Despite the dark, I can see her silhouette roll over to face me. "Yes. You are."
I shake my head. "I'm dirty blond."
"Yeah." I imagine her eyes bugging out at me the way they always do when she uses that tone. "Dirty.Blond."
"It's not the same thing," I argue, propping myself up and only making my bed split further apart.
"It's literally in the name, Jovi," she counters. "Dirty blond is blond."
"No one would look at me and think, oh hey, that dude's a blond." It's the most asinine argument in the history of arguments. Neither of us is unaware of this. But we need it. So we keep it going. "When I think blond, I think sun-bleached blond surfer dude."
"Yes," she concurs, "sun-bleached is another type of blond. As is strawberry, or golden, or ash. And yes, even dirty. All shades of the same thing. Blond."
I move to lift up onto my hip and face her. I know it's a mistake the second I shift my weight, because it presses the two cushions so far apart, my hip lands on the hardwood floors with a soft thud. "Shit." I mutter, abandoning the hair discussion to sit up and reassemble my bed.
"Did you just land on the floor?" she asks, sitting up on her air mattress as well.
"The cushions aren't staying together as efficiently as I'd hoped," I admit, pushing them back into place. We put a fitted sheet around them thinking it would lend some structure. Not enough, as it turns out.
"Are you going to be able to sleep like that?"
I shrug, getting back into place to lie down. Carefully. "It'll be fine." As long as I don't move. I tug the blanket back into place. That's all it takes for the cushions to shift again. I freeze as soon as I feel them slide apart, hoping she won't notice.
"They're coming apart again, aren't they."Damn it.
"Don't worry about it," I tell her, exhaling and letting my body relax as the mattress splits in two beneath me. "I've slept in worse places."
Liz doesn't lie back down. The longer she stays silent, the more I swear I can feel the heat of her glare on me. "That's not going to work for me."
"What?" I pop upright, instantly regretting it when the movement makes the lower cushion shoot sideways, bumping into her air mattress. "Why not?'
"Really?" She sounds offended. I would know. I've offended her more than anyone in the last fourteen years. "You think you get to be all, 'no, Liz, I can't acceptyour suffering',"she pauses when I snort a laugh at her terrible impression of me, "but I'm going to go ahead and roll over and go to sleep knowing you’re fucking up your back on the hard floor with your head and feet propped up on two pillows? When I'm the whole reason you're not sleeping on a real bed to begin with?"
I drag out my exhale since it's too dark for her to see my expression. "Fine. What do you propose I do instead? Go back to the sofa?"
"No." The response is fast.
Her counteroffer takes long enough for me to gather she hadn't thought of one yet when she shot down my suggestion.
But she wants me to stay.
"We can share the air mattress."
Apparently, a whole hell of a lot.
"Are you serious?"
She starts to scoot over, the rubber mattress making squelching noises over the floor as she moves. "It's big enough for two," she mumbles. "And Lena would be pissed if I didn't share."
Right. Lena.
I swallow, suddenly nervous as I crawl over and slip under the comforter beside her. It's an air mattress, so it dips under my weight, drawing her toward me despite both of us trying not to touch.
Neither of us says anything else. We just lie here. Still and stiff until exhaustion takes pity on us and we fall asleep.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
LIZ
