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01.
The first time that Inej Ghafa thinks about kissing Nina Zenik is in the middle of their freshman orientation.
She’s been at college for less than twelve hours, which means it’s way too soon for a sexuality crisis of any kind, but she doesn’t know what else to do with all the feelings that swim up in her chest when Jesper tells her there’s someone she has to meet and she ends up face-to-face with someone so pretty it makes it hard for her to think straight.
Nina is easily the most beautiful person she’s ever seen—all soft curves and piercing green eyes and the kind of smile that Inej knows is nothing but trouble. Inej has never wanted something as badly as she wants to reach up and brush her fingertips over the freckles that dance across Nina’s cheeks in this moment, which is something she can say with confidence she has never thought about before. It’s bad for her.
So bad that she doesn’t even realize Jesper is talking to her until it’s too late and she’s only caught the tail end of the conversation.
“And she’s bi, too! Isn’t that great?”
Inej opens her mouth and then promptly closes it without a word. She’s sure that she looks terribly attractive right now—about as elegant as a fish out of water—but the very last thing she needed to learn about this very beautiful human being right now is that she enjoys kissing girls. “That’s great!”
Jesper opens his mouth like he has more to say about it, but Inej will never know what it is because at the exact same moment he catches a glimpse of his roommate from across the room. “Both of you stay right here, I’ll be right back,” He instructs before he begins weaving his way through the crowd. “Kaz!”
And then it’s just the two of them.
Inej definitely means to say something very cool and effortless, something that will make Nina laugh or maybe even make her want to be her friend. Instead, what comes out is “So, you’re bisexual?” which is quite possibly the worst thing that she could have said.
Nina gives her a quietly amused kind of look and Inej’s face burns. “That I am. Are you as well, then?”
“Oh. Well. Uh.” The truth is, she doesn’t know. The Inej of twelve hours ago would have said she was straight and meant it, but the version of Inej who has laid eyes on Nina Zenik is a changed woman. “I don’t—”
Nina raises her hands in surrender. It’s possible that a look of disappointment flashes across her eyes, but it’s also possible that she’s making it all up inside her head. If it ever was there, it’s gone by the time that a sly smile works its way onto Nina’s pink lips. “If you’re ever looking to figure it out, give me a call.”
And that. That right there is the first time she ever thinks about kissing Nina. She knows the other girl is only teasing but that doesn’t stop her gaze from dropping to Nina’s mouth before she can stop it.
If Nina notices, she never says anything about it.
Inej carries on with the rest of her night, tragically unkissed.
02.
The second time that Inej Ghafa thinks about kissing Nina Zenik is Halloween.
Inej’s plans for the night involved curling up in bed with popcorn and a scary movie or two with her roommate—a clever, feisty girl from Ravka named Alina—but that changes when Alina comes into their dorm after her Friday morning psych lecture with an apologetic look on her face. “About tonight…”
“Are you going to cancel on me?” Inej asks, folding her arms over her chest. “Is it because of Zoya?”
“It might be because of Zoya,” Alina admits, and the dreamy look she gets on her face every time she thinks about her crush is so cute that Inej can’t even be mad at her. “She invited me to a Halloween party.”
Inej raises an eyebrow. “She asked you?”
Alina’s cheeks flush. “Okay. Her roommate Genya invited me, but she wouldn’t have invited me if Zoya didn’t want me there, right? I mean, would you invite someone that I didn’t like to a party?”
“Definitely not,” Inej concedes. “In that case, I guess I’ll forgive you for making me watch Halloween all by myself. I’m not sure Jamie Lee Curtis will say the same.”
“Ooooorrrr…” Alina begins, fluttering her eyelashes in the way that she does whenever she’s trying to get Inej to do something for her.
Which, in this case, is almost certainly going to Zoya’s roommate’s Halloween party with her. “No. Absolutely not.”
Alina pouts. “I haven’t even asked you yet!”
“You don’t have to! I’m not going to the party with you.”
“But Nina will be there!”
