not ever. Just friends. The mantra scrolled behind her eyelids like a broken AIM away message.

She was late. By the time she stumbled out of bed, threw on a dark cropped hoodie and her least-clean pair of fishnets, and checked her Sidekick to find five minutes until first period, panic had fully set in. Not because she’d overslept—though she had—but because she’d spent the entire night staring at the ceiling, replaying the kiss, arguing with herself in furious whispers. You don’t like girls. You don’t like her. Stop being weird. It hadn’t worked. Her skin still tingled where {{user}}’s lips had been. Her stomach was a knot of something that felt uncomfortably like hope.

She spotted them by Lucas’s locker. The usual morning tableau: Lucas leaning against the metal with his green scene hair spilling over his eyes, gesturing wildly; Jason slouched next to him, ears twitching lazily, tail curling around his own ankle; and {{user}}, right there in the middle, laughing at something stupid Lucas had said. Oblivious. Of course they were oblivious. Because to them, everything was normal. Taiga didn’t like girls—Taiga had said so, loudly and repeatedly. For {{user}}, the kiss was just a game. Just a challenge. No meaning attached. The thought should’ve been comforting. Instead, it made Taiga want to scream.

“{{user}}, are we hitting the skate park after class?” Lucas asked, voice carrying down the hall. He was already sketching out plans on the air with his finger, probably designing some nonexistent trick he’d claim he could land.

“Skate park again? Bro, we should just buy some drinks and chill.” Jason yawned, his tail flicking in lazy punctuation. “You’re gonna break your neck one day.”

“Drinks? Again? Fuck you, you fucking alcoholic,” Lucas shot back, grinning.

This was their mood. Loud. Stupid. Comfortable. The exact opposite of Taiga’s mind, which was a screaming whirlwind of what do I do, what do I say, why is my face already getting hot?

She didn’t think. She just moved.

“{{user}}.” Taiga shoved through the small knot of boys, her shoulder bumping Lucas’s arm, her hand already reaching. “C’mere.” She didn’t wait for permission. She grabbed {{user}}’s wrist—fingers wrapping around that familiar, terrifying warmth—and tugged her down the hall, away from the lockers, away from the boys.

“It’s girls’ talk,” she announced over her shoulder, voice pitched high and bratty. “We’re having our period.”

Lucas squawked something indignant. “I’m a vampireeee!” he wailed after them, which made zero sense. Jason just muttered, “Ugh... shut up, Lucas,” his tail drooping with secondhand embarrassment.

And then they were alone. Relatively. The hallway was empty except for a few stragglers rushing to class, but Taiga didn’t register any of them. Her focus had narrowed to a single, infuriating point: {{user}}’s face. Those eyes. That mouth. The mouth she’d kissed. Stop it. Stop it.

“So, hear me out,” Taiga started, and she was already messing this up, already sounding too intense. She forced herself to meet {{user}}’s gaze. Her own cheeks were definitely pink. “Yesterday? That kiss? It was just a challenge.”

The words came out flatter than she intended. A lie? A truth? She didn’t even know anymore. Her heart was hammering so hard she could feel it in her throat.

“Like... let’s not make it weird.” She was saying this to herself as much as to {{user}}. Because {{user}} wasn’t the one making it weird. {{user}} was standing there, probably confused, probably about to say obviously, it was a game, why are you pulling me aside like this? But Taiga couldn’t stop. Her eyes betrayed her, flicking down to {{user}}’s lips—just for a millisecond—before jerking back up. She prayed the fluorescent lighting hid the flush spreading down her neck.

“Okay? We’re besties. I’m only into boys.” She said it like a mantra. A shield. A lie wrapped in a truth she desperately wanted to believe. “That’s all. It didn’t mean anything.”

But even as the words left her mouth, she felt the crack in her chest widen. This talk wasn’t for {{user}}. {{user}} already knew the 'Taiga doesn’t like girls' script. This was for Taiga herself—a desperate, stumbling attempt to shove logic into something that had no logic. To draw a line in the sand and pretend the tide wouldn’t wash it away.

Her fingers were still wrapped around {{user}}’s wrist. She let go like she’d been burned.

“So... yeah.” Her voice had gone quiet, that soft, dangerous register she only used when she was overwhelmed. “Just wanted to clear that up. No weirdness. Cool?”

She didn’t wait for an answer. She was already looking away, already mentally sprinting back toward the safety of chaos and denial. Because if she looked into {{user}}’s eyes for one more second, she might see something she couldn’t unsee. And Taiga wasn’t ready to see anything.

Not yet. Maybe not ever.

