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Columbina learns people by watching them.
It’s not a conscious decision, not something she ever sat down and decided to do, it’s just what happens when she’s quiet long enough and everyone else isn’t.
It’s how she knows that Sandrone hums when she studies, almost imperceptibly, a sound too soft to exist when anyone else is talking. The melody never quite resolves into anything recognizable; it’s just a faint, tuneless thread under her breath as her eyes flick left to right across the page.
It’s how Columbina knows that Sandrone forgets to drink water unless reminded. Her bottle sits near her elbow, untouched for hours, sweating a ring onto the desk while Sandrone is hunched over notes, brows furrowed.
It’s how she notices that Sandrone always kicks her shoes off under the desk the second she sits down. Not neatly. Not lined up like she plans to put them back on. Just half-kicked, abandoned, toes curling into the thin dorm carpet like she never intends to stand up again.
The room they share is technically meant for two people, but the furniture is arranged like the architect resented that fact. Two beds pressed against opposite walls. Two desks jammed under the single narrow window.
One wobbly dresser between the door and the rest of their lives. It’s cluttered with textbooks and stray socks and the faint detergent smell of borrowed hoodies, and somehow it still feels empty when Sandrone isn’t in it.
Columbina never says that part out loud.
At the beginning of the semester, it feels easy. Comfortable. Like buying a pair of shoes that don’t blister your heels the first time you wear them. They fall into routines the way people do when they’re careful not to name things, moving around each other in the limited space like they’ve always known how.
Shared breakfasts, when they happen to wake up at the same time. Sandrone yawning into her coffee, Columbina picking at toast, both of them sitting shoulder-to-shoulder on the edge of Sandrone’s bed because the chairs are buried in laundry and handouts.
Late nights where one of them pretends to study while the other actually does; Columbina lying upside down on her mattress, scrolling idly through her phone, while Sandrone is hunched over her notebook, highlighter caps scattered like confetti.
Their shoulders brush when they move past each other. Their knees knock under the desk when they sit next to each other. Neither of them pulls away. The touch is casual, incidental, something they both pretend not to notice and yet never avoid.
Columbina tells herself this is enough.
Then they start doing bits without realizing they’re bits.
The first time, Columbina leaves her chair for exactly thirty seconds to grab a book from her bed. When she turns back, Sandrone is already in it, spinning with a guilty smile, her feet hooked around the legs to keep herself anchored.
“I was only gone for thirty seconds,” Columbina says flatly, hands still on the spine of the book.
Sandrone swivels lazily, grinning up at her. “Dorm law” she declares solemnly, pointing a highlighter at Columbina like a gavel. “If you leave it unattended-”
“You’re not even studying,” Columbina cuts in.
“I’m emotionally preparing to study” Sandrone says. She leans back, looking obnoxiously pleased with herself.
Columbina breathes out through her nose in a sound that might almost be a laugh and sits on the very edge of Sandrone’s bed instead, posture stiff, hands in her lap. She can feel the warmth of where Sandrone usually sits, the faint dip in the mattress.
Sandrone glances up from the screen she hasn’t actually opened anything on. “You know you can just sit here” she says, patting the mattress beside her, eyes soft.
Columbina hesitates. The space is nothing, half a meter of worn blanket and tangled sheets. It feels like a chasm.
Then she sits.
Slowly. Carefully. Like the bed is the edge of a precipice and she’s testing how far she can lean. Their thighs brush. Sandrone shifts just enough that their knees bump, like it was an accident, but she doesn’t move away.
Sandrone smiles like she’s won something.
Later, when Sandrone can’t open a stubborn jar of pasta sauce, she doesn’t even make a show of struggling. She just walks over and wordlessly hands it to Columbina, fingers brushing hers in the exchange.
“You didn’t even ask” Columbina says, fingers tightening around the cool glass.
“I trust you,” Sandrone replies, casually. Thoughtless. Like it’s obvious.
The words land heavier than they should. Trust is not something Columbina has ever been given easily. It settles low in her chest and stays there, warm and terrible.
At night, when the world outside is damp and quiet and the hallway lights hum through the thin door, they lie in their separate beds and talk in fragments.
“Do you ever think about transferring?” Sandrone asks one night, staring at the ceiling, voice drifting into the dark.
“No,” Columbina says.
“Wow. Immediate.” Sandrone laughs softly, a brief exhale of sound.
columbina shifts, her fingers tracing idle patterns along the seam of her pillowcase. “I don’t like starting over.”