That stops Inej in her tracks. She knew it was a mistake to talk about Nina with her roommate—in fact she held all of the silly, confusing feelings that she had for Nina close to her chest for an entire month after they first met—but then one night Alina had come home from class and pulled two bottles of pink moscato from her backpack and one thing led to another. Alina had felt like such a safe person to tell everything to because she frequently talked loudly and at length about the girls she wanted to kiss, so Inej assumed she was somewhat of an expert in the field.
“I might still like boys, too, though,” Inej had said, sprawled out on the carpet and staring intently at a crack in the ceiling. “I don’t know yet.”
“That’s fine,” Alina had assured her in response, reaching a hand across the gap between them to tangle her fingers with Inej’s. “Kiss whoever the fuck you want, that’s what I always say.”
The fact that Alina is choosing to bring Nina back up for the first time since Inej confessed her secret crush right now feels a little bit like bribery.
“Oh?” Inej does her best to play it cool, like this news does absolutely nothing whatsoever to her nerves. “Genya and Zoya know Nina?”
Alina doesn’t look like she’s buying it for a second. “They went to school together in Ravka.”
“That’s nice,” Inej says, pretending to be very interested in brushing her hair for the sixth time today.
“I bet if Nina knew you didn’t have plans she would invite you.” Alina slides into her line of sight, her pitiful pouty face still firmly in place.
“I
do
have plans,” Inej corrects, but Alina’s sad puppy face is very quickly wearing her down.
“Inej, I’m literally begging you,” Alina pleads, and when Inej raises an eyebrow at her she gives a dramatic sigh and then lowers herself to her knees. “Okay, now I’m literally begging you. Please, please, please talk to Nina and come to this party. Think about how iconic it would be of us to show up together to this party and then leave with the hottest girls there.”
Inej’s face feels ten degrees warmer. “I’ll text her but I will not be leaving with anyone except you, to be clear.”
Alina wiggles her eyebrows suggestively. “Whatever you say, Inej!”
Predictably, Nina jumps on the chance to invite her to her friend’s party, even when Inej gives her a chance to back out by texting ‘only if you’re sure, i don’t want to impose.’
‘omg noooooo you’re no imposition AT ALL,’ Nina replies almost immediately. ‘you’ll actually be saving me from having to reminisce on my days at the little palace all night so really i’m in your debt’
And, if that wasn’t enough to sell Inej on Nina’s eagerness, when Inej informs her that she doesn’t have a costume, Nina is at their door in less than ten minutes, ready to raid her closet and help her come up with something to wear at the last minute.
They’re able to pull together what Nina assures her is a very convincing pirate, especially after she talks Inej into letting her do her makeup. Behind her, Alina does a series of increasingly graphic hand gestures that make Inej wish the earth would open up and swallow her whole.
“I like your costume, Little Red,” Alina says with a wink and Inej feels jealousy coil in the pit of her stomach when it draws a lovely laugh from Nina’s pretty lips.
The costume in question is a slinky black dress, fishnet tights, and a red hooded cloak. Inej is trying very hard not to focus on Nina’s costume out of fear that it might actually kill her.
“Thanks,” Nina grins as she returns her attention to blending out Inej’s eyeshadow. She said she was going for a smoky, sultry look and though Inej isn’t one hundred percent certain what that means, she trusts Nina. “Please don’t boo me but I got this guy to dress up as my Big, Bad Wolf.”
Inej intentionally ignores Alina’s attempts at catching her gaze, not wanting to see the look of pity that is undoubtedly resting there. “A guy?”
“I know. Gross, right?” Nina laments with an overly dramatic sigh. “It’s more of a joke than anything, because he’s Fjerdan.”
“What’s his name?” Inej asks, proud of how neutral her voice sounds when it feels like her heart is being crushed into a little ball in her chest.
“Matthias,” Nina says. “But we’re not—Well, we’re not officially anything. It’s purely physical.”
Nina’s words do about as much to reassure her as they do to quiet the thrum of jealousy buzzing through her. Which, like, she knows that she’s being unreasonable. Nina doesn’t belong to her. Nina will never belong to her. They’re just friends.
