“Elena–slow down!” Adelia calls from behind me, out of breath. I decided to race her to my house.

“Nuh-uh, slow poke!”

Suddenly, I’m pulled back, and next thing I know, Adelia is ahead of me.

“Cheater!” I shout after her.

Everything passes by me in a blur. I’m running faster than I ever have, I think.

Adelia stops in front of my house, hands on her knees, panting. “Is this it? You said it was house sixteen…”

“Mhm!” I scoot past Adelia and, grabbing the house key from my jeans pocket, I unlock the door.

“Take off your shoes,” is the first thing I say when Adelia steps in.

We take off our shoes together, my shoes the classic Air Force 1’s, Adelia’s Doc Martens boots.

Dropping our stuff by the stairs, I close the front door and give Adelia a mini tour of the house.

“Your house feels so…homey. But proper at the same time. I’m scared to touch anything,” Adelia seems a bit astonished as she analyzes a painting hanging over the couch in the living room.

“I mean, it’s not meant to feel that proper, for lack of better words. You can touch stuff, but just be careful.”

“I’d rather not.”

I find myself grinning. She’s so respectful of everything.

The next place I lead Adelia is upstairs, where I show her my room.

“You said your room is boring?” is the first thing Adelia says as soon as she catches sight of my room.

I rub the back of my neck, chuckling. “Yeah, I guess. Haha.”

“It’s not! It’s so aesthetic,” Adelia sighs. “Mind if I sit on your bed?”

“Be my guest.”

Adelia sits down on my bed, carefully, as if she’s afraid the bed would collapse under her weight.

“What’s so aesthetic about my room?”

Adelia points up to the walls. “The fairy lights with polaroid pictures hanging from them.” She points at my curtains. “The vines hanging from your sheer white curtains, which also have fairy lights.” She points to my night stand. “The candles.” She points at the posters hanging over my bed. “The post–”

“Okay, okay, I get it,” I laugh, covering her mouth with my hand. Until I remember that getting very close makes Adelia uncomfortable.

I drop my hand. “Sorry.”

Adelia looks genuinely confused. “About what?”

“Getting…too close. Remember what you said earlier?”

Adelia pinches the bridge of her nose. “I said to forget that! I don’t always feel that way anyway; just forget it!”

“Okay.”

I take a seat next to her, cracking my knuckles. “Sooo, what now?”

“I thought we were here to study, not to hang out.”

“I mean…do we really have to? I know the lab rules like the back of my hand.”

“But I have other homework to do. We have that algebra homework. And I don’t know about you, but I also have history homework.”

I roll my eyes. “Ugh, fine. How about we make this our compromise,” I lean into Adelia a little. I don’t know why, but I like being very close to her. “We do our work for twenty five minutes, take a ten minute break, then keep repeating that cycle until we’re done with our work. Deal?” I stick my hand out, waiting for Adelia to shake it like we’re making a business agreement.

“Deal,” Adelia takes my hand and shakes it firmly.

After setting a timer, we end up doing algebra homework for twenty five minutes with hardly any chatter, apart from the occasional, “what did you get for this question” and “can you help me with this question?”

When the alarm to the timer goes off, Adelia stretches, and I roll onto my back. We’re sitting on the floor, on my plush green rug.

“Is green your favorite color?” Adelia looks down at my rug.

“No. Pink is. I just got this in green because I needed a variety of pastel colors in my room. Also, it looks like grass, which I like.”

“Ah.”

I tuck a strand of hair behind my ear. “So, I was thinking…want to stay over for dinner? My parents wouldn’t mind. That is, if you and your parents are okay with that,” I add.

“Sure! I’ll ask.” Adelia whips out her phone and immediately begins texting.

For the next five minutes, we just sit in silence, staring at each other.

I don’t know why, but I can’t help thinking about what it would be like to be in Adelia’s arms. I really want to hug her. Why am I like this?

Adelia smiles timidly at me. For the first time, I notice that she has dimples.

I reach out and poke her in the cheek, right where one of her dimples is.

“Yup, that’s my dimple,” Adelia nods her head.