Sandrone turns her head, and Columbina can feel the weight of the stare even without looking back. “you’re not the only one” Sandrone says, so quietly it almost isn’t words.
Columbina doesn’t answer. She stares at the blank wall inches from her face and bites the inside of her cheek. She doesn’t trust herself not to say too much.
She doesn’t trust herself at all.
------------------------------------
“I might be late tonight,” Sandrone says, shrugging into her jacket. It’s the thicker one, with a broken zipper pull and frayed cuffs. She shakes her hair out from the collar, tying it up with a band she fished off her wrist with her teeth.
“Study group” she adds, muffled around the hair tie.
“Oh” Columbina replies, watching her in the mirror above the desk. “Again?”
Sandrone’s reflection meets hers and then glances away, a flicker of apology crossing her features. “We’re going over the midterm,” she says, tying her hair up into a messy knot.
“You’ve already gone over it” Columbina points out, because she knows. Because she’d watched Sandrone painstakingly make color-coded notes for three hours last night while Columbina lay there silently, memorizing the curve of her wrist as she wrote.
“I know” Sandrone says. “But they asked.”
They.
The plural sticks in Columbina’s throat like a fishbone. She nods anyway. “Right.”
Sandrone pauses with one arm halfway into her sleeve. She glances back, searching Columbina’s face like there’s an answer written somewhere she’s missing. “Is that… okay?” she asks carefully.
“Yes,” Columbina says too fast. “Of course.”
She means it in the moment. She always does. She wants Sandrone to have people. She wants Sandrone to have everything.
Sandrone hesitates again at the door. “You can come if you want” she offers, words slow and genuine. “I mean, you’re better at this stuff than me, they’d-”
“It’s fine” Columbina cuts in, eyes dropping to her notebook, even though she hasn’t turned the page in ten minutes. “Have fun.”
The word tastes wrong in her mouth. She uses it anyway.
when the room is quiet and Sandrone isn’t there, Columbina discovers silence has weight. It presses against her ears, makes the ticking of the cheap wall clock sound like a hammer. She tries to read.
She tries to sleep. Instead, she catches herself checking the time every ten minutes, her gaze drawn to the door like it might open if she looks hard enough.
When Sandrone finally returns, she’s flushed from the cold, cheeks pink, scarf half-unraveled around her neck. Her laugh arrives before she does, floating into the hallway as the door cracks open. She’s smiling at something someone else said, phone pressed to her ear, a slice of warmth Columbina wasn’t there to see.
“You’re actually really smart” someone is saying, tinny through the speaker.
Sandrone laughs, ducking her head as she toes off her shoes. “Don’t sound so surprised.”
Columbina, sitting cross-legged on her bed with a book she hasn’t turned a page of, doesn’t look up right away. When she does, she notices the way Sandrone’s hair has fallen loose from its knot, trailing over her shoulder in a soft wave. The way the overhead light catches in the strands. The way her eyes crinkle when she laughs.
She wonders, distantly, if the person on the other end of the line notices that too.
“They’re actually really helpful” Sandrone says into the phone as she drops her bag with a soft thud. “you’d like them.”
Columbina smiles. It feels practiced. “I’m sure” she says.
Much later, when the lights are off and Sandrone’s breathing has evened out, Columbina lies awake, staring into the dark. She wonders, not for the first time, if Sandrone has ever noticed how carefully she never asks their name.
------------------------------------
Then Sandrone starts studying with someone else.
It doesn’t happen with fanfare; there is no dramatic argument, no clear before and after. Just a classmate who asks once if Sandrone wants to go over lecture notes together, then again the next week, and again after that.
Someone who laughs easily, and sits a little too close on the worn couches in the common room, who seems to orbit Sandrone like she’s the center of their gravity and doesn’t even seem to realize it.
At first, they meet in the common area downstairs, at a table sticky with old coffee rings and pen marks. Then sometimes outside, under the leafless trees in the courtyard. Sometimes just the two of them, hunched over textbooks that Columbina knows Sandrone has already combed through alone.
Sandrone mentions it casually, while pulling on socks or digging through her backpack. “Oh, I’m meeting up with them later” she’ll say, like it’s nothing. Like it’s a weather report.
Columbina nods. Says that’s fine.
She means it, in the specific, narrow way people mean things they haven’t examined too closely. She wants to be the kind of person who doesn’t mind. The kind of person who doesn’t need.
