“And you walked in those?”

I stopped just inside the balcony door.

Geonsu was sitting forward on the couch, staring at a pair of my mom’s old heels as if she had shown him medieval torture equipment.

“And more than walked.” My mom lifted one of them by the ankle strap. “I danced in these.”

Geonsu looked from the shoe to her. Apparently, fifteen minutes had been enough for Geonsu to end up several meters deeper in Becker family history than I had intended.

Cynthia already had another pair on.

“These were my favorites,” she said, turning one foot to admire them. “I borrowed them constantly.”

“You tried to steal them constantly,” my mom corrected.

“Because you wouldn’t give them to me!”

“They were limited edition!”

Romina, who had decided observing wasn’t enough, stepped into a pair of red heels and immediately pitched sideways toward the coffee table. My mom caught both of her hands while Cynthia doubled over laughing.

Geonsu was halfway off the couch as if he had been prepared to catch her too, then slowly sat back down when it became clear she wasn’t going to die.

By the time dessert came out, nobody bothered returning to the table. We gathered around the coffee table instead, some of us on the couch and the rest on the floor, passing around tiramisu and whatever remained of the alcohol.

Sometime around three, Romina and Cynthia fell asleep on opposite ends of the couch, defeated by the tequila they had insisted on finishing.

My mom started gathering glasses while Alex cleared the table. Geonsu followed me into the kitchen with an armful of plates before anybody could tell him not to.

I followed him into the kitchen and moved beside him at the sink.

He washed while I rinsed, which worked until we both reached for the same plate and knocked our hands together. Geonsu pulled his back, smiled and handed it to me instead.

It happened again a few dishes later. By then, I had started noticing something else.

Eucalyptus.

It was faint at first, enough that I thought I had imagined it. The scent had been completely absent all evening, just as it had been when I visited him at Toscana. Over the next few minutes, however, it gradually became easier to pick out whenever he moved beside me.

I remembered what I had heard at Toscana while waiting for him.

“Your suppressants are wearing off.”

Geonsu looked at me. “You noticed?”

“A little.”

“Sorry.”

“Why are you apologizing?”

He smiled and returned to the plate in his hands.

His scent didn’t bother me.

I hadn’t enjoyed another person’s pheromones since Johan. Even thinking about that should have been enough to make me uncomfortable, but Geonsu’s were warm and familiar by then, eucalyptus slipping through the smell of dish soap, coffee and whatever remained of dinner.

My own scent had stayed close to my skin most of the night. I let a little more of it go, just to see if he would notice.

Geonsu’s hands stopped beneath the water. When I looked sideways, he was already looking at me.

Neither of us said anything. After a second, he lowered his eyes and resumed washing the plate.

“Why did you take them tonight?” I asked. “You’re not working.”

“I didn’t know who would be here.” He passed me another plate. “Or if your family had secondary sexes. I didn’t want to walk into somebody else’s apartment smelling up the place.”

“They’re all Betas…” I rinsed the plate and placed it on the rack. “I thought dominant Alphas had better control.” A light chuckle escaped me.

“Usually. Yeah, sometimes…” He kept his eyes on the sink. “Things make it difficult.”

“Like wha–”

“You.”

I slowly turned toward him.

Geonsu’s eyes widened slightly. The warm water continued running between us while his fingers tightened around the plate until his knuckles turned white. His mouth opened, then closed again.

Nothing came out. I couldn’t think of anything to say either.

The water kept running between us, loud enough that I could barely hear my mom and Alex moving around in the living room.

You.

I liked the answer. That realization came first. The anxiety followed so quickly that my stomach turned.

Heat spread beneath my shirt and into my face. I gripped the edge of the counter, suddenly too aware of how close we were standing and of the scents lingering between us.

Geonsu’s expression changed. He shut off the water.

“Are you okay?”

“Yeah.” I swallowed. “I think I drank too much.”

He didn’t move toward me. Instead, he stepped away from the sink and opened the kitchen window. Cold air rushed over my arms.

“Do you need to sit down?”

“No. It’s just… warm in here.”

He stayed near the window. I breathed slowly until the nausea settled enough for me to loosen my grip on the counter.

I wanted him farther away. I didn’t want him to leave.

My mom and Alex came into the kitchen, carrying the remaining glasses. Geonsu glanced at the time and immediately reached for the towel beside the sink.

“I should probably go. Thank you for having me,” he said to my mom. “I had a really good time.”

“You’re leaving already?” She looked at the clock herself. “Oh. Never mind. Jesus.”