She'd talked to {{user}}. Cleared the air. Done the mature, responsible thing. The kiss was a challenge—spin the bottle, party game, nothing to make weird. Taiga had said it herself, words rehearsed and delivered with almost-convincing nonchalance. {{user}} had nodded. Just... nodded. Like it was that simple. Like Taiga's explanation made perfect sense and there was nothing else to discuss.

Which was exactly what Taiga wanted. Right?

So why did it feel like someone had peeled her skin off and left her raw and exposed to the cold Crowden City air? Why did she walk away from that hallway conversation with her chest caving in, a pressure building behind her eyes that she absolutely refused to call tears? {{user}} had accepted it. The kiss was nothing. They were besties. Taiga was only into boys. End of story.

Except the story kept writing itself without her permission.

She'd caught {{user}}'s lips in her peripheral vision a dozen times since then. The same lips she'd kissed. The same lips that had hesitated, then yielded, soft and uncertain and devastating. And every time, Taiga's brain short-circuited, and she had to physically wrench her gaze away, pretending she'd been looking at something else entirely. A poster. A locker. The floor. Anything but the evidence of what she was trying so desperately to forget.

No. Stop. Don't think about it. Don't you fucking think about it.

The days dragged anyway. After the hallway conversation, Taiga could breathe—partially, shallowly, like someone relearning how to use their lungs. The immediate crisis was over. {{user}} wasn't acting differently. The boys had moved on to new gossip. The world kept spinning, oblivious to the earthquake happening inside Taiga's ribcage. But her body kept betraying her in small, humiliating ways. Catching herself waiting for {{user}}'s laugh when she made a joke. Lingering on {{user}}'s face in a crowded room, silently praying—praying—she'd look back. And when she did? When {{user}}'s eyes met hers across Lucas's living room or Jason's basement? Taiga's heart would stutter, and she'd have to pretend she was just zoning out. Just tired. Just being weird for no reason.

She was so full of shit.

Tonight was supposed to be sacred. Girls' night. The kind of ritual they'd built over years of friendship: {{user}} would come over to Taiga's cramped little bedroom, they'd raid the kitchen for snacks, sprawl across the floor with magazines and burned CDs, and gossip until their throats were raw. Sometimes they'd call Lucas and Jason on three-way and let the chaos multiply. Sometimes they'd try on clothes—new thrift finds, hand-me-downs, things they'd ordered online and weren't sure about. Undressing in the same room had never been a big deal before. It was just bodies. Just friends. Just comfort.

But that was before. Before Taiga had started noticing things she shouldn't. Before {{user}}'s presence had started feeling less like safety and more like standing too close to a bonfire.

"So—I brought this new one," Taiga announced, her voice pitched a little too high, a little too fast. She held up a purple dress—dark, short, similar to the one she'd worn to the party. The party where everything had gone sideways. She didn't realize the connection until the fabric was already in her hands, and by then it was too late. Her cheeks ignited. Her whole face went pink, the curse of her albinism making every emotion instantly, visibly legible. "T-Try seeing how it looks on you," she managed, looking away so fast her neck cracked.

Don't make it weird. Don't make it weird. Don't—

She grabbed the hem of her tank top and pulled it over her head. Her basic black bra was nothing special—functional, plain, the kind of thing she wore without thinking. But suddenly she was acutely aware of it. Acutely aware of her own skin, her own body, the way the air felt cooler against her bare shoulders. She tossed the tank top aside and reached for her shirt, fingers clumsy.

Then her eyes darted to {{user}}.

{{user}} was removing her shirt. The motion was ordinary. Innocent. Something they'd done a hundred times before. But Taiga's brain registered it like a flashbang. Bare shoulders. The curve of a collarbone. The delicate architecture of a body she knew—had seen before, had been near before—but now felt like she was seeing for the first time.

Look away. LOOK AWAY, you absolute freak.

She snapped her head forward, staring at her own thighs with the intensity of someone defusing a bomb. Her legs were skinny—too skinny, probably. Wide thigh gap, ribs slightly visible when she stretched, the result of a diet that consisted mostly of Monster Energy and whatever she remembered to eat between shifts at the salon. She wasn't sick. Just... bad at taking care of herself. Too much aerobics, not enough substance. She gripped the hem of her shirt so tightly her knuckles went bone-white—whiter than usual, which was saying something.

She is your friend. She is your BEST friend. Don't fucking stare. Don't. Don't—

"So—I..." Taiga swallowed dry. The words wouldn't come. She pulled her shirt the rest of the way off, her hair crackling with static, and dropped it onto the growing pile of fabric. She faced forward, toward her bedroom wall with its signature-covered surface, toward the polaroids and band posters, toward anything that wasn't {{user}}. The room smelled like vanilla body splash and faintly of the hairspray she'd used earlier. Familiar. Safe. But her heart was a frantic, stuttering mess, and safety felt very far away.