“You have a really pretty smile. And cute dimples.” I squeeze her cheeks together.

“Hey! Stop that!” Adelia protests, giggling.

“Nuh uh.”

Adelia’s face grows red, and as I feel my face turn a bit red, I immediately drop my hand from her face. Self-consciously, I look at my hand, like I just touched something I shouldn’t have. What’s wrong with me?

We sit in awkward silence for a few moments until Adelia’s phone buzzes. “Must be my mom!” she exclaims, pulling her phone out and begins to text furiously.

“What’s the verdict?”

“She said I can stay over for dinner!”

“Yay! Have you ever tried Romanian food?”

“Nope! I have no idea what it tastes like.”

I feel my cheeks, which just turned back to their normal pale shade, go red.

Adelia must’ve realized what she said, because she laughs awkwardly and says, “Sorry. That sounded weirdly sexual. I didn’t mean it that way.”

“Don’t worry! It’s fine. I do the same thing a lot, especially since English isn’t my first language.

“But I haven’t heard you say anything like that yet.”

“Yeah, because I haven’t found the right opportunity to mess up what I’m going to say. But just you watch; I will slip up sometime.”

“Okay. I’d love to see that happen.”

I forgot I put a five minute timer on; when the alarm blares, I jump slightly. Adelai cackles at this.

“Really? It’s just an alarm!”

“I’m flighty, okay! I jump at everything. Get used to it.”

We return to our work, this time Adelia doing her history homework, while I just lay around, this time on my belly, pretending to study the lab safety notes, when in the end I keep thinking about Adelia.

I really like her…as a friend, obviously. I love spending time with her. I know we just met less than a week ago but…I seriously think we could be, like, life-long friends. It’s amazing how we just clicked when we first met. I’m happy I have her in my life. I–

“Elena?” Adelia blinks at me.

“Huh? Did you say something?”

“No, but you were staring at me.” Adelia smiles a bit uncomfortably.

“Oh,” I look down at my hands, which are clutched. Not so smooth.

“Are you okay? It seems like something is on your mind.”

“N-no. I’m fine!”

Adelia looks at me for a few seconds, though it feels much longer than that, and then she returns to her work.

“Elena! sunt acasă!”

“Oh, that must be Mam–I mean–my mom.”

“Okay.” Adelia doesn’t look up from her computer, where she’s busy typing away.

Standing up, I head downstairs to greet Mamă.

“Bună ziua! Ce faci?” Mamă questions as she slips her shoes off and places them in the shoe storage cabinet.

“Hi, I’m not doing anything.”

Mamă looks at me inquisitively. “Este totul în regulă?” Is everything okay?

“Da–yeah. Listen,” I begin, and Mamă leans in to hear me, since I dropped my voice pretty low. “I invited Adelia over so we could study together. I didn’t think you’d mind. Is that okay?”

Mamă’s face crumples. “That’s fine, but next time ask me, okay? You know I don’t really like you inviting people over without telling me.”

“Sorry,” I shrug.

“It’s okay. Is she staying for dinner?”

“Yeah,” and with that, I head back upstairs.

When I enter the room, I see Adelia packing her backpack. A sudden fear grips my chest. Don’t go. I want you to be here.

“Hey,” Adelia says, looking up.

“Hi. Are you…are you leaving?” 

“No! I’m just putting all my school stuff away. I just finished my homework.”

Phew. “Oh, alright. Good!”

“You know…” Adelia begins, criss crossing her legs, wringing her hands. “You should play me a song or two on your ukulele.”

While Adelia grins, I can feel my core go warm. Don’t mess this up. You have to sound perfect.

I grab the case containing my ukulele, and, pulling it out, I quickly tune it, then I sit across from Adelia on the floor, holding the ukulele as if I’m about to play it, which I am. “What song do you want me to play?”

“Hmmm,” Adelia considers. “You know how to play Clairo, right? And Beabadoobee?”

“Yeah.”

“Do you know how to play “Eleanor and Park” by Girl in Red and Beabadoobee.

She knows that song too? “Yeah! That’s one of my favorite songs. I played it non-stop when I just moved to the States.”