Geonsu laughed.

“Come here.”

She pulled him into a hug before he had much opportunity to prepare for it. Geonsu stiffened for half a second before laughing again and returning it.

“Thank you for coming,” she said. 

When she released him, there was a faint mark from her lipstick on his cheek.

Alex nodded toward him, one corner of his mouth pulling into a slight smile. “Get home safe.” 

“Thanks. And thank you for tonight.”

Their eyes stayed on each other for a moment longer than the goodbye required. Then Geonsu looked at me. My eyes went immediately to the lipstick on his cheek.

“You have…” I pointed at my own cheek. “Lipstick. On the right side.”

Geonsu lifted his hand, but before he found it, I reached up and rubbed it away with my thumb.

His eyes came back to mine.

“Text me when you get home,” I said.

“I will,” he whispered.

Geonsu pulled on his coat and wrapped the new scarf around his neck. Seeing it on him did something strange to my chest that I chose not to examine.

“Good night.”

“Good night.”

I stayed by the open door while he walked down the stairs. Halfway to the next landing, he looked back.

I was still standing there. He smiled and then he continued downstairs. I waited until I heard the main entrance close before shutting our door.

I couldn’t sleep all night. I tried until the light outside my window started changing.

I turned onto my side, then onto my stomach. I pulled the blanket around myself until I was sweating beneath it, only to throw it off because the weight suddenly felt unbearable. I moved my pillows. Changed them back. Put one beneath my knees and another against my chest.

By morning, I was sitting in the middle of my bed with the sheets twisted around my legs and an agitation beneath my skin that wouldn’t let me stay still.

I knew what it was. The realization made my eyes burn.

“No…” I got out of bed and locked my bedroom door.

At first, I tried to be deliberate about it. I pulled the duvet from the bed and folded it against the wall. Pillows went around it, then another blanket over the top. I added two sweaters where my shoulders would rest and crawled into the middle.

My body rejected it immediately.

A sob escaped me.

I pressed both hands against my eyes and stayed there until the pressure hurt.

“Stop… Please.”

By then I wasn’t folding anything. I pulled clothes from my wardrobe and threw them onto the bed, searching through them with both hands. Shirts. Sweaters. Another blanket. I stripped the pillowcases off because suddenly I couldn’t tolerate the texture beneath my face. One of them wouldn’t come free quickly enough and I yanked until the seam tore.

The sound made me freeze. I stared at the fabric in my hands. Then I started crying.

I sat on the floor surrounded by half my wardrobe and cried until my chest hurt, furious with myself because I knew what I was doing and still couldn’t make my hands stop.

My knees started aching from kneeling on the floor. My shoulders hurt from dragging the mattress partly away from the wall and pushing it back when the gap bothered me. The tips of my fingers burned. When I looked at them, the skin around my nails was swollen and red, one cuticle split far enough that a thin line of blood had appeared beside the nail.

I sucked it away and reached for another blanket.

I couldn’t stop. My muscles tightened. My skin prickled. My heart raced as if something terrible would happen if I didn’t fix the nest.

I buried my face in one of the bed sheets. Nothing. I expected…

The thought made my stomach drop.

Eucalyptus.

I could remember Geonsu’s scarf around my face on the way to the precinct. The faint scent trapped deep inside the fabric. The way I had breathed it in and, without intending to, taken another breath.

“No…” My voice cracked.

That was when I really broke down.

I ripped through everything I had already thrown aside, crying hard enough that I could barely breathe. I knew I wasn’t going to find anything. Every drawer I opened proved it again. Every shirt I dragged against my face smelled wrong.

I dropped onto my knees beside the bed and pressed both hands against my head. 

“Please stop…”

I heard my mom and Alex farther down the hallway. They spoke quietly enough that I couldn’t understand them.

Then my mom sat down outside my door. I knew because I heard her back touch it. She didn’t ask me to open it. She stayed there.

I lost track of when the second day started.

There were bottles of water outside my door. My mom told me every time she replaced them.

My lips split from how dry they were. My head hurt constantly. Standing made black spots creep into the edges of my vision, so I started moving around the room on my knees whenever I could. I still rearranged things. My hands hurt so badly that gripping fabric became difficult.

At some point, I noticed blood on a pale shirt and stared at it without understanding where it came from.

I lasted perhaps two seconds before I started to cry again.

By the third day, I stopped knowing how long I had been awake.

My mom’s voice came through the door sometimes. Alex’s did too. I answered when I could. Other times, I heard them and couldn’t make myself speak