The Ecosystem

Overwhelmed By The Chaos

Cotton set her mug down. Her hands were shaking.

“I don’t know how to do this,” she said. “I don’t know how to be a person without a script.”

“You’re doing it right now,” Jasmin said. “You’re complaining about my furniture. That’s a start.”

Cotton laughed. It was a wet, ragged sound. She covered her face with her hands.

“I’m so tired,” she said. Muffled. Honest.

She felt the couch dip. Jasmin moved closer. She didn’t touch Cotton. She just sat in the space beside her.

“Then sleep,” Jasmin said.

Cotton lowered her hands. “Here?”

“The couch pulls out. It’s terrible for your back, but it’s horizontal.”

Cotton looked at Jasmin. “You’d let me stay?”

“I’m offering,” Jasmin said. “You can say no.”

Cotton looked at the door. It was raining harder now. Her apartment was twenty minutes away. It was clean. It was quiet. It was empty.

She looked at the sagging couch. At the mismatched socks. At Jasmin, waiting without expectation.

“I’ll stay,” Cotton said.

The Aftermath

They didn’t have sex.

Jasmin gave Cotton a t-shirt to sleep in. It was soft, worn thin, and smelled like Jasmin.

They pulled out the couch. They wrestled with the sheets. They brushed their teeth side-by-side in the tiny bathroom.

When the lights went out, the room was dark, but not pitch black. The streetlights filtered through the blinds, casting stripes on the floor.

Cotton lay on her back, staring at the ceiling. She could hear Jasmin breathing on the other side of the mattress.

It wasn’t a ritual. It wasn’t a sacrament.

It was a sleepover.

And for the first time, Cotton didn’t feel like a priestess in a temple.

She felt like a guest in a home.