Along came Avery

4 5 . m i r r o r m i r r o r

I wake up by tingles and lingers of fingers stroking the length of my arm. At first I'm thinking it's a fly bothering me and crawling back and forth but then, after consciousness takes over, enough for me to hear the soft sigh behind me, I realise that indeed, yesterday was not a dream.

Avery is very much behind me on my bed, and I don't know if I should now pretend like I'm sleeping so he finds every reason to get up and leave my dorm or actually turn around and scare him away with my morning breath. I think the latter is very much what's going through my mind, but I'm also thinking of the embarrassment afterwards. So I lay still for a couple of minutes, basking in the calming feeling of his fingers rubbing my arm.

I wonder what he's thinking. If he even managed to sleep much, considering he did once say he has insomnia. Come to think of it, I don't even feel his body besides me properly; his body heat I can feel and his fingers too, but the rest of him, much different to when he pulled me against him the night before, I cannot feel.

I close my eyes, sighing softly as an unreasonable smile plays along my lips. I actually enjoy the sensations of his fingers rubbing against my skin. I don't think I've ever woken up to such or even experienced this sort of comfort from another guy like this. I think the butterflies in my gut agree, and yes, I'm okay with it.

I don't think I can pinpoint exactly when I fell asleep, but I'm brought back to consciousness naturally after finding that the entire dorm sounds quiet. Too quiet. At first, I turn my head to look behind me, thinking maybe Avery will be behind me still, but even his side of the bed is empty. I stare up at the ceiling, thinking maybe he did wake me up at some point to say he was going home or to uni — maybe in the midst of my sleep I told him to kill himself or go to hell or something, I don't even know.

After yawning twice, the second for extra measure, I get up to my feet with a grown, scratching my eye as my legs slowly drag me out my dorm and to the kitchen. With narrowed eyes, I glance around the small dorm. No sign of another human being present, nothing out of the ordinary. No Avery. No Amber.

"And then?" I mutter, slowly turning back to my room and going to gather my stuff to shower.

I switch my bonnet for a shower cap, put out a pair of high jeans and a plain white crop top, throw my lingerie along them, and then grab my shower equipments before going to shower. Subconsciously, I lock the toilet door.

After showering, I wrap the tower around me and stand before the mirror, lazily and blindly digging in my toiletry bag for my deodorant. My one eye pops open when I don't feel the familiar bottle, and I dig for it some more. I come to that realisation that hey, maybe I don't actually keep everything in my toiletry bag, I groan before attempting to open the toilet door a good few times, realising I did lock it.

Feeling frustrated but humbled, I slowly unlock the door and then step out to my room, opening a few drawers before grabbing a new deodorant and spraying it on me. Then, I head back to the bathroom.

As the next step, I take my toothbrush and put some toothpaste on it before brushing my teeth, eyes looking down at the sink though really, not really focused on the white marble because I'm so much in my head.

Will I see them today? Will things be awkward? Of course things will be awkward, understandably, because now Qailah knows and maybe she told them? Maybe she spoke to them? Or maybe she didn't. What about Amber? It's obvious she went to campus, her and Avery, but I wonder what she's telling them. If she's telling them anything. Or maybe she doesn't care? So maybe they don't actually know or care.

Why do I care?

Muscle memory has to be the only reason I'm rinsing my mouth and gurgling with mouthwash even without realising, but right after spitting it out and rinsing the basin, my lazy eyes look up at the mirror.