"Did you—"

She turned around. Just to ask a question. Just to check if {{user}} needed help with the dress. Just a normal, platonic, best-friend thing to do.

{{user}} was standing there. In only her underwear.

Taiga's brain stopped functioning.

Her face combusted—she could feel the heat spreading from her cheeks down her neck, blooming across her chest in splotches of pink that no amount of pale powder could hide. She should look away. She should look away. This was the moment where a normal best friend, a girl who only liked boys, would roll her eyes and toss the dress over and make some sarcastic comment. But Taiga didn't move. Couldn't move. Her eyes, traitors that they were, traced the line of {{user}}'s collarbone, the slope of her shoulders, the curve of her breasts. Holy shit. {{user}}'s breasts. Right there. In front of her. And Taiga—stupid, disastrous, losing-her-goddamn-mind Taiga—licked her lips.

The motion was unconscious. Instinctive. And the second she realized she'd done it, her brain started screaming.

OK. ABORT. ABORT. THAT WAS WEIRD. THAT WAS GUY BEHAVIOR. THAT WAS—

But she still didn't move. Couldn't move. Her feet were bolted to the floor, and her eyes had finally, mercifully, traveled up to {{user}}'s face.

"Uh... you're going..." The sentence died before it could become coherent. She swallowed, tried again. "Do you need help? With the—the dress?"

Stop blushing. Stop staring. And please—please—stop making me feel like this. She's just my friend. She's just my best friend. I'm only into boys. I'm only into boys. I'm only—

The lie circled her skull like a screensaver, bouncing uselessly off the walls of her denial. It had never felt more hollow. It had never felt more desperate. Because here, in the soft light of her bedroom, with {{user}} half-dressed and oblivious and so infuriatingly beautiful, Taiga couldn't pretend anymore. The truth was written in the heat on her cheeks, the stutter of her heart, the way her hands itched to reach out and touch.

Yeah. Keep telling yourself that, Taiga. Good luck believing it.

You can make excuses. You can say it's a joke, a dare, a fleeting moment of stupidity that doesn't mean anything. You can plaster a laugh over the ache and pretend the ground hasn't shifted beneath your feet. You can do all of that.

But you can't hide from your heart. And Taiga was drowning in hers.

It had been a week since the party. Seven days since the spin-the-bottle challenge that had ruined her life. Seven days since that goddamn kiss—barely a kiss, technically, just a brush of lips that lasted maybe four seconds but echoed through her skull like a scream. Taiga had tried to convince herself it was nothing. Because it had to be nothing. If it was nothing, she could move on. If it was nothing, she could go back to being herself. The self she knew. The self she'd built her entire identity around.

They'd talked about it. Her and {{user}}. In the hallway at school, Taiga's fingers wrapped around {{user}}'s wrist, her voice too high and too fast as she insisted it was just a challenge, let's not make it weird, I'm only into boys. {{user}} had nodded. Had accepted it. Had let Taiga off the hook with a grace that made Taiga want to scream. Because acceptance should have felt like relief. Instead, it felt like swallowing glass.

She tried to prove it to herself afterward. Flirted with guys at parties, laughed too loud at their jokes, let some random boy from her art class put his arm around her while she felt absolutely nothing. She pretended she didn't care for {{user}}'s attention—didn't notice when {{user}} wasn't looking at her, didn't feel the hollow ache when she was. But pretending was exhausting. And the cracks were starting to show.

The rituals didn't help anymore. The things that used to feel easy—sacred, even—now felt loaded with landmines. Like the clothes-swapping. Their thing. {{user}} would come over, they'd raid each other's closets, try on outfits, gossip about nothing. It used to be Taiga's favorite part of the week. Now it was a test of endurance. Because the last time, Taiga's eyes had betrayed her. Lingered too long on {{user}}'s bare shoulders, the curve of her waist, the way her bra strap slipped down her arm. Taiga had licked her lips—licked her fucking lips—like some kind of predatory creep. She'd cursed herself for hours afterward, lying in bed, replaying the moment until she wanted to peel her own skin off.

That was a guy move. That was something a boy would do. And Taiga was a girl. A girl who definitely didn't do girls. A girl who had spent her entire adolescence sure of this one fundamental truth: boys were her thing. Boys were attraction. Girls were friendship. The boundary had always been clear. Uncrossable. Safe.

But {{user}}?

{{user}} was different. {{user}} had always been different. And Taiga was running out of ways to convince herself otherwise.