But if they’re just friends, then why does the thought of anyone else touching her make Inej feel sick?
Nina spends most of the night attached to Inej’s hip, despite wearing a matching costume with Matthias, but not all of it. There are thirty sickening minutes when Nina disappears from her side while Inej is busy talking to Jesper, and she spends all one thousand eight hundred seconds scanning the crowd looking for where she ran off to. By the time that she and Matthias stumble out of a coat closet, Inej is on her fifth drink of the night and feeling reckless.
“Hey! I have something to tell you!” She says, definitely too loudly, the moment that she spots Nina straightening out her black slip dress as she walks toward her.
Nina arches a perfect eyebrow at her. “Yeah? What’s that?”
“I have decided that I want to kiss—” Her words die on her tongue when her eyes land on a fresh bruise blooming on the side of Nina’s neck, a reminder that Nina is not interested in her. Instead of telling Nina that she wants to kiss her, like she had planned on doing about thirty seconds ago, she weakly finishes with “Girls.”
Despite the fact that her change in tone is obvious to herself, Nina’s eyes light up and she smiles so wide, it hurts Inej’s cheeks just to look at her. “Really? Inej! That’s amazing!” Nina squeals, throwing her arms around Inej’s neck and yanking her in for a hug that makes Inej glad she chose not to act on her feelings. Her friendship with Nina is way too important for that. “I’m so proud of you. Thank you for telling me.”
Despite what she told Alina earlier that night, she does end up going home with Nina that night, but not in the way that her roommate had suggested she would. Instead, Nina helps her to wipe off all her makeup and loans her a shirt to sleep in and Inej climbs into bed, a safe distance away from Nina.
“I’ve never had a friend like you,” She admits, only half convinced that she’s actually saying the words in real life and not in a dream.
“Me neither,” Nina whispers, and Inej forces her eyes open to steal one last look at her. “Goodnight Inej.”
“Goodnight Nina.”
03.
The third time Inej Ghafa thinks about kissing Nina Zenik is in the middle of the night, curled up on opposite sides of the bed while Inej tries not to dwell on how angelic Nina looks, bathed in the moonlight like this.
It’s the week of final exams for the semester, but with winter break looming around the corner and Nina insisting that they meet up to study multiple nights a week it’s been growing increasingly harder to focus on her studies.
In Nina’s defense, they do have a handful of classes together. It’s both a blessing and a curse—she and Nina are quickly becoming great friends, but her feelings for Nina are only getting more and more out of control as they grow closer. Having to bury those feelings deep within herself to ensure that their friendship survives is agony, but she knows it’s worth it every time Nina slides into the seat next to her, batting her eyelashes at Inej as she asks to borrow a pen because she forgot one—again.
Nina is a good study partner, too. She’s whip-smart and not afraid to show it, Inej finds herself quietly amazed by her each time that she goes head-to-head with someone and refuses to back down. She feels like she could be content to just follow Nina around and watch her exist, suspended in her gravity.
The thing about Nina is that she has this uncanny ability to make you feel like you’re at the center of the universe when spending any amount of time with her makes it blatantly apparent that Nina is the one everyone is orbiting around. Despite the fact that every single person in every single room she enters is hanging on her every word, when Nina is talking to you she makes you feel like there’s nothing more important than what you’re about to say to her. It’s almost worse when they’re alone together.
When it’s just the two of them, there’s nowhere else to look, nothing else to dwell on. She’s powerless to all the things that Nina makes her feel. Ever since the fateful almost-confession on Halloween, Inej has been trying to keep the time she spends alone with Nina to a minimum out of pure self-preservation.
Unfortunately, on this particular night, all of the study rooms in the library were full so they had no choice but to retire to Nina’s dorm and study there. Between her upcoming exams and the way that the distance between her and Nina seems to shrink with every minute they spend studying, Inej doesn’t realize how late it’s gotten until her eyes start feeling heavy and she’s stifling yawns.
“Saints!” Nina exclaims when she casts a look down at her phone and sees it’s past midnight. “It’s late!”
Disappointment wells up in Inej’s chest. “I should probably get going.”