But she notices the changes anyway.
The way Sandrone starts leaving earlier in the evenings, tucking her hair behind her ear, checking her phone more often than she used to. The way she comes back lighter, distracted, talking about an assignment Columbina has already completed three days ago but listens to anyway, because it’s Sandrone’s voice that matters, not the topic.
Jealousy settles in quietly. It does not burn. It aches slow, steady, a hollow tugging under her ribs every time she hears Sandrone say, “They said this thing in study group…” and laughs.
------------------------------------
Movie night again.
Columbina almost doesn’t go.
It’s become a floor ritual: someone streams something on a laptop connected via a questionably functioning HDMI cable to the common room TV, everyone piles onto the couches and beanbags with cheap popcorn and blankets that smell faintly of microwave butter. The first time, Sandrone had tugged Columbina along by the sleeve, insisting “It’ll be fun” and Columbina had gone, because Sandrone asked.
This time, Columbina drifts in late, hovering by the doorway, the light from the hallway slanting across the back of the room. The glow from the TV flickers blue and gray across people’s faces. Laughter rises and falls in waves, bouncing off the low ceiling.
Someone is already sitting on Sandrone’s side of the couch. Close. Too close. Their hip pressed flush against Sandrone’s, sharing the corner of her blanket like they’ve done it a hundred times.
“Oh,” Sandrone says, halfway through reaching up to wave Columbina over. She glances back at her, a fleeting crease between her brows. “Did you want-?”
“It’s okay,” Columbina says, too fast. The words feel like a reflex and an impact all at once.
She hates, actually, physically hates, the way Sandrone’s shoulders drop with relief. Like she had been bracing for an argument. Like she’d been afraid she’d have to choose.
Halfway through the movie, the person beside Sandrone shifts closer. Their heads are nearly touching now. The room is dim, everyone’s attention fixed on the screen. The world narrows to the shape of them, to the subtle tension in Sandrone’s spine.
Sandrone goes very still.
“you okay?” they whisper, breath stirring the hair near Sandrone’s temple.
“yeah” Sandrone says. “just cold.”
They offer their hoodie. Sandrone hesitates, then takes it with a small, polite smile, shrugging into the warmth. The scent of someone else’s detergent clings to the fabric.
From her bed across the room, where she’d claimed a spot under the pretense of better Wi-Fi, Columbina feels something inside her go taut, then snap. Her phone glows uselessly in her hands, notifications lighting up the screen, none of them important.
Someone from their floor has taken the seat beside Sandrone that used to be hers by default and leans into her shoulder like it’s the most natural thing in the world. Sandrone doesn’t pull away. She doesn’t lean in, either. She just… allows it. Absorbs it. As if ownership of her space is communal, as if anyone can just press into the warmth Columbina has spent weeks quietly learning.
That might be worse.
“is this okay?” the person asks, already half-settled, voice low.
Sandrone laughs awkwardly. “yeah, it’s fine.”
Columbina’s phone buzzes again. A text from someone in their class. A reminder about an assignment. She doesn’t check it. Her fingers close around the device like it’s something to hold onto, like it can anchor her in place.
Later, back in their room, Sandrone kicks her shoes off with familiar carelessness, dropping onto her bed with a huff.
“They kept whispering through the whole thing” she says, scrubbing a hand over her face. “I barely heard the dialogue.”
Columbina sits on her bed, legs pulled up to her chest, pressing her chin into her knees. The room feels smaller than usual, every wall a little closer.
She is very quiet.
“…Are you mad?” Sandrone asks finally, her voice uncertain.
“No,” Columbina says. Then, after a beat she doesn’t mean to fill, “Do they do that often?”
Sandrone frowns, confused. “What?”
“Sit that close.” The words slip out more tightly than she intends.
“Oh,” Sandrone says. A pause. She thinks about it. “I guess.”
Columbina nods. Once. Twice. She doesn’t ask more. It already feels like she’s interrogating something she doesn’t own.
She is already asking too much.
Sandrone’s frown deepens. “you’ve been doing that a lot lately” she says quietly.
“doing what?” Columbina asks, feigning ignorance, staring down at her fingers where they twist in the fabric of her sweatpants.
“pulling away,” Sandrone says. The words land with all the softness of a dropped weight.
Columbina swallows. “I didn’t think you noticed.”
Of course Sandrone notices. Of course she does. She’s the kind of person who always notices when other people need help, but never when she needs boundaries.