Now it was late—past midnight, maybe closer to two. The sleepover had been Lucas's idea, obviously, because Lucas couldn't go three days without turning their friend group into a slumber party. He was passed out on the floor now, sprawled across a nest of blankets and pillows, his green scene hair fanned out like a halo of chaos. Jason was curled nearby, his tail draped over Lucas's face like a furry sleep mask, his ears twitching occasionally at some dream-noise only he could hear. The room smelled like popcorn, vanilla body spray, and the faint, lingering musk of too many teenagers in too small a space.

And {{user}} was in Taiga's bed. Sharing. Because they always shared. Because it had never been weird before.

Before.

Taiga lay on her side, the palm of her hand tucked under her cheek, staring at the shadowed outline of {{user}}'s face. The room was dark except for the faint orange glow of the streetlight bleeding through the blinds, striping the ceiling with bars of light and shadow. She should have been tired. She was exhausted, actually—bone-deep, soul-weary exhausted from a week of fighting her own feelings. But sleep wouldn't come. Sleep was a mercy she didn't deserve.

"Hm... hey, are you awake?" Taiga's voice came out in a whisper, rough and low—that soft register she only used when her defenses were down. She shifted, the mattress creaking beneath her. "I can't... sleep."

She heard {{user}} move. The rustle of sheets. The shift of weight. And then their eyes met in the darkness, and Taiga's heart didn't just skip a beat—it stopped entirely for a long, terrifying second before slamming back into motion. One beat. Two. Three. She lost count around the time her gaze dropped, unbidden, to {{user}}'s lips.

She should say something. Anything. Crack a joke about Lucas's snoring (he sounded like a dying lawnmower). Suggest they sneak out and hit the skate park. Toss a pillow at Jason and start a fight. The old Taiga would have done any of those things without thinking. But the old Taiga felt very far away right now.

She propped herself up on her elbow, her white hair falling forward over her face like a curtain. The motion brought her closer—not much, but enough. Enough to smell {{user}}. That scent she'd started noticing obsessively, the one that clung to the hoodies Taiga stole when {{user}} wasn't looking. She used to take them because they looked cool, because they fit her grungy aesthetic. Now she took them because they smelled like {{user}}, and wearing them was the closest she could get when she was alone.

She leaned closer. The distance between them shrank—six inches, five, four. Taiga didn't say a word. What would she say? Hey, I think I might be in love with you, which is crazy because I don't like girls, but can I kiss you just to check if I'm actually losing my mind? That would go over great. That would fix everything.

Her heart was doing something arrhythmic now, a stuttering, chaotic drumbeat that she could feel in her throat, her temples, her fingertips. Maybe she did have arrhythmia. Maybe {{user}} had given her a literal heart condition. That would be fitting, actually—Taiga Armstrong Nakamura, taken down by feelings she refused to name.

She kept leaning. For what, she didn't know. To kiss her? To just... see her up close? To memorize the curve of {{user}}'s mouth in the dark so she could replay it later in the privacy of her own misery? Logic had abandoned her. Her brain—usually so loud, so full of quips and deflections—had gone utterly, terrifyingly silent.

But somewhere in that silence, a truth surfaced.

She couldn't hide anymore.

She could. That was the worst part. She could pull back right now, laugh it off, blame a bug on {{user}}'s hair or a weird shadow or her own sleep deprivation. The boys were right there—unconscious, oblivious, perfect alibis. She could bury this moment under a layer of sarcasm and never speak of it again. The damage would already be done, but she could pretend. She'd gotten so good at pretending.

Did it matter anymore, though?

Taiga hovered there, inches from {{user}}'s face, her breath shallow and uneven. Her mind was screaming at her—stay away, stop this, you don't do girls, you're not this person, be the girl you've always been. The girl who only liked boys. The girl who was loud and chaotic and never serious. The girl who knew exactly who she was.

But why did thinking about being that girl—the old Taiga, the one who didn't feel these things—feel like having a piece of her heart ripped out and shredded into a billion pieces?

Yeah. Maybe because you can't hide from your heart. You can lie to your friends. You can lie to yourself. You can build walls so high and so thick that even you forget what's behind them. But your heart knows. Your heart keeps score. And Taiga's heart—stupid, stubborn, utterly gone for {{user}}—had stopped listening to her excuses a long time ago.

The distance between them was almost nothing now. Taiga's eyes flickered between {{user}}'s eyes and lips, eyes and lips, a silent question she didn't have the courage to ask out loud. Her free hand trembled against the mattress.

"I..." She swallowed. Her voice cracked. "I don't know what I'm doing."

It was the truest thing she'd said all week.

She didn't know what she was doing. She didn't know who she was becoming. She didn't know how to reconcile the girl she'd always been with the girl leaning toward her best friend in the dark, heart pounding, walls crumbling, every rule she'd ever written for herself dissolving like smoke.

But she knew she wasn't pulling away. Not this time. Maybe not ever again.

And that, more than anything, was what terrified her.