Nina grabs her wrist. “If you think I’m letting you walk across campus alone at this hour, you’re crazy. You can stay here.”
“It’s not that far,” Inej begins to protest, but Nina silences her by pressing a finger to her lips.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” She says and Inej can barely do anything but think about the fact that Nina’s finger is still touching her mouth. “We’ve shared a bed before.”
Once. On Halloween. Inej swallows hard. “Okay. I’ll stay here.”
And so they end up laying in Nina’s bed, and even though Inej hasn’t had a drop to drink, she somehow feels drunk on something even stronger than the punch from the Halloween party. She knows that it’s late and that she should really be getting to sleep—especially since she has an exam that she needs to take in less than nine hours—but she’s powerless when it comes to Nina.
Instead of sleeping, they end up talking for another hour, trading secrets back and forth in the dark. Inej can’t remember the last time that someone asked her so many questions, much less cared about the answers to them the way that Nina does. She ends up telling Nina all about her childhood, about her life growing up on the highwire, about the freedom and the loneliness that sometimes came with it. All the things that she’s never said to anyone else before come tumbling right out of her like running water, and all because Nina asked. It’s so easy with her.
At least, it’s easy up until the moment that Nina says “You never told me when you figured out that you liked girls.”
And, like, it would definitely cause irreparable damage to their friendship if she were to say that meeting Nina at orientation night was her gay awakening, or that seeing Nina with someone else was what made her jealous enough to come out in the first place, but Nina is her best friend and she feels unbearably guilty even thinking about lying to her. Instead, she goes with a kind of half-truth. “I don’t know… I think just being here, in Ketterdam, and meeting so many new people opened my eyes.”
Nina reaches across the bed and tucks a strand of Inej’s silky, black hair behind her ear. Inej’s breath catches in her throat. “Any people in particular?” She asks, glancing up at Inej from beneath her long, dark lashes.
If she wanted to, she could change the trajectory of their entire friendship right now. All it would take is one word, three letters. You. She could throw caution to the wind for once in her life and say what she feels, she could put it all out there and get the sweetest possible reward in return.
Or, she could put it all out there and lose the closest friend she has here. She could end up alone again, and she’s just found the place where she feels like she belongs.
She shakes her head and pretends to yawn. “I have an exam in the morning. I should probably get some sleep.”
Nina nods, her expression unreadable to Inej. “Probably.”
She doesn’t do as well on the exam as she wanted to, but if it came down to choosing between a night with Nina and acing a test, she’d pick Nina every time.
04.
The fourth time that Inej Ghafa thinks about kissing Nina Zenik is on New Year’s Eve.
Their next semester doesn’t start for another five days, but they all agree to come back to campus early so that they can celebrate together. Zoya and Genya are hosting again and Alina insists that Inej helps her bleach her hair white-blonde in the bathroom the morning of the party, though Inej suspects it’s just an excuse to corner her and talk to her about Nina.
Things with Nina have been… confusing, to say the least. It’s like being apart over winter break and communicating solely through texting has made them both bolder, braver, and she isn’t sure how it’ll translate when they’re face-to-face again.
To tell the truth, she’s been dying to get a second opinion on everything, so when Alina asks her how things are going on the Nina front, she doesn’t stop herself from going “We might kiss tonight.”
“Inej!” Alina shrieks, jerking her head and almost causing Inej to spill bleach on their bathroom rug.
“Stay still or we’re going to have a bleach-stained bathroom for the rest of the year,” Inej warns, her face already heating up.
“Oh, forget about the bleach!” Alina says, which Inej is pretty sure is a very bad idea because bleach is a time-sensitive, highly damaging chemical, but she digresses. “You’re going to kiss Nina tonight? What?! Tell me everything!”
“Okay, I’ll tell you everything if you let me finish your hair,” Inej says. “You’ll be really upset if you have to go to the New Year’s Eve party with half of your hair burned off.”
Alina waves a hand dismissively. “Nah, I would just shave it.”
Inej giggles. “You would rock a buzzcut, for sure.”
“I would rock anything,” Alina says. “But enough about me. Spill!”
