Chapter 8: Junior Year – Dreams and Distances

The bay-window bedroom is theirs now, officially. Jordan’s mattress—once an exile from the drafty side room—has merged with Nawana’s on the floor, the resulting superbed a sinking island of flannel and mismatched pillows. Morning sunlight leans in through the half-open blinds, draping itself across the two tangled figures in a way that feels almost staged.

The new semester is winding down, and with it the war footing. Finals have been a shared siege this year: Nawana with her battered MacBook and a pile of freelance deadlines, Jordan hunched at the other desk with a rainbow of highlighters and a flesh-colored anatomical model that watches everything with a blank, anatomical stare. Some nights, Nawana wakes up to find Jordan cross-legged on the floor, reciting nerve pathways to herself and stress-eating sunflower seeds. Other nights, Jordan finds Nawana slumped over her sketchpad, face pressed into the paper as if she could breathe art directly from the source.

They’ve learned the rituals of survival. The red velvet couch is now the designated “argument zone”—fights stay there, never in bed. The Google calendar has color codes: blue for therapy, red for date night, green for deadlines, purple for “leave each other the fuck alone.” On Sundays, they do the grocery shopping together, alternating who gets to pick the junk food. Whoever wins gets to choose the week’s background noise—Jordan always picks music, Nawana always picks cartoons, and the compromise is usually lo-fi beats and anime reruns.

But some rituals are sacred, and these are the ones they hold closest—Tuesday night ramen, eaten on the windowsill with their legs hanging out over the Fire escape. Friday mornings at the bakery across from campus—one cheese danish, one black coffee, shared over a crossword Jordan always fills in halfway and leaves for Nawana to finish. And the unspoken rule that after every fight, no matter how loud or bitter, they must touch—pinkies linked, hands on each other’s backs, a single breath shared in the hallway or under the kitchen light.

Today is Thursday. Nawana is awake first, as usual. She lies on her stomach, drawing with a blunt pencil in the margin of her sketchbook, listening to Jordan’s sleep-breath rattle the pillow. The page is already crowded: an abstract tangle of hands and teeth and antlers, some Cherokee symbol she’s half-remembering and half-inventing. She’s trying to capture the feeling of yesterday’s therapy session, where she told the grad student that loving someone was like “letting a wolf bite you on purpose, just to see how long you can hold on.” The grad student had nodded, written it down, and asked, “Does it hurt?” Nawana had said, “That’s the point.”

Jordan groans, rolling over. She blinks at Nawana, dark hair a snarl across her face, then groans again and pulls the covers over her head. “It’s too early,” comes the muffled protest.

“It’s nine,” Nawana says. “You have class.”

Jordan’s arm emerges, flails for her phone, then withdraws. “Cancel the sun.”

“Sorry, can’t,” Nawana says, propping herself up on an elbow. “It’s union rules.”