‘Hey, do you want to go to the We the Living concert tomorrow?’

I turned around to see that she was sitting on her bed, wrapping the loose strings of lights up her arms and legs.

‘Jesus, what’re you doing? You’re going to burn yourself!’ Nicole smiled her slow, big, brilliant smile. ‘Oh come on, Tara. Lighten up.’

I started laughing. ‘You’re batshit crazy, you know that, right?’ She laughed too. ‘C’mere.’

I went over and slid into bed with her.

Beds are personal; they are spaces for one. Sometimes for a plus-one. Generally, in those freshman dorm rooms with gathering groups and restricted seating, the unspoken norm was to sit gingerly on the edge of someone’s bed when alternative options ran out. Legs swung against soft comforters, denim brushed duvets in pinks and blues and reds. But I sat deep on Nicole’s bed, all the way along the breadth. Rested my back against the wall, against the pillows she slept on. Kicked my shoes off, rubbed damp socks on a bright green spread.

As she sometimes did, Nicole scooted closer and wrapped herself into me. She sidled on to my lap, settled her tiny body along the ungainly bumps and contours of mine. I felt a warm back down my front, arms and legs beaded with little glows of light twined around mine. There is a fairy on my jeans. Fairies on brown skin and black fleece.

She is so, so beautiful. Buttery, cool expanse of skin. Soap and something floral, hair trailing honey on my neck, down my chest. And for a minute, I don’t quite know what to do with my hands. I don’t quite know how to hide the quickening of my pulse. Can she hear my heart? Will she move away?

One of the tiny bulbs on the string of lights burned a round, reddening spot on my arm. I picked it away from my skin, held my breath. She stayed. I breathed.

‘I love you, Tara.’

‘Would you ever make out with me?’

She laughed a mildly surprised aren’t-you-straight? ‘Maybe, I don’t know. Would you?’

Honey moved left and right on my neck.

Stung, hurt, petulant, and reticent to show it, I asked her why. I tried to sound amused, settled for casual.

She said, ‘Because I love you.’

‘So?’

‘You’re the only relationship of value I’ve had outside of my mom—and you know how that works out—that’s not sexual in nature. And it means a lot to me that I can have that.’

I didn’t say anything.

‘You’re the best friend I’ve ever had, Tara.’

It felt like a request, so I nodded and started asking about plans to go to the We the Living concert.

Sometimes it hit me—where I was, what I was doing, who I was with.