Tracing Ceiling Constellations

It was late September, and the fan creaked above us like it had grown tired of spinning. The mattress on the floor still smelled faintly of her sunscreen, her sweat, and that strange lavender talc she’d once called “a cheat code for not showering.” The bulb flickered once, then died with a soft pop. I didn’t bother fixing it. She liked the dark.

We weren't supposed to meet tonight. Her parents thought she was studying at Anchal’s place. Mine didn’t ask anymore. I think they had made peace with the fact that I didn’t bring friends home—just one girl, again and again, with the kind of familiarity that unsettles older people.

She lay beside me now, not asleep, not awake. Just breathing. Eyes closed, lashes twitching. The curve of her bare shoulder caught the streetlight bleeding through the torn curtain.

“Are you thinking?” she asked.

I didn’t answer.

She turned on her side, rested her chin on my chest. “Thinking ruins everything. You know that, right?”

I could feel her fingers tracing circles on my ribs, lazy, distracted. Her touch didn’t carry urgency anymore—it carried memory. Like she’d done it before and would do it again. I wasn’t sure if that was comforting or cruel.

“You remember that day on the bridge?” she whispered, lips brushing my collarbone.

“Which one?”

“The one where I said—‘let’s never lie to each other’—and you said—‘then let’s never talk too much.’”

I smiled faintly. “You hated that answer.”

“I still do,” she said, but her voice had laughter inside it. Not joy, but something gentler. Familiarity. We were only nineteen, but we’d already outgrown a hundred versions of ourselves.

There was this thing she did—whenever it got too real, too close to something that might stay, she pulled away like smoke. Not dramatically. Just... softly. With grace.

Tonight felt like one of those nights.

I looked at her, really looked, and it hit me how much of her I had memorized. The two tiny scars on her knee. The way she blinked twice fast when pretending to listen. Her obsession with tracing constellations on the ceiling, even when there weren’t any stars.

“I want to sleep,” she said.

“You’re tired?”

“No,” she replied, brushing her lips against my neck, “I just want to see if you’ll visit me there.”

“In your dreams?”

She didn’t say yes. She didn’t have to.

Later, after the talking stopped and her breaths turned soft, I stayed awake. Watching. Counting. One, two, three...

Her hand was still on my stomach, fingers curled like she was holding onto something. Maybe a promise. Maybe nothing.

I whispered something then, something she didn’t hear but maybe would find in sleep.

“If we meet there, don’t walk away this time.”

In the morning, she left without waking me.

There was no note. No message. Just her body heat fading from the sheet and the quiet echo of her voice from the night before, layered beneath my skin.

She had once said, “We’re not in love. We’re just... rehearsing.”

But dreams don't rehearse. They replay. And in mine, she’s always there.

Resting her head on my chest, eyes closed. Saying things without saying them.

Waiting for me to fall asleep. So she can meet me.

Where the sky isn’t blue. Where nothing makes sense. Where nothing needs to.