Chapter 8: The Morning After
The alarm was a physical assault—a sharp, digital shriek that tore through the fragile quiet of the room. Leonid jerked violently, a swimmer breaking a surface he didn’t remember diving under. His world resolved into two realities: the pounding in his temples from last night’s whiskey, and the warm, unmistakable weight plastered across his chest.
Jennie was sprawled on top of him. Not beside. Her long black hair was a tangled curtain over his sternum. One of her legs was hooked possessively over his thighs, her knee nudging his groin. Her face was buried against the hollow of his throat, her breath a steady, damp rhythm on his skin. He could feel every dip and curve of her through the thin cotton of his shirt and her dress, which had ridden up to the middle of her thighs.
“Fuck,” he groaned, his voice shredded with sleep.
He flailed an arm, slapping blindly at the nightstand. A textbook thudded to the floor. An empty bottle rattled. His fingers finally connected with his phone, swiping the alarm into silence. The sudden quiet was louder than the noise had been.
In the stillness, he became hyper-aware. Of her scent—cherry blossom and something inherently, uniquely Jennie—infusing his own. Of the steady beat of her heart against his ribs. Of his own body’s traitorous, instinctive response, hardening where her thigh pressed.
He tried to shift. “Kim. Off. You’re crushing my lungs.”
She made a small, discontented sound, a kittenish murmur against his neck. She didn’t open her eyes. Instead, she shifted her hips, a slow, drowsy grind that was probably involuntary but felt devastatingly deliberate. The friction was a bolt of lightning straight to his spine.
“Jennie,” he said, sharper now, a command laced with a panic he didn’t want to examine.
Her eyes opened. He felt the flutter of her lashes against his collarbone. She lifted her head just enough to look at him, her face soft with sleep, her feline eyes unfocused and dark. In the grey morning light seeping around the blinds, she looked young. She looked like the girl from the Polaroid.
“Leonid,” she breathed, his name a prayer from her sleep-swollen lips.
Then it hit him.
A sudden, irresistible tickle clawed at his sinuses. His eyes widened. He tried to turn his head, to wrench away from her. “Oh, shi—”
He sneezed. A massive, convulsive expulsion of air and sound.
The force of it made his entire body buck. Hers, coiled around him, went with him. The tangle of limbs and sheets offered no purchase. In a chaotic whirl of fabric and yelps, they pitched sideways off the narrow bed.
The floor met them with a solid, unforgiving thump. Leonid landed first, on his back, the air punching out of him. Jennie landed half on top of him, half beside him, her elbow digging into his diaphragm.
For a long moment, there was only stunned silence, broken by his ragged gasp for breath.
“What,” he wheezed, staring at the water-stained ceiling tiles, “the actual fuck.”
Jennie was already pushing herself up. She knelt beside him, her hair cascading around a face now sharp with alertness. She looked from him to the bed, then back to him, her head tilting. “The coefficient of friction between the cotton sheets and your bare skin was insufficient to counteract the sudden lateral force generated by your sternutation.”
Leonid blinked. He pushed himself up on his elbows, a dull ache blossoming in his lower back. “My what?”
“Sneezing. You have powerful abdominal contractions. It was like being launched from a trebuchet.”
He just stared at her. She was sitting on his floor, delivering a physics lecture, her dress twisted and her knees scraped from the rough carpet. The absurdity of it all—the tender vulnerability of last night, the searing memory of his hand on her cheek, now culminating in this graceless, painful heap on the floor—hit him like a wave.
A laugh bubbled up in his chest, harsh and unexpected. It hurt his ribs. It turned into a cough.
“A trebuchet,” he repeated, voice strained. “Of course.”
He got to his feet, extending a hand down to her. She looked at it, then placed her own in his with a formality that was, again, utterly her. Her hand was small, her fingers cool. He pulled her up.
They stood there, in the wreckage of the morning, holding hands for a second too long. The ghost of last night’s confession hung between them, fragile and exposed in the harsh morning light. He saw her gaze flicker to his mouth, then away, a rare flicker of something like shyness.
He dropped her hand, turning toward the small, grimy window. “You should go. I have practice.”
“You have practice at ten. It is seven-fifteen. Your cafeteria serves acceptable scrambled eggs until eight.” Her tone was matter-of-fact. She was already straightening her dress, smoothing her hair with her fingers. “Also, you are still holding my hand.”
He looked down. He wasn’t. But the phantom feeling of her skin against his remained. He shoved his hands into the pockets of his sleep pants.
“Fine. Eggs.” He needed caffeine. He needed space. He needed to not be in this room where her scent was now woven into the very particles of the air. “But you’re buying. For the trebuchet injuries.”
A small, real smile touched her lips. It was a rare sight, unguarded and sweet. “A fair reparations. I also believe you have a slight rug burn on your lower back. I saw it when you stood. Would you like me to—“
“No,” he said, too quickly. The image of her touching his bare back, her cool fingers on the stinging skin, sent a fresh jolt through him. “It’s fine. Get your shoes.”
As she slipped on her black boots, he watched her from the corner of his eye. The efficient, precise movements. The way she tucked a stray strand of hair behind her ear. The girl who built forts and stepped in front of bees was still in there, locked in the prison of this beautiful, terrifying young woman.
He pulled a cleanish hoodie over his head. “And no weird shit at breakfast. No analyzing the viscosity of the orange juice. Just… be normal. Or whatever passes for normal with you.”
She stood by the door, waiting. “Normal is a statistical construct, Leonid. It doesn’t exist. But I will refrain from discussing fluid dynamics.”
“Great. Promise.” He grabbed his keys, ushering her out into the hallway. The door clicked shut behind them, locking away the intimate chaos of his room. The public hallway, with its fluorescent lights and smell of industrial cleaner, felt like a reprieve.
And like a betrayal.
They walked down the hall, not touching. The silence was different now, charged with the unsaid. He could feel her presence beside him like a magnetic field. He shoved the feeling down, burying it under the familiar weight of sarcasm.
“So,” he said, as they hit the stairwell. “If I sneeze again, should I issue a warning? For public safety?”
She considered this, her boots echoing on the concrete steps. “A three-second countdown would be optimal. It would allow for bracing and potential evacuation.”
He laughed again, the sound bouncing off the cinderblock walls. It felt easier out here. Safer. He could pretend last night was just the whiskey. That the touch was nothing. That the fall was just a funny accident.
But as he held the heavy exit door open for her, his eyes inadvertently dropped to the scrape on her bare knee. A faint blush of red against her pale skin. A mark from his room, from his chaos. A familiar, protective pang—the same one he’d felt seeing blood on her childhood knees—twisted in his gut, sharp and disorienting.
She walked through the door into the bright, ordinary morning, unaware of the turmoil in his head. He followed, the ghost of her weight still pressing on his chest.