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Rumi blinks at the ceiling.
Then she blinks again.
There's a leg on top of her. Zoey, she assumes, is it, since she always sleeps like a starfish, or a T-Rex.
In turn, there is an arm on top of her. Mira, who holds her firmly in her grasp, silently asleep.
She's still not sure how she got here. Sure, sleepovers were normal among friends (or so the TV said), but for that sleepover to last two months was...a long time, right?
She doesn't even remember the last time she went to her room to sleep or lie down there. Maybe she went to get a notebook like... two weeks ago? Everything else is here, in Mira's room.
Which...she's not sure when it happened, really. At one point, it was Mira, Zoey, and Rumi's clothes and things, and then it was whoever grabbed it the fastest.
Right now, she wasn't even wearing clothes she recognized as hers and that was...weird, wasn't it?
Friends share clothes. She thinks so; in reality, she has no friends other than the girls, so TV and internet are all she has to go on. At least, most of the time, it turns out that they say yes. The thing is, Rumi isn't sure if they referred to share clothes as a sometimes, or as a always.
(She likes to think they mean always)
She's also not sure whether friends kiss each other on the cheek or the forehead before bed. No matter how hard she searches, she never comes up with anything, and she'd rather stab herself with her own sword than ask to Celine.
That would be embarrassing. She doesn't want any more embarrassing conversations. She still remembers the time she told her how weird her stomach felt and how fast her heart was beating when she saw Zoey and Mira working out, and how Celine pulled her aside to give her The Talk after.
After that, they didn't speak for a week, and Rumi bravely avoided the girls for a total of 7 hours straight, her longest record to date.
(The worst 7 hours of her life, really.)
Then Zoey and Mira found her, looked at each other, picked her up, threw her on the couch, and hugged her because they thought she had a fight with Celine.
Rumi didn't have the strength or the desire to correct them. There are some things that shouldn't be said. Besides, their arms around her waist kept her distracted.
They still do it, because exposure therapy is a lie. She is NO more prepared to face that situation than she was eight years ago.
"Hm, Rumi."
Just as she is not prepared to face this situation, whatever it is...this.
The truth is, the only thing that surprises her at this point is that the girls haven't yet seen her patterns. She doesn't know what kind of miraculous luck that is, because sometimes she wakes up with her shirt pulled up or with Mira or Zoey's hand inside her shirt, touching her, and she screams inside.
Rumi still isn't sure if she's the luckiest woman in the world, or the unluckiest. It depends on the day.
(When Celine calls her, and awkwardly asks her about Mira or Zoey, she is the unluckiest.)
For example, the other day, Zoey bit her neck, and Rumi felt every sin marked in her blood multiplying by 100. Especially when Mira kept grabbing her damn waist.
Some days, she is a mix of both fortunes.
Days like these, however, where the girls sleep hugging her, are what make her feel like the luckiest woman in the world to have such good friends.
She doesn't even care whether her secret is discovered or not. She barely tries to hide, though she continues to ignore requests to go to the Bathhouse, not because of her patterns, but because she'll explode if she goes there and sees Mira and Zoey naked bodies.
That would be a shameful death to explain to Celine.
Bobby, on the other hand, is the only one who seems to understand her suffering, he always brings her bottles of water when there are dance rehearsals.
Which she's very grateful for, because whenever she sees the girls sweating, her body vibrates with energy and her mouth goes dry.
"Rumi?" Mira leaned on one elbow, lifting the hand around her waist to rub her eyes. At the loss of warmth, Rumi let out an undignified sound. Like a sad puppy. "Ugh, why are you awake at...the four of the morning?"
How quickly Mira returned her arm to where it was should be studied. Perhaps exposure therapy is a hoax, but Pavlov wasn't wrong.
"I was uh, thinking." Is Mira putting her hand under her shirt? Okay, okay. Yeah, she can handle that. "About... marks."
"Marks." Mira sounded, somehow, drained of life. Not that that lack of passion showed in her hand, which was caressing her...patterns? "You mean these?"
Wait.
"You know!?"
Mira looked at her, clearly resisting the urge to call her an idiot. And yes, her stupid hand continued to caress her skin, raising the hairs there.
Oh, now she was touching her abs, perfect.
Today Rumi was gonna die.
"Rumi" It was unfair how good her name sounded when her voice was thick with sleep. "Please wake Zoey up for a second."
Rumi didn't think about it, because friends don't think before doing favors for their other friends, yes.
"Uuuuugh." Zoey covered her mouth with her hand, yawning. "Whassup?"
"Rumi thought we didn't know about her patterns."
Now it was Zoey who looked like she couldn't believe her.
"Really?" She leaned on her elbow, just like Mira. "Rumi, love, about a month ago you woke up with your shirt pulled up to your neck, we saw more than just your patterns."
Something that, of course, good friends do too.
"You guys looked like you were sleeping!"
"We weren't, we just didn't want to embarrass you."
"You guys are terrible friends." Rumi wasn't pouting, who said that?
"Yeah, 'friends'." For some reason, Zoey highlighted the word. Her hand caressed her cheek, squeezing it. "Now go to sleep, it's too early to be alive."
Kissing the corner of her mouth, Zoey fell limp onto the bed, already snoring and drooling again.
"Hm, Zo's right, time to sleep, princess." Mira stroked her back once, and lay back down. "Good night."
"Good night."
Yes, very good best friends.
Perhaps Rumi will have to look up the definition of that phrase again later. Just like she did the previous fifty times.