Friction

The radiator clicked twice before settling into a low, uneven hiss.

Claire adjusted the edge of her notebook until it aligned with the corner of her desk. The movement was small, precise. Necessary.

Across the room, a page turned.

Not loudly. Just enough.

She kept her eyes on the line she’d been reading. The sentence blurred halfway through. She started again.

Another page.

Fabric shifted—cotton against cotton. A sleeve, maybe. Or the edge of a shirt dragging lightly across skin.

Claire’s grip tightened on her pen.

She didn’t look up.

Didn’t need to.

Rowan’s presence sat in the room like a second temperature—subtle, constant, impossible to ignore once noticed.

Claire pressed the pen harder into the page. The ink darkened. Bled slightly at the curve of a letter.

She exhaled, slow.

“Do you have a black one?”

The question landed without warning.

Claire looked up.

Rowan sat cross-legged on her bed, one knee angled outward, a book open in her lap. Her hair fell forward slightly, catching the light from the window. She didn’t look away when Claire met her eyes.

“A pen,” Rowan added, lifting her own. “This one’s dying.”

Claire nodded once. “Yes.”

She reached for the holder on her desk.

At the same time, Rowan stood.

The distance between them closed too quickly.

Claire turned back with the pen already in her hand.

Rowan reached.

Their hands met.

Not fully. Not even deliberately.

The back of Rowan’s fingers brushed against Claire’s knuckles—light, accidental, and immediate.

Still.

Neither of them moved.

The contact held for a fraction too long.

Claire felt it register—first as awareness, then as something sharper. Her breath caught before she could stop it. The air shifted, pulled tighter between them.

Rowan didn’t pull away.

Her hand stayed where it was, fingers curved slightly around the space where the pen should have been.

Claire’s pulse climbed.

It wasn’t pressure. Not exactly. More like proximity—too close, too sudden, too present.

She could feel the warmth of Rowan’s skin.

Could feel where it ended.

Rowan’s gaze dropped briefly to their hands.

Then back up.

There was no apology in her expression. No urgency to correct the moment.

Just recognition.

Claire swallowed.

Her fingers loosened.

Rowan took the pen.

The contact broke.

The air snapped back into place—wider, cooler, empty in a way it hadn’t been before.

“Thanks,” Rowan said.

Claire nodded.

She stepped back, just enough to restore the distance. The line of the rug sat clearly between them again.

Rowan returned to her bed, settling into the same loose position as before. She clicked the pen once, testing it, then set it aside in favour of the book already in her hands.

The page turned.

Claire sat down.

Her notebook waited exactly where she’d left it.

She picked up her pen—her pen—and forced her attention back to the line in front of her.

The words still didn’t hold.

Her hand hovered above the page.

She flexed her fingers once.

The sensation lingered.

Not the touch itself—too brief to leave anything real—but the memory of it. The awareness of where it had been. The way her breath had shifted without permission.

Claire pressed her palm flat against the desk.

The wood was cool. Solid.

She focused on that instead.

Across the room, Rowan shifted again. The mattress creaked softly under her weight.

Claire didn’t look.

Didn’t need to.

She could map the movement anyway—the angle of Rowan’s body, the line of her shoulders, the way she occupied the space without adjusting to it.

Without asking.

Claire’s jaw tightened.

She drew a line through the sentence she’d been trying to read and started again beneath it.

The letters came out cleaner this time. More controlled.

But her handwriting had changed.

Slightly tighter.

More pressure in each stroke.

She paused.

Looked down at the page.

Then, without thinking, glanced up.

Rowan was already looking at her.

Not directly—her eyes flicked away a second too late, dropping back to the book in her lap.

But the shift had been there.

Claire saw it.

Felt it, again, in the space between them.

Not contact.

Not distance either.

Something held in between.

Claire lowered her gaze.

Pressed her pen to the page.

And tried, unsuccessfully, to forget exactly how close Rowan had been.