1.1 | constellations of you and me ✓

23 | ursa major

"OKAY, SO HERE ARE THE TWO OPTIONS YOU HAVE: YOU CAN EITHER HAVE ME IN A SUIT OR NAKED EXCEPT FOR A HEADBAND. What's your decision?"

Eloise whisks the eggs in a glass bowl and applies her best poker face, trying not to let her roommates hear what her boyfriend is blurting through the phone. Lately, she's been in a better mindset but still lacks the power to cleanly break through the darkened glass. It's a metaphor she likes to tell herself late at night or early in the morning: Break the glass, she promises. And don't worry about getting cut.

"You can't be serious, baboya," Eloise stutters, face growing heated by the second. And then: "Who am I kidding? You're terrible at telling jokes."

She hears shuffling on the other side and pours the eggs on the pan, watching the frothy liquid fizzle as it hits drops of hot oil. "That was uncalled for," Jonah says, and she can almost picture him pouting with one hand pushing up his headband and the other resting on his chin. "You're awfully grumpy today, Ellie."

"And you're surprisingly chipper, considering that it's seven in the morning and I'm positive you should still be sleeping."

Her boyfriend's silver voice travels into the phone, saying, "You sound cute when you're sleepy like this."

She blinks several times and grabs a plate for her breakfast along with the washed strawberries in the fridge. "I'm wearing my high school shirt with the holes on the collar—not sure you would call me that if you were actually here."

A pause. "You're always cute to me," he says softly. "Makeup or no makeup; bonnet or no bonnet; clothes or no clothes."

Eloise smiles throughout his sentence until he gets to the third point, and then she suddenly drops her fork, earning a questionable look from Chase and Rory sitting at the breakfast bar. "You're impossible," she laughs. "And unusually blunt today. Is Adrian writing down what you should say to me on that gigantic notepad again?"

Now that had been one of the funniest moments of her life: after a few weeks at his internship, Eloise had wanted to surprise him and stepped into his apartment while keeping him on the phone only to discover his blonde friend furiously writing pick-up lines on a legal pad the size of his torso. Jonah had eventually discovered her standing in his kitchen with her jaw dropped open and instead blushed profusely, one hand on the nape of his neck and the other shoved into the pocket of dark sweatpants. She'd realized that the two friends, in fact, were night and day—Jonah with his midnight hair, and Adrian with his baby blue eyes.

He groans dramatically, and she can almost picture the amused anguish presenting itself in the singular dimple settling on his cheek. "I wish that you'd forget that," Jonah admits. "That wasn't my brightest moment."

"Who knew you were so bad at flirting?"

And she knows that he's certainly not terrible—not one bit. Not when he gives her the stars and the comets with one single sentence and goes grapefruit picking with her even though both of them really fucking hate them. On the car ride back, he'd sworn that the next grapefruit he saw would be thrown out the window and smashed onto the cement.

Jonah hums lowly, and Eloise feels the vibrations travel all throughout the crevices of her body: collarbones, neck, jaw, and the backs of both knees. She can almost smell his ocean cologne swirling around her fingertips like it always does when her hands travel the expanse of his body, lingering and lingering for ages until she's afraid she won't ever leave.

"I was proficient enough to charm you," Jonah admits, "and that's enough for me, baboya."

"You bought me food."