He Was Just My Best Friend... Until He Followed Me To My Bedroom

The heat had settled into Aoife's room like something physical, a weight pressing against the drawn curtains and pooling in the corners where the air refused to move. She sat cross-legged on her bed, wearing only a thin cotton vest and underwear, her history textbook open to a chapter on the Easter Rising that she had already read twice. The exams were in ten days. She would do fine. She always did fine, a fact that drained the urgency from her studying and left her instead with a restless, humid boredom.

Her phone buzzed against the mattress. She knew it was Liam before she looked. The timing was wrong for her mother, who texted only in the evenings, and wrong for the group chat, which had gone silent since Sarah's birthday drinks three days ago. It was Liam's hour, the slow stretch of afternoon when he woke from whatever late sleep his summer job unloading stock at the hardware store allowed him, emerging into consciousness with the need to tell someone something stupid.

She picked up the phone. A photo of a goose wearing sunglasses, no caption. She laughed, a sharp exhale through her nose, and felt the familiar pull in her chest, the gravitational ease of him. They had been sitting next to each other in various classrooms since they were twelve, their desks shuffled and reassigned by indifferent teachers, and yet somehow always ending up adjacent, close enough to pass notes or share a set of headphones under the pretense of listening to the same audio file for an assignment. Their communication had become a language of its own, half-finished sentences and references to conversations held years ago, memes that meant something else entirely.

She abandoned the textbook, letting it fall closed on the rumpled sheets, and typed back: this is literally you

how, he replied, almost immediately.

the smug expression. the complete lack of awareness that you're being photographed.

you're just jealous of my natural beauty

obviously

She could picture him in his kitchen, probably still in the t-shirt he'd slept in, his hair flattened on one side from the pillow. The image arrived fully formed, accompanied by no particular feeling except the comfortable certainty that she knew him, that this knowing required no effort.

come over, she typed, and then deleted it. Wrote instead: are you studying

absolutely not. dying of heat in this house, my mother has the heating on for "the damp"

it's 28 degrees

i know. she's insane. save me

you can come here if you want. pretend to study.

be there in 20

She set the phone down and looked at her room with new eyes, suddenly aware of the underwear drying on the radiator, the cup of tea gone cold on her desk, the general evidence of a life lived without spectators. It didn't matter. It was Liam. She pulled on a pair of shorts and went to open the window, letting in a breath of air that was somehow hotter than what had been trapped inside.

He arrived twenty-three minutes later, which meant he'd walked fast. She heard the knock, three quick raps that she'd know anywhere, and called down to her mother that it was Liam, that they were studying, that she'd bring down cups later. Her mother answered with a vague affirmative from somewhere deep in the house, already absorbed in whatever afternoon program she had chosen for company.

Liam stood in the doorway with his backpack slung over one shoulder, his face flushed from the walk. He'd changed into a different t-shirt, she noticed, a pale blue one that she'd seen before, that she'd probably seen him sleep in. His hair was still damp from a shower, darkened at the temples, and he smelled of the cheap shower gel he kept buying despite her telling him it made him smell like a swimming pool.

"Your house is cooler," he said, stepping past her into the hallway, close enough that his arm brushed hers. "Marginally."

"Upstairs is worse. Come on."

She led him up, aware of him behind her on the narrow stairs, aware of her own bare legs, her own thin vest. They had done this a hundred times. They had done this so many times that the awareness felt like a betrayal of something, a suspicion cast on their history.

Her room was dim, the curtains still drawn against the sun. He dropped his bag by her desk and lowered himself onto the floor, stretching out on his back with his knees bent, feet flat on the rug she'd bought at a market two summers ago. She sat beside him, not quite parallel, her hip angled toward him, and reached for her history notes though she knew she wouldn't read them.

"This is pointless," he said.

"The exams?"

"Everything. Existing in this weather."

She made a sound of agreement and let her notes fall to the floor beside her. They lay in silence for a moment, the kind of silence that had always been easy between them, filled with the white noise of the house, the distant hum of a neighbor's lawnmower. Then he shifted onto his side, propping his head on his hand, and she saw the sweat collecting in the hollow of his throat, the way his t-shirt clung to the line of his collarbone.

"There's a girl," he said. "From the school in town. Orla something. I met her at the hardware, she was buying paint for her brother."

Aoife kept her eyes on the rug, tracing the geometric pattern with her finger. Red diamonds, blue triangles, a repeating sequence she'd memorized without meaning to. "Oh?"

"She's nice. She asked if I wanted to get a drink sometime."

"Are you going to?"

"I don't know. Maybe." He was watching her, she could feel it, though she refused to lift her gaze. "What do you think?"

The question was familiar. She had answered it a hundred times, about a hundred girls, offering opinions that were honest and supportive and completely devoid of the particular feeling that was gathering now in her stomach, tight and unwelcome, a knot of something she didn't want to name.

"She sounds nice," Aoife said. "You should, if you want to."

"Yeah." He was still watching her. She kept her finger moving, red diamond, blue triangle, red diamond. "It's too hot to think about anything, really."

"Yeah."

They lay there for longer than made sense, neither of them moving to open a book or turn on music or do any of the things they had supposedly gathered to do. The heat pressed against the windows, against their skin, against the space between them that had always been certain and was now, suddenly, not certain at all.

"Ice pops," Liam said eventually, the words emerging as if he'd been thinking them for some time. "We need ice pops. The artificial ones that turn your tongue blue."

Aoife pushed herself up, grateful for the excuse to move. "The shop's still open."

They walked in the kind of heat that made the air shimmer above the road, the tarmac soft and sticky under their shoes. The estate was quiet, everyone sealed inside their houses with curtains drawn against the sun. Their footsteps echoed too loud in the silence.

"Remember when we were eleven," Liam said, "and we tried to fry an egg on the pavement outside your house?"

"You mean when you tried to fry an egg. I told you it wouldn't work."

"Scientific method. You have to test these things."

She snorted, falling into step beside him. They walked close enough that their arms occasionally bumped, the way they always had, but now she was conscious of the space between them in a way that felt new and uncomfortable.

The shop was empty except for Mrs. Hennessy behind the counter, fanning herself with a magazine. They bought four ice pops each, the cheap kind that came in plastic tubes, and walked back out into the heat.

"Let's not go straight home," Aoife said.

They took the long way, past the green where the grass had turned yellow and brittle. She could feel the cold of the ice pop through the plastic, condensation wet against her palm. Liam was quiet beside her, peeling the wrapper off his first one with careful fingers.

The silence stretched between them, different from their usual easy quiet. She kept thinking about his throat, about the way he'd looked at her when he mentioned the girl from the hardware store, about the fact that she was wearing a vest top and shorts and suddenly felt too exposed in her own skin.

Their hands brushed as they walked, a casual contact that had happened a thousand times before. But this time it felt like electricity shooting up her arm, a jolt that made her breath catch. They both pulled away too quickly, stepping apart like they'd been burned.

The silence that followed was heavy, loaded with something she couldn't name. She could hear her own heartbeat, loud in her ears, could feel the heat radiating off the pavement and off his skin. He was looking straight ahead, jaw tight, the ice pop melting forgotten in his hand.

"Your tongue's already blue," she said finally, the words coming out too loud.

He glanced at her, something unreadable in his eyes. "So's yours."

They walked the rest of the way home without speaking, the distance between them measured and deliberate, the air thick with everything they weren't saying.