Columbina tells herself she has no claim. That whatever this feeling is, this ache that curls claws around her chest whenever she sees someone else drawn into Sandrone’s orbit, it belongs to her alone. It starts and ends inside her chest. It is not Sandrone’s problem to solve.
So she grows quieter. Laughs less. Stops reaching out first. She stays out later, lingering in the library until closing, wandering the campus walkways longer than necessary just to avoid seeing Sandrone come home flushed with stories and someone else’s name on her tongue. She stops waiting up.
Sandrone notices. Of course she does. She always notices.
------------------------------------
The night it breaks is cold in the way that seeps through windows and cheap insulation, the kind of cold that makes the floor feel like ice when bare feet touch it. Columbina shrugs into the emptiness she expects her hoodie to fill and finds nothing.
At first, she looks for it absently. She checks the back of her chair where it usually hangs, then the foot of her bed, then under the pillow where she sometimes bunches it for extra height. It’s not there.
“Have you seen my hoodie?” she asks, rummaging in the heap of clothes on the desk chair. Her voice is calm. Neutral.
Sandrone doesn’t look up from her laptop. “Oh yeah,” she says. “I lent it out.”
The words don’t quite fit into Columbina’s understanding of the world. They hang in the air, wrong-shaped.
“You what?” Columbina says slowly.
“It’s cold” Sandrone replies, like this is explanation enough, like the cold is a justification for anything. “They gave it back, though. I think. It was on my bed earlier.”
Columbina nods. Slowly. Carefully. Like every movement might crack something fragile. She doesn’t trust her voice, so she says nothing.
Later, Columbina is coming back from the library, fingers numb around the strap of her bag, the fluorescent lights of the hallway buzzing faintly. Her hair is damp with the ghost of outside air. She’s thinking about nothing in particular…her next assignment, the way her pen has started skipping ink…when she sees it.
Her hoodie.
It’s unmistakable: dark fabric worn soft from overuse, the cuffs slightly frayed, the faint bleach mark near the hem where she’d spilled something last semester. It’s draped over someone else’s shoulders in the hallway, swallowing their frame. The sleeves are too long on them, hands disappearing into the fabric. It hangs wrong, like it knows it doesn’t belong there.
The hoodie is hers. Not because she bought it, that memory is blurry, a sale rack, a bored cashier, but because Sandrone keeps stealing it. Because it smells like their room, like Sandrone’s shampoo and cheap laundry powder and the faint dust of old textbooks. Because when Columbina thinks of warmth, she thinks of that hoodie wrapped around Sandrone’s shoulders as she sits hunched at their desk, humming over her notes.
When Columbina sees it on someone else, her first thought is absurdly practical: They’re going to stretch the sleeves.
Her second thought hurts enough to stop her in place.
Sandrone is there too, arms folded loosely across her chest. She’s smiling. Laughing. Her eyes crinkle at the corners the way they do when she’s genuinely amused.
“this is a nice hoodie” someone says, fingers tugging at the too-long sleeve.
“Oh, it’s my roommate’s” Sandrone replies easily, no hesitation, no further explanation.
“your roommate has good taste” someone jokes, bumping her shoulder.
“she really does,” Sandrone laughs fondly.
Columbina stands at the corner, just beyond their line of sight, feeling like she’s watching something from outside a window. Her body is here, but whatever is left of her is pressed against the glass from the other side.
She does not say anything. She does not step forward.
She simply turns around before she can hear anything else. Before Sandrone can look up and see her expression. Before someone can notice and call her into a conversation she doesn’t trust herself to endure.
She doesn’t come back to the room that night.
------------------------------------
The silence the next day is unbearable.
It’s not the comfortable quiet they’ve settled into before, where pages turn and pens scratch and Sandrone hums softly over her notes. This silence is jagged. It has edges. It sits between them on the floor, on the beds, on the narrow stretch of rug like something alive.
“you didn’t come home” Sandrone says when Columbina finally pushes the door open, the afternoon light already thin and gray.
“I needed air” Columbina says, dropping her bag by her desk. Her fingers feel clumsy on the zipper.
“You didn’t text” Sandrone says. She’s sitting on her bed, knees pulled up, Columbina’s hoodie, reclaimed, bunched around her.
“I didn’t think you’d care” Columbina answers. The words come out sharper than she means them to, brittle with all the things she hasn’t said.
