Because acknowledging it would mean admitting what it was: not friendship. Not roommates being considerate.
Something that started with want and ended somewhere I couldn't afford to go.
It happened on a Tuesday.
I came home early from shift, heading to the kitchen for water, when the bathroom door opened.
Ava stepped out wearing only a towel.
We both froze.
Her hair was wet, dripping onto her shoulders, darker than usual against her pale skin. The towel was small. Wrapped around her from chest to mid-thigh, leaving more leg visible than I was prepared for.Much more.
My brain just stopped.
"I didn't—" she started, cheeks flooding red.
"Sorry, I should've—" The rest of the sentence went somewhere. Not out of my mouth.
She clutched the towel tighter, which only drew my attention to where her fingers pressed into the terry cloth, the curve of her collarbone, the freckle I'd never noticed on her left shoulder.
Then she darted to her room. The door clicked shut.
I stood in the hallway for a full minute. Maybe two. My heart was pounding like I'd just climbed ten flights with a hose pack. I stared at the closed door, then at the bathroom, humid with steam, smelling like her shampoo.
I went to the kitchen. Got my water. Drank it in three gulps.
It didn't help.
We didn't talk about it. Not that night, not the next day, not ever. But now there was a before and an after, and we were both pretending not to notice. The apartment felt different. The air was heavier, the way a building feels right before something catches. That held-breath moment when you know it was coming but not where.
Every accidental brush of hands in the kitchen hit me somewhere below the ribs. Every time she squeezed past me in the hallway, I lost a few seconds. Just gone. Like my brain couldn't hold anything buther.
Roommates,I told myself.Friends.
The words didn't fit anymore. Maybe they never had.
The evening ritual became my favorite part of the day.
Ava curled up on one end of the couch, my paramedic textbook open in her lap, bare feet tucked beneath her. She wore her reading glasses for studying. Wire-rimmed, slightly crooked. She kept falling asleep in them.
Watson supervised from the armchair, yellow eyes tracking between us like a disapproving professor who suspected his students of not taking the material seriously.
"Drug interaction," Ava said without looking up. "Beta blockers and calcium channel blockers."
I was at the stove, stirring marinara, trying to focus on anything except how good she looked in my old Mets t-shirt. She'd stolen it from the laundry pile last week and hadn't given it back.
I wasn't going to ask for it back.
"Additive effect," I said. "Risk of severe bradycardia and hypotension. Monitor closely, consider alternative agents."
"Good." She flipped the page, the softwhisperof paper filling the quiet. "Patient presenting with signs of stroke. Walk me through your assessment."
"FAST assessment first. Face drooping, arm weakness, speech difficulty, time to call 911." I turned down the heat and grabbed plates from the cabinet. Hers on the left, mine on the right.
"Then Cincinnati Stroke Scale: facial droop, arm drift, abnormal speech. If positive, establish IV access, monitor airway, and transport immediately. Note time of symptom onset for potential thrombolytic therapy."
"What's the window for tPA?"
