“It’s… probably not my best question,” you mumble sheepishly from between the tremendous flanks of your friend’s gentle fingertips, as if apologizing for plunging the pair of you into this exchange at last.

            “No.  No, it’s okay.  We probably should talk about it,” she says, and on the ends of her words you can hear tiny quavers of anxiety, something you can’t recall hearing in her tone before, and something that, against the odds, manages to bring her a little closer to your scale in this singular moment.  “We definitely should talk about it.”

            You’re pulled instantaneously back to the moment you first laid eyes on each other as you took your assigned seats in Intro to Organic Molecules class next to one another last semester.  Science was never your strongest suit, but you still took it out of pure academic interest, and had to fight yourself to not stare creepily at Ellie as she took her seat, clad in an unassuming olive jacket and jeans, her honey-toned hair pulled back in a ponytail.  And those deep gray eyes, gorgeously drilling in their every passing glance.  Living clouds, behind her pupils.

            Of course, you had to put a lot of this aside immediately, because you soon found yourself very nearly in over your head in a collegiate chemistry course, despite your drive to succeed.  That was when you actually came to know Ellie, with her steel-sharpened mind primed for anything the scientific world threw at her, who noticed fairly easily your troubles when you just barely managed to claw your way above the B-minus line.  Her offering of tutoring was a surprise to you that, despite its initial awkwardness, led to discussions beyond science and into philosophy and art, eventually allowing you to summon the courage to suggest she take a 19th century British literature course with you, allowing your conversations to become a blending of discoveries in every discipline.

            You can replay all the conversations in your head from those months back, but no matter how many times you do, feeling all the same feelings again, you can’t comprehend how you started off at that lab table as strangers and ended up in these odd little platonic sleepovers that stood in defiance of nearly every ordinary social law.

            “I think you’re pretty cool,” you mutter stupidly in the silence, hating yourself for these words that make you feel like some petrified middle schooler trying to get a girl to carpool to a basketball game with you and share a crappy box of popcorn.  You’re this far; you owe her a little honesty, or at least the part of it that you can admit fully even to yourself: “I like being around you.”

            “I like being around you, too,” Ellie coos after a heart-rending pause that probably lasts no more than a split second.

            “Do you think it’s that easy, then?” you choke out, your throat dangerously dry now.  “That by itself can’t be what makes us do it.”

            “Probably not,” she agrees warmly.  “I think when most people feel like that, they just go see a movie, fuck each other afterward, and then never speak again.”

            Despite the tension, you laugh with her, incredibly grateful for her willingness to look at this all so frankly in equal measure to help alleviate your fears.  And suddenly, you feel spurred to take another little leap.

            “I do it because I feel safe with you,” you admit, your voice cracking embarrassingly from nervousness, and you can hear her intake of breath as she concentrates her entire consciousness on your stumbling words.  The phrases come easier the further you go, as though you’d been practicing them in your subconscious for some time.  “I get so tired of everything sometimes that I can’t even think.  When I’m… like this, I can just let go for a while and focus on one thing.  A feeling, or… I don’t know.  Something.  But it lets me wake up.  It lets me recharge so I can try to pretend like I’m normal again.”

            Realizing this might well-be the longest string of words you’ve ever spoken to your friend that didn’t include a joke or a deflection from your true feelings, you bite your lip and force yourself to shut up, wanting once again to meld with the darkness and become anonymous out of self-imposed humiliation.

            Seriously, what the hell could she possibly want with your blubbering, wearisome little self?

            “I do it because I feel safe with you, too,” she admits, instantly knowing that such a statement requires clarifying, given who’s pinning who between fingertips the size of oak trunks at this moment.  “I’ve… always been like this.  I need to feel like I can help.  Like I can… protect someone.  Completely.  And I’ve never found another way to do it, until now.  So that’s kind of it, I guess.  I… want to watch over someone.  Over you.”

            “Thanks,” you breathe delicately, feeling palpably soothed by this revelation.  “That wasn’t the worst thing ever, was it?”

            “Nope.”

            “We’re still friends?”
            “You’re my best friend,” she corrects definitively, and your whole being floods with relief.

            “You’re mine too,” you say.  “Why did it take us almost a year to do that?”

            She shrugs again.  “I don’t think we’re so great at this straight-talking thing just yet.  It scares the hell out of both of us.”

            “Maybe we’ll be a little better at it now,” you suggest hopefully.

            “I think we will,” she says with another lyrical chuckle.  “I know we will.  We’ll try it together.  Keep each other honest.”

            “Agreed.”

            “Do you think you’re ready to fall asleep?” she asks, pursing her lips and blowing forth a concentrated gale of lukewarm wind that sends a tingling sensation down your miniscule arms and legs.  “You’re starting to wilt a little.”

            “I… I think I am.  Thanks.”

            Still the bigger question hovers over you both in the warm darkness, even bigger than the one regarding your equal desires to interact at this scale, but again without true eye contact you silently agree to let it be for now as she places you back into your bed with such mind-bending delicacy that you almost forget that her hand is the length of a school bus to you right now.

            “Good night, Ellie,” you whisper gently, momentarily lost in the soothing flight, and wonder if you should repeat it with your already insignificant volume raised up to an actually audible speaking level.

            “Good night, Aaron,” she replies, having obviously heard you without a problem, and after her colossal fingertips have delivered you into the fabric on the bedside table again, you feel the folds of it covering you back up as she tucks you snugly in again.

            It’s enough for one night, and with a foreign-feeling smile on your lips, you sink into sleep almost immediately.