That hurts Sandrone enough to go quiet. Her mouth opens, closes. Her hands flex in the fabric over her knees.
“Why wouldn’t I care?” she asks, genuinely bewildered, like the alternative never occurred to her. Like the idea of not caring is more alien than anything else.
Columbina lies on her side on her own bed, facing the wall, the paint chipped and faintly marked by the ghosts of tape. The words sit heavy in her chest, an ache pushing upward, begging to be let out. She hadn’t meant for this to happen like this. She hadn’t meant for anything to happen at all. All of this was supposed to remain unspoken, safely contained in the quiet spaces between them.
“…you let them wear my hoodie” she says finally, voice very small.
“…is this about the hoodie?” Sandrone asks, confusion knotting her brows.
“Yes” Columbina says. No hesitation. The truth is bigger than that, but it’s a place to start.
Sandrone exhales, “I didn’t know it meant that much” she admits.
“It didn’t” Columbina says. That’s a lie. Or it used to be true and now it isn’t. She forces herself to keep going before she can back down. “It meant you!”
The words are out before she can stop them. She finally turns, looking at Sandrone fully for the first time since yesterday. Sandrone’s eyes widen, her breath catching.
“I didn’t think--” Sandrone starts.
“I know,” Columbina says quickly. “I know you didn’t mean anything by it.” Her voice wavers despite her best efforts at control. “that doesn’t mean…it didn’t hurt.”
The room holds its breath with them.
There is a pause that stretches and stretches, and then, softer than anything she’s said in weeks, the truth she’s been holding too tightly slips free.
“I don’t like…sharing you,” she admits, the confession cracking her voice. “and I don’t like pretending I don’t.”
The words hang in the air like a fragile bridge between them.
The room is very still.
“I keep watching people take pieces of you,” she whispers, eyes fixed on some indeterminate point in the middle distance. “and I keep telling myself I don’t get to be upset. That wanting you too much would ruin things.”
Sandrone’s voice is soft, careful. “What things?” she asks, like she genuinely doesn’t know.
Columbina laughs weakly, the sound half-sob, half-breath. “Us,” she says. The word shakes. “Whatever this is.”
Her fingers curl into the blanket, knuckles white. “I thought,” she continues, staring at the wall like it might save her from herself, “that if I wanted you too much, I’d lose you.”
She has read enough stories to know how this goes. The confession comes, and with it, distance. The careful apology, the forced smile, the gentle letdown. She waits for the space that usually follows moments like this, the feeling of something precious slipping out of her hands.
Instead, Sandrone crosses the room in two steps.
The bed dips under her weight as she sits on the edge of Columbina’s mattress, closer than she’s ever let herself imagine. There is no hesitation in the way she moves now, no nervous laughter, no deflection.
“There is no version of this,” Sandrone says firmly, every word deliberate, “where wanting me is wrong.”
Columbina’s breath stutters. She turns before she can stop herself, heart pounding so hard she can feel it in her throat.
Sandrone is close, too close. Close enough that Columbina can see the tiny freckle near the corner of her mouth, the faint ring of a sleepless night under her eyes. Her expression is steady. Certain. Like she’s already made a decision and is just now pulling it into the light.
“There’s no need to be upset…you already have me” Sandrone adds, and the words land like a promise, solid and anchoring.
Columbina pulls back on instinct, nerves sparking, hands trembling. “I’m sorry, I--” she starts, apology tumbling out of her without shape.
Sandrone cups her face with both hands, fingers warm against her jaw, thumbs brushing the dampness at the corner of her eyes that Columbina hadn’t realized was there.
“Shh” Sandrone says, voice gentle, almost a whisper. “It’s okay. I’m sorry too.”
She leans in before Columbina can unravel her own courage any further and presses her mouth to Columbina’s.
The first kiss is desperate. Apologetic. Certain.
It’s a tangle of all the words they never said, all the glances they pretended not to catch, all the nights spent staring at the same ceiling and refusing to look sideways. Columbina’s hands fly to Sandrone’s wrists, fingers curling there like she’s afraid if she lets go, the world will snap back to normal and they’ll both pretend this never happened.
“Y-you don’t have to be careful with me” Sandrone murmurs against her lips when they break apart for air, breath warm and unsteady.
Columbina pulls back at once, instinctively, shoulders tensing, bracing for the flood of regret. For the “we shouldn’t have” and the “this was a mistake” that she’s been rehearsing hearing in her nightmares.
Sandrone doesn’t let her retreat.
