“Mmm-hmm.” I nod, and he turns it off. It takes my eyes a minute to adjust, but I can still make out his silhouette as he climbs into bed.
I stare up at the place where the moonlight slants in through the gap in the curtains, spreads across the ceiling. The only sound is the ocean rolling in, the wind sweeping through the treetops. Years ago, before the house had central air, I could sometimes hear my dad’s snoring or the soft din of the soundscapes Sasha listens to so she can fall asleep. She’d shush us from her window if Ren and I were talking or laughing too loudly. But now, everyone on this side of the house sleeps with their windows closed.
“Ren?” I say after a while. It feels wrong to be out here together without speaking, like the ghosts of our former selves would be disappointed. That, and he did save me earlier, with Stevie on the beach.I want him to know I noticed, to have his good nature recognized.
“Yeah?”
“Thank you,” I say. “For covering for me earlier. About the sheets.”
“Anytime.”
“Did anyone ask you about it afterward?” I ask, worried he caught some flak for coming up early without telling anyone.
Ren is quiet, mulling his answer. “My mom asked me if I needed to get out of the city because I was disappointed Amanda wouldn’t be here this weekend.”
I hesitate, still not sure if this is a conversation this version of us should be having. “Are you? Disappointed?”
I can hear Ren’s head shift against his pillow. “I don’t thinkdisappointedis the right word.”
I know it’s not my place to ask what the right word is, not anymore. I watch the shadows on the ceiling, picking over the day for other topics of conversation so he doesn’t feel pressured to answer just to fill the silence. “So you really don’t talk in your sleep anymore? Like, at all?” I ask.
“As far as I know,” Ren says. “Why?”
“I don’t know.” Something about the dark, about Ren not being able to see my face when I say it, emboldens me. “I always found it sort of comforting.”
“Did you,” Ren says.
I lean up on my elbows, looking in the direction of his bed. “I did. It was nice to hear when I couldn’t sleep anyway.”
Ren’s low chuckle is muffled, like he’s pressed his hands to his face. “That makes it so much worse,” he says. “Not only could you not sleep, but my babbling kept you up longer.”
“No,” I say. “I was already awake, and it was like… I don’t know. It’s stupid.”
Now it’s Ren who’s rolling onto one side, pushing up onto an elbow and twisting himself toward me.“I bet it’s not stupid. Tell me.”
I’m grateful, again, for the dark. I never told him this even when we were friends. “Okay, so I was already awake, and I would wish you were too, so we could talk. But then, it was kind of like you were talking to me anyway.”
“About nonsense, of course.”
“Of course.” I smile. “But it was mostly just you kind of muttering stuff. And it helped me fall asleep when I couldn’t.” When he doesn’t respond, I worry that I’ve said too much, offered too much of myself up. That whatever had thawed between us earlier today really was just for show. I consider lying down again, ready to overthink my oversharing until the sun comes up. But somehow moving right now seems worse.
The moonlight coming in just crosses his face, so I can see the moment he smiles back at me. “I can just talk until you fall asleep, if it would help,” he says.
I laugh lightly, suppress a yawn like his suggestion already has me tired. “I think we’re doing well,” I say.
“Well?” he asks.
“You know,” I say, without thinking much of it. “Making everyone believe we still like each other.”
Ren stills, the smile slipping off his face, a statue cast in shades of gray.
“Do you think we hate each other?” he asks softly.
His question is a punch in the stomach, knocking the wind out of me.Hateis never a word I could attribute to Ren.
“No,” I say, quickly, wishing I could take back what I said, explain it better, tell him I was joking, that it felt enough like old times for a minute that it seemed like something we were in on together.Isn’t it funny we have to make people believe we’re friends? Can you imagine?
“We just don’t like each other,” he says.
