Brennan woke up to Jonas saying her name and shaking her shoulder.
“Brennan? Movie’s over.”
She blinked and sat up, trying to banish the lingering grasp of sleep from her heavy eyes and foggy mind. “What time is it?”
“Only nine,” said Jonas, moving to get up now that she was awake and had removed her face from where it had been plastered to his shoulder. He went to the window and frowned as he looked out. The half-burned-out string of Christmas lights flickered. “The snow’s gotten pretty bad though, so if we want any chance to get you home, we’d better leave.”
“Okay.” She yawned as she stood and grabbed her coat, shrugging into it and wrapping her scarf around her neck. Jonas pulled on his coat and repositioned his crutches as he awkwardly got his shoes on.
Once they got outside, it became clear that the snow was even deeper than it had looked from the window. Brennan glanced at Jonas; he seemed a little tense, one hand gripping the bus pass against his crutch. Her sleep-addled brain finally caught up and she shook her head. “I’m sorry, Jonas,” she said. “I know—the snow—” Her gaze flicked to his left leg (she noticed he had shifted to his right to keep his weight off of it) and then up to his face. He was still staring ahead as if in thought. They were still a ways from the Metro station—not even off campus yet.
“Jonas?”
Without acknowledging her, he just turned and started walking in the opposite direction of the parking lot. “Rhys has a sleeping bag,” he said over his shoulder as she struggled through the snow in heels behind him. “I’ll sleep on that and you can take the bed. It’s too bad to drive tonight—bus or not. It’s just not safe. You can stay with me.”
“Wait, Jonas—” He stopped and she caught up to him. “You don’t have to sleep on the floor,” she said. “I’ll take the sleeping bag.”
“Don’t be silly,” he said. He seemed nervous, a bit unfocused.
“Really—” she said.
He frowned at her heels. “It’s a long walk to Rhys’s dorm,” he said. “Why don’t you take the keys and go back to the dorm room. Do you remember how to find it?”
“It’s okay,” she said. “I want to come with you.” She didn’t want to be alone with her thoughts. This was an eventuality she hadn’t prepared for, hadn’t thought about. Hadn’t been given notice of. Sleeping anywhere other than her own bed was bad enough (she thought about chickening out of her high school retreat) but doing it on short notice—best to push those thoughts away and occupy her mind with something else for now.
Jonas looked at her for a moment before shrugging. “Okay,” he said, simply. Brennan shoved her hands deep into her coat pockets and continued walking next to him.
The snow fell silently around them, making her feel small again. She closed her eyes and turned her face toward the sky.
“You know, I had a good time tonight.”
Brennan looked up as Jonas broke the silence. He seemed a little nervous, like he was worried about whether or not she’d had a good time also. “Me too,” she said. She frowned, looking into the distance. “Jonas?” she said hesitantly.
“Hmm?”
“Why do you really like me? Because I’m so . . . me?” She sighed. “I just still can’t quite believe—”
He stopped short under a streetlight that stood next to the sidewalk, a silent sentinel in the snowstorm, casting the snow beneath it a mellow orange.
“Forget it,” she said. “It’s a stupid question. And you kind of already answered it when we stargazed but I just—”
“No,” he said, turning to her. “It’s not stupid. It’s just a complicated answer. Or at least, I thought it was. But now—” He met her eyes. “You make me want to get better. You are possibility.”
Brennan smiled slightly, not asking what he meant because she understood. He was possibility to her too—the possibility of better, and normal, and something good.
She bumped her left shoulder against his right. “Hey.”
“Hey.” Then, after a moment. “This is good, right?”
“This is good,” she said. Then she shoved a handful of snow down his back, which made him gasp, hunch into his crutches, and then laugh.
“So . . .” Brennan watched as Jonas spread the sleeping bag on the floor and fluffed a pillow, placing it at the head of the makeshift sleeping space. “I didn’t exactly bring pajamas.” She laughed awkwardly. Her tights were soaked through, and her dress wasn’t doing so well either. She shivered a little and wrapped her arms around herself.