She follows the movement, closing the gap again, one hand sliding to the back of Columbina’s neck, grounding her, the other still cradling her cheek.
This time the kiss is slower. Grounding. Less a collision and more an answer. A confirmation of everything Columbina has been too afraid to name.
Something in Columbina loosens. The tightness that has lived in her chest for weeks, months, begins to unfurl. She doesn’t cry. She just exhales, a long, shuddering breath, like she’s been holding the air in her lungs since the first time Sandrone hummed over her notes.
------------------------------------
The next day, the hallway is loud with voices and movement. Doors slam. Someone laughs too loudly down the corridor. There’s the faint smell of burnt toast from the communal kitchen and the constant murmur of music leaking from someone’s headphones.
Sandrone and Columbina walk side by side, shoulders brushing occasionally, hands tucked into their sleeves against the lingering chill. There is a new weight in the air between them, but it isn’t heavy. It’s solid. Real.
Someone calls Sandrone’s name from across the hall. A classmate, waving a notebook in one hand, cheeks flushed from rushing. “Do you have the notes from yesterday?” they ask, already stepping closer, like the yes is a foregone conclusion. They smile like they expect to be prioritized.
Columbina stands beside her, hands tucked into her sleeves, saying nothing. She watches. Waiting for the familiar script to play: the immediate yes, the rearranged schedule, the way Sandrone will bend herself into shapes for anyone who asks.
Sandrone pauses.
She looks at Columbina first.
The glance is quick, but it’s not casual. There’s a question there, and something else, something like apology and commitment woven together.
Then she turns back and says calmly, “Sorry. I already promised her.” Her head tips toward Columbina, no explanation needed, no hesitation.
Just choice.
The classmate blinks, surprised, then nods, backing off with a muttered, “Oh, yeah, no worries. Maybe later.”
Columbina doesn’t smile. She doesn’t need to. The corner of her mouth softens anyway, an almost-smile that’s more for herself than for anyone else.
The ache in her chest is still there. the jealousy doesn’t evaporate, doesn’t vanish with a single kiss and a hallway decision. But now it’s warm, steady, something with somewhere to live that isn’t just the empty corners of her heart. It isn’t a gnawing hole. It’s a weight she can carry.
Sandrone leans closer, their shoulders touching fully now, deliberate. “Want to go grab coffee?” she asks, voice light but eyes searching Columbina’s face in that careful way she has.
Columbina nods, and it’s almost automatic, because she would follow Sandrone anywhere. “Okay,” she says. She doesn’t drink coffee. She never has. The taste is too bitter, the caffeine too sharp in her veins.
She doesn’t correct Sandrone. She doesn’t need to. She just wanted to be near her.
“I’ll treat you to any pastry you want” Sandrone beams, the offer bubbling out of her, hands animated as she speaks. “like, the really overpriced ones behind the glass that look like they’ve been Photoshopped? Anything you point at.”
Columbina huffs a soft laugh, feeling her chest loosen further. “that’s a dangerous promise” she murmurs.
“Good” Sandrone says, bumping their shoulders together. “I intend to keep it.”
When they walk into the café, people still look at Sandrone. They still call her name in hallways, still ask for notes, still drift into her orbit like she’s sunlight after too many cloudy days.
But now, when someone steps up and asks, “Are you free later? I wanted to go over the problem set” Sandrone glances at Columbina first. When someone nudges her shoulder in the library, leaning into her space without thinking, Sandrone shifts closer to Columbina instead, legs brushing under the table, eyes flicking over with a quiet, Are you okay?
Jealousy is still there. It just has somewhere to rest now. curled up between them on late nights when Sandrone falls asleep with her head on Columbina’s shoulder, their fingers threaded loosely together. In the hoodie Sandrone pulls over both their heads when they’re sitting too close on the bed, the fabric tenting around them like a shared secret. In the mug Columbina holds while Sandrone drinks her coffee, stealing sips of hot chocolate from Columbina’s cup because “yours always tastes better.”
For the first time, Columbina isn’t watching Sandrone be chosen from a distance, safe on the outside, telling herself she has no right to want.
For the first time, when people reach for Sandrone, when they ask, when they assume, there is a quiet, unspoken understanding:
She is the one Sandrone chooses.
and that, Colombina thinks as Sandrone brushes a crumb from the corner of her mouth with a fond thumb and presses a quick, grounding kiss to her lips, is something she can finally let herself want as much as she does.