“You know who I liked? Connie. That girl you were dating, who ended up moving to Romania?” Lacey says, narrowing her eyes in thought. “Why did that end?”

“It was Bulgaria,” she corrects, rolling her eyes as she shifts forward to grab a cookie. “And she had plans to leave the country without even telling me until like two weeks beforehand, so. Kind of hard to make that work.”

She can’t deny that she’s glad when the conversation switches away from her love life, though. Especially after her friends run through a few more names from her past, and it occurs to her that it’s actually a good thing Hannah isn’t interested in dating her.

Because there’s a list of women that Caroline has tried to make it work with and yet it never has. And when that would inevitably happen with Hannah, she’d be beyond devastated.

***

Caroline’s never in her life been nervous about sharing a bed before. Not with friends or with lovers.

She can’t even begin to describe the relief she’d felt an hour ago when Hannah had excused herself to go to sleep just after midnight. She’s still a little nervous about waking up with Hannah, but that’s tomorrow morning Caroline’s problem. Now, she just has to sneak into bed and curl up on her side to forget Hannah’s there.

She does just that after she brushes her teeth and washes her face, opening and closing the bedroom door and squinting her eyes in the dark. Hannah’s taken the left side of the bed and from what Caroline can make out, she’s laying on her back, facing the ceiling.

Slipping under the covers, she scoots in as gently as she can, trying not to disturb Hannah at all.

Queen size bed or not, she discovers as she pulls the blankets over herself, it’s not big enough to prevent her from feeling like she’s immediately encompassed by Hannah’s scent. A groan escapes her throat at the realization, even as she inhales.

“Everything okay?” Hannah’s whisper breaks through the dark. Her voice is a little raspy, as it gets when she’s sleepy, Caroline knows. Extremely appealing.

Squeezing her eyes closed, she whispers back, “Shit, sorry. Did I wake you up?”

“No, I… can’t sleep. Why are you whispering?” Hannah asks, her voice still hushed herself.

“Because you are!” She points out, voice still a whisper for a reason she can’t name. It inanely makes the awkwardness that’s built up in her chest dissipate as she starts laughing. She’s still just slightly tipsy, even though she cut herself off and stuck to water over an hour ago.