Jonas frowned for a moment, before crutching to his dresser and pulling out a pair of shorts and a sweater. “The shorts have a drawstring,” he said, “so you’ll probably be able to make them fit. And you look pretty cold so—” He shrugged. “Sweater.”
Brennan took the things from him and held them to her chest.
“You can change in the bathroom across the hall,” he said.
She nodded and escaped to the bathroom. Alone, she stared at herself in the mirror. Her hair was messed up from sleeping and then walking (and some running on her part after the snow incident) through the snow with Jonas. Her dress was soaked at the hem and down her back (he’d gotten her back), and her tights were sopping. You’re a mess.
She stripped off the soaked tights and dress and quickly pulled on the shorts and the sweater, which was so large on her she might as well have not even been wearing the shorts, since it hung to her knees. She found that odd, because Jonas wasn’t exactly very big. Then again, he was tall, and she was short.
She shook her head, halting her mind’s foray into focusing her anxious thoughts on sweater logistics. She pulled her arms into the sweater sleeves and wrapped them around her chest, still staring at herself in the mirror.
Brennan imagined how Ambreen would tease her once she figured out that Brennan had spent the night at a guy’s place, even if it hadn’t been in that way. She tried to think about what Ambreen might do in her situation. Be confident, like Ambreen, her brain said.
She did her best to push her anxiety into a ball in the pit of her stomach. She took a deep breath and turned out the bathroom light, before peeking out to make sure no one was in the hallway and practically leaping the few steps between the bathroom and Jonas’s room.
She shut the door behind her, a little too loudly. Jonas looked up from his sleeping bag, where he was lying on his stomach, scrolling through something on his phone. “Lucky it’s not courtesy hours yet,” he remarked.
Brennan didn’t say anything, just sat on the edge of the bed.
Jonas watched her for a moment. “You nervous?”
“When am I not?”
“Wanna watch another Potter movie? I know you’re obviously tired since you fell asleep during the first one, so maybe it would help you to relax and fall asleep.”
“Worth a shot,” she said.
Jonas got up and put in the movie, turning on the TV. Brennan climbed into bed and pulled the covers up over her. The pillow smelled like Jonas’s shampoo—pine, peppermint, something she didn’t quite recognize. She yawned, even as the movie started to play.
She looked down at Jonas, watching as he crawled into the sleeping bag. “Don’t you—” She paused sheepishly. “Never mind.”
“What?” he said, looking up at her from the floor.
“Don’t you take your prosthesis off to sleep?”
He looked away slightly, not making eye contact. “I mean, usually,” he muttered. “But I don’t usually have people over to see me sleep.”
They were both silent for a few moments.
“You know,” said Brennan. “You can’t wear it all the time. I’m gonna see it eventually. Why not just get it over with? It’s not like it will make any difference for me to see you without it. I already know you only have one and a half legs. There’s not some secret that’s going to be suddenly out there if you take off the plastic and metal part of your leg.”
Jonas didn’t say anything, and he avoided looking at her. “I’ve kept it on before; it’s not a big deal.”
“Jonas . . .”
“Stop, Brennan.”
His tone was sharp-edged. Brennan swallowed. “I’m sorry. I’m an inconvenience.”
What felt like an eternal sixty seconds passed. “You’re not an inconvenience.”
Brennan didn’t reply, just got up and turned out the lights before returning to bed. She looked at the ceiling as the dialogue of the movie swirled in and out of her thoughts.
“Jonas?” she whispered sleepily.
“Hmm,” he muttered. She wondered if he had already been asleep.
“Good night,” she said.
“Good night.”
The snow outside made shadows on the wall as it fell past the streetlight outside the window. Brennan watched The Chamber of Secrets for a while. Jonas had his back to her now. She watched him for a moment, the rise and fall of his side as he slept, the tousle of his dark hair against the pillow, already mussed.
She closed her eyes and breathed in Jonas’s shampoo smell from the pillow, letting herself relax and fall into unconsciousness, even as Harry first heard the voice in the pipes in the movie still playing in the background.