“Ooh, nice! I love that song too.”

“I thought you were more of a rock person,” I tease, practicing switching between the chords of the song really quickly.

“Yeah, but I also really like indie and some pop. Just because I prefer genres like rock and alternative rock doesn’t mean that I don’t have a wide taste in genres. I’m not that boring.”

“I didn’t say you were! You’re anything but a boring person. I love spending time with you!” I exclaim. Maybe it’s just me, but Adelia seems to go a little pink when I say that.

I begin to play the song, and as soon as I do, Adelia goes quiet. Not only does she go quiet; it feels as if the whole house has gone silent, going from soft whispers to the kind of silence and calm before a storm.

I play with all my heart, strumming enthusiastically, and as I do, I look at Adelia, who’s swaying to the music, her mouth agape with shock and happiness.

As soon as I’m done playing, Adelia whoops and claps, all smiley. “That was amazing! You’re really great at playing the ukulele.”

I blush at that. Why do I blush so much around Adelia? “T-thank you,” I stammer, at a loss for words. Adelia is looking at me like I’m the most beautiful person to exist. Or maybe it’s in my head. 

“Elena!” Mamă calls from the bottom of the stairs.

“Da?”

“Engleză, te rog frumos,” Mamă says sternly. “English. Not everyone here speaks Romanian.”

At that, Adelia shifts slightly uncomfortably on the floor. “It’s okay,” she whispers. “You guys can speak Romanian.” I shake my head and mouth “no.”

“Îmi pare–I mean, sorry, Mamă,” I call back. “What is it?”

“I wanted to ask what Adelia wants to eat. We can order pizza or something.”

I glance over at Adelia. “Do you want that? Or do you want to try some Romanian food?”

Adelia looks down at the rug, tracing nonsensical patterns on it with the tip of her pale pointer finger. “Romanian food.”

“Mamă, she wants to try some Romanian food!”

“But I’d prefer to give her something fresh. Why not just order pizza?”

“Does it matter that it’d just be reheated? The food, I mean,” I question Adelia. She looks up at me. “No, it doesn’t matter. I just really want to try your food! Sounds like it could be good.”

I chuckle. “It sure is good.”

“Elena?”

“Da–sorry, Mamă. Adelia says she doesn’t mind that it’s not fresh. She’s intent on trying Romanian food.”

“Oh, alright. Dinner will be at around six, is that okay?”

“Yeah!” I reply when Adelia nods at me reassuringly.

“Okay. I’ll let you two be.”

I look back at Adelia, who is staring at me. “What?”

“No, nothing…I just think it’s so cool that you speak Romanian. I know you didn’t really speak it just now, but the few words you did speak–it was just cool,” Adelia picks at the rug self-consciously. She looks embarrassed.

“Oh, so you like that I can speak Romanian?” I smile sheepishly.

“Um, I mean, it’s cool.”

“Nah, you really do like it!” I crawl over to Adelia and sit right next to her, resting my hand on her shoulder.

Adelia squirms. “Y-yeah. I just don’t know anyone other than Sarai who is multilingual. I think being multilingual is a great thing”

“Attractive?” I question, lowering my voice.

Adelia’s eyes widen. “I mean, yeah. But I don’t like you in that way.”

My heart sinks when she says that. I don’t know why. “No, I mean, uh, I wasn’t suggesting that! I just wondered…” Ugh. I really messed this one up.

“Never mind,” I mutter, turning away.

Out of the corner of my eye, I see Adelia’s mouth open, as if she wants to say something, but then she closes her mouth, clenching her jaw.

We end up sitting in awkward silence for a few minutes, neither of us looking at each other or moving. Why did you have to go off and say something like that? Why did you have to mess this up? I scream at myself in my head.

“We…should do something. Dinner won’t be ready for a while, will it?” Adelia asks, breaking the silence and the tension.

“Sure. What do you want to do?”

Adelia tucks a strand of hair behind her ear. Copycat. “Can you play me more ukulele? I really like it when you play. It sounds really nice and soothing.”

“Sure,” I reply.