So she does. She tells Alina all about the way that she and Nina have texted basically non-stop since leaving school for winter break. She wakes up every morning to a text from Nina that reads ‘good morning sunshine!!!! ☀️🥰🫶’ and falls asleep to one that says ‘sweet dreams, talk to you in the morning 🌙😘💫’ like clockwork and they still make her heart flutter every time. Nina is still as sweet as ever, but trying to decipher between what’s friendly flirting and what’s real flirting is one of the most challenging things she’s ever done.
When she says this to Alina, she throws her head back and laughs and even though she knows that Alina isn’t laughing at her, she still feels a little self-conscious. “What?”
“Nothing,” Alina is quick to assure her. “It’s just that you’re really one of us now. Not being able to tell if a girl is flirting with you or not when she’s definitely flirting with you is a formative queer experience.”
Inej blushes. “I don’t know that I would say she’s definitely flirting with me.”
Alina gives her a look. “Babe. She sends you good morning and goodnight texts every day.”
“So? She’s my friend!”
“So am I, but you don’t see me having to be the first thing you think about when you wake up and the last thing that you think about before you fall asleep,” Alina replies, and, well. Inej can’t really argue with that. “Not to mention, she’s literally offering to kiss you.”
And, like, yeah. She did offer to kiss her, but Inej still can’t entirely tell if she’s joking or not. It’s very possible that Nina only offered her services tonight because Inej had made the mistake of saying that she’s never kissed anyone at midnight on New Year’s Eve before and Nina decided that had to be rectified as soon as humanly possible.
“You’ve also offered to kiss me,” Inej points out in a desperate bid to not have to confront the fact that maybe she and Nina are more than just friends, putting their entire relationship at risk.
“Yeah, but that was in a platonic, scientific kind of way when you were still questioning your attraction to women,” Alina argues. “Now we know you’re gay as hell and we know you want to kiss Nina. So what’s the problem?”
The problem is that the minute that things go from friendship to more with Nina, everything gets so much more messy and complicated. The risk of losing her increases exponentially. There’s at least a hundred different scenarios that Inej can create in her mind that end up with her losing Nina forever, and almost every single one of them starts with a kiss.
Of course, the moment that she arrives at the New Year’s Eve party and Nina comes running over to hug her, she forgets all a hundred of the reasons why kissing Nina is a terrible idea. It’s at least partially because Nina’s wearing a red, velvet dress that hugs each of her curves in a way that makes Inej’s mouth feel dry, but it’s also because of the way she feels like she’s home the minute that she sinks into Nina’s arms.
“I missed you,” She says before she can stop herself, her words muffled against Nina’s shoulder.
“I missed you most,” Nina replies, squeezing her one last time before she pulls away with a glimmer in her eyes. “Let’s go get drinks!”
For the rest of the night, all Inej can think about is her conversation with Alina. Her roommate’s words play on an endless loop in her mind, over and over until Inej feels like she’s on the edge of freaking out in a big way.
The aforementioned freak-out, unfortunately, comes to a head at the worst possible time—sixty seconds before midnight.
It’s in that moment that she realizes how close she is to kissing Nina and, consequently, how close she is to ruining everything between them forever. What if she kisses Nina and it doesn’t mean as much to her as it does to Inej? What if she kisses Nina and she hates it and their friendship falls apart? What if she kisses Nina and it’s everything but the new added stressors to their relationship cause them to crumble?
When the countdown gets to forty, Nina slides an arm around her waist and Inej feels herself jerk away from the touch before she can stop herself.
“What’s wrong?” Nina asks, voice low and concerned.
Inej shakes her head. She feels like she can’t breathe. “I just—”
When she takes a step back, Nina follows, a frown forming on her perfect face. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine,” Inej says. The countdown reaches thirty. Her stomach twists. “I think I just need some air.”
This time, when she pulls away, Nina doesn’t follow. Instead, she stays frozen in place, watching as Inej slips out of reach and out the back door of Zoya and Genya’s apartment. In the chaos, nobody else notices. The countdown only grows louder as they get closer and closer to midnight.
Ten.
Inej dares to look back into the apartment, dares to look back at Nina.
Nine.
Nina isn’t looking back.
Eight.
Matthias has taken Inej’s place beside her.
Seven.
Inej’s stomach twists, her eyes burn.
Six.
Nina glances her way.
Five.
She could go back in. She could get the girl.
Four.
She turns away, instead, wraps her arms around her torso to shield herself from the bitterly cold air.
Three.
It’s for the best. This is for the best.
Two.
It wouldn’t have worked out for her and Nina, anyway.
One.
Nina kisses Matthias as the clock turns to midnight. Inej rings in the new year alone.
05.
The fifth time that Inej Ghafa thinks about kissing Nina Zenik is in the spring.
The good morning and goodnight texts stop after New Year’s Eve. Inej does her best to tell herself that it’s because they’re back at school now. They still see each other every day. They’re still as close as ever. For the most part, things are the same.
The biggest difference is that after the New Year’s Eve party, the dynamic of Nina and Matthias’s relationship shifted. She doesn’t like to talk about it much—she brushes it off whenever Inej tries to ask her about it—but she can tell it’s different. They’re not in a relationship, exactly, but they’re something more than they were last semester.
If this is how things would’ve ended up for her and Nina after New Year’s Eve, she’s glad that she didn’t kiss her. She can’t imagine the kind of agony that Matthias is in, constantly being dragged back and forth in their on-again, off-again fling.
They don’t really talk about him often, but Inej can always tell where they stand based on Nina’s current plans for spring break. When things are on with Matthias, Nina gushes about a whole group trip—the two of them plus Matthias, Jesper, Jesper’s roommate Kaz, Zoya and Alina (who did start dating after the New Year’s Eve party), Genya, and Wylan, the newest one to join their rag-tag bunch. When things are off with Matthias, Nina insists that a girl’s trip is what they need most.
When spring break finally does roll around, Nina and Matthias are decidedly off. Nina claims they’re done for good, but she’s said that and been wrong before.
“I want to do something peaceful, something easy,” Nina decides the week before break begins. “Just the two of us. Okay?”
Inej’s chest aches. She wants that so, so badly, but it’s been hard to be alone with Nina since New Year’s Eve. Even though she was the one who made the choice not to kiss her—a choice she’s still trying to convince herself was right every day—she’d be lying if she said she hadn't wished she could go back and do it all over again. The idea of spending a whole week together, just the two of them, could very well be torture, but Inej can never say no to her.
“Okay,” She agrees, reaching out to link their pinkies together. “Just the two of us.”
They don’t have enough money to do anything crazy, so they decide to go on a roadtrip down the coast of Kerch, one that ends in a little hotel room on the southern end of the island. There’s not much to do there—far less than there is in the bustling city of Ketterdam—but Inej can’t deny that it’s nice.
They go out and explore the little town on their first day, and despite how small it seemed when they first drove through it, they somehow manage to stay out until the sun goes down that night. There are endless little shops to go into, each one more niche than the next. They spend hours looking at secondhand bookstores, vintage boutiques, even a little shop that only sells different kinds of olive oil—though, to be fair, they stay in that one for a while because the shopkeeper (an old man who just seems excited to have customers) keeps bringing them out fresh pieces of bread to dip into different flavors of oil. In the end, they end up buying four very overpriced bottles.
Their hotel is on a hill overlooking a little beach, so they spend most of their days there. It’s too cold to swim, but it’s a perfect temperature to drag a blanket onto the sand and read. Every morning they wake up, pack themselves lunch, and head down. They take turns reading and annotating the books that they picked up from the store in town. Inej’s picks were all carefully selected, she pored over the descriptions of at least a dozen before narrowing it down to the best of the best. Nina’s were all chosen on a whim, most of them because she liked the cover. To her own surprise, Inej finds she enjoys both of their choices equally.
The beach is the perfect place to watch the sunset, which they do every night. Inej mentions once, offhandedly, that she’d like to see the sunrise one day, too. Nina usually sleeps in way past the hour that the sun rises, but on the last day of their vacation, she wakes Inej up at six forty-five, her blanket wrapped around her like a babushka.
“Is something wrong?” Inej asks blearily, trying to figure out what could possibly have Nina waking her up at this hour.
Nina just giggles. “Nothing, except you might miss the sunrise if you stay in bed much longer.”
The beach is far colder in the morning haze than it is under the afternoon sun, and Inej finds herself shivering when they get down to the sand. “You had the right idea with that blanket.”
Wordlessly, Nina adjusts the blanket and then holds it open for her, Inej’s heart flutters in her chest as she moves in close and allows Nina to wrap them both up in the borrowed hotel room quilt. “I’m glad we’re here,” Nina says, tilting her head against Inej’s.
“Me too.”
And she is, she’s so glad, because in just a handful of days, this trip has seemed to fix everything that had gotten weird between the two of them in the last few months. They’re back to the Nina and Inej from before winter break, back in their little world where it’s just the two of them, the way that Inej likes it best.
Most importantly, they don’t talk about New Year’s Eve at all… until the last day of their trip.
It rains that last day, which means that they can’t go to the beach and they’ve already exhausted most of the stores in town which leaves them with only one option.
“Grumpy’s Goat Shack?” Inej asks, staring up at the sign that hangs crookedly above the bar. She and Nina are pressed close together until the singular umbrella she had in her car and, despite the strange name and the sound of numerous goats bleating out back, Inej is strongly considering going inside just to be free from the sensation of every inch of her body pressed up against Nina’s.
“Goats are adorable,” Nina says with a grin. “Also, it’s happy hour.”
To Nina’s disappointment, all the goats stay out back in the barn even when it’s raining except for one—a little one with a collar that reads Milo who lingers close to the bar. When Nina asks if they can bring him to their table, the man behind the bar scowls at them.
“Do you think he’s Grumpy?” Nina leans over to whisper in her ear as he pours them their drinks. Inej has to disguise her laugh as a cough hidden behind her hand.
“Definitely,” She whispers back.
Grumpy’s Goat Shack’s happy hour deal is a buy-one-get-one deal, which is just as dangerous as it sounds—especially when Nina’s drink of choice for them is a Wandering Isle Iced Tea that comes in what can only be described as a small fishbowl. Before she knows it, hours have flown by and Grumpy cuts them off and sends them back to the hotel.
The walk back does absolutely nothing to sober her up so Inej can only blame the unsaintly amount of liquor she’s consumed for the way she drops herself onto one of the beds and says “Are you mad at me?”
Nina’s eyebrows furrow in confusion. “Right now? Not that I know of. Have you done anything to make me mad at you?”
“Not right now,” Inej shakes her head. “But maybe I did at the New Year’s Eve party.”
Nina’s features immediately soften and she moves to sit beside Inej on the bed. “I wasn’t mad… A little insulted that you’d rather run out of the apartment than kiss me, but not mad.”
Inej’s face screws up into an expression of horror. “No, Nina, I wanted to kiss you so bad.”
Nina’s cheeks flush and Inej can’t stop herself from sitting up and reaching for her, tenderly brushing her fingertips along her freckles the way that she wanted to ever since she first saw Nina back during orientation.
“Then why didn’t you?” Nina asks, and Inej is catapulted back into reality.
She groans and drops her head onto Nina’s shoulder, burying her face against her neck. Without meaning to, her lips brush against the place where Nina’s pulse thuds beneath her skin and she feels it skyrocket. “Your heart is beating really fast.”
“You’re making me nervous,” Nina admits, and Inej can’t help but giggle at the thought of her making the brave, bold, endlessly confident Nina feel nervous. “Inej…”
“Yeah?” Inej asks, slowly lifting her head to look at Nina again. At this moment, she’s having an incredibly hard time remembering why she’s gone the whole year without kissing Nina. She’s so beautiful.
“No, you’re beautiful,” Nina replies, the pink on her cheeks deepening. Inej didn’t realize she’d voiced her thoughts aloud, but she can’t bring herself to regret them. “But we shouldn’t.”
Inej hears the words but they don’t process in her brain. She’s too busy leaning in forward, savoring the way that their noses bump together and the sound of Nina’s breath catching in her throat. “Why not?”
There’s a split second where Inej thinks that finally, after months and months of pining, she’s finally going to have this, she’s finally going to have Nina. Then, with a quiet whimper, Nina pulls herself away from Inej entirely. “Not like this.”
Embarrassment floods Inej’s face, hot and sticky. Without another word, she crawls back into her own bed and turns away from Nina so that she can’t see when tears start to fall.
The next morning, they pack their car up and head back to school without speaking a word of what happened the night before.
+ 01.
Inej doesn’t hear from Nina much in the week after the return back from spring break. She can’t shake the feeling that she ruined things forever between the two of them, just like she feared that she would.
She’s too humiliated to bring herself to text Nina first. Nina never takes the leap either. They don’t have any classes together this semester, so Inej is fully and completely suffering.
In the midst of one of her worst moments (three days after they came back from the trip, no contact from Nina) she even looked into transferring schools, up until Alina took her laptop and revoked her internet privileges for the rest of the day. Instead of allowing her to spiral any further, they curled up together on Alina’s bed and watched all of their favorite romance movies and wept into their pints of ice cream.
“What if we’re never friends again?” Inej asked through tears after A Walk to Remember.
Alina made a noise of sympathy and smoothed her hair down. “Maybe she’s just nervous… like you were on New Year’s Eve. Just give her some time.”
She’s not sure how much time she has in her but thankfully, mercifully, she’s put out of her misery on Friday night.
She’s alone in her dorm room when she hears the knock on the door. She tries not to allow herself to feel too hopeful, but that all goes out the window the moment that she opens the door and sees Nina standing in front of her.
She looks as beautiful as always, though today she’s wearing a soft, pink sundress instead of her usual red. The sight of her is still enough to make Inej forget how to speak.
“Hi,” Nina says, accepting that Inej isn’t going to be the one to speak first. “I have a surprise for you.”
Inej blinks. “What? Nina—”
“I know,” Nina interrupts, reaching for Inej’s hand. “I know, but just… Please? Come with me and if you hate it then you can yell at me or whatever you want to do right now.”
“I don’t want to yell at you,” Inej admits, because she doesn’t. She wants everything to be okay between them again. She doesn’t want to lose her.
Nina dares to give her a smile. “Then come with me?”
Nina’s surprise is on the roof of Inej’s dorm—which she didn’t even know was accessible. Maybe it isn’t. Maybe this is just another thing to add onto the list of things that only Nina Zenik can ever get away with.
“Close your eyes,” Nina instructs as they pause in front of the door that leads outside, and Inej dutifully does as she’s told. Nina’s fingers slide between her own as she uses both of her hands to guide her out. “Okay, now you can look.”
Inej slowly opens her eyes and the sight before her knocks all the air out of her lungs. Spread out on the roof is what has to be the most romantic picnic she’s ever seen, complete with flowers and candles and chocolate covered strawberries and everything. “Nina…”
Nina gives her a tiny, hopeful smile. “I like you, Inej. A lot. And I think that maybe you like me, too. I wasn’t so sure about it but then after spring break… I knew that you felt the same way as me. I’m sorry for not texting or anything sooner but I knew that I would just confess everything the minute that I saw you and I wanted to do it right.”
Any of the fear or worry or frustration that she held toward Nina for ignoring her all week is long-gone now, replaced with a feeling of complete and total happiness. “You like me?”
“So much,” Nina admits, her cheeks tinged the same color of pink as the sky as the sun sets behind them. “And I know it’s scary because we’re best friends but—”
“I think we can handle it,” Inej interrupts, moving in close and wrapping her arms around Nina’s shoulders. She doesn’t want to waste another second. “Don’t you?”
“Definitely,” Nina murmurs and Inej feels butterflies come to life in her stomach when Nina’s gaze drops to her mouth.
“Then let’s stop wasting time.”
When she finally, finally leans in and kisses her, Inej knows without a doubt that it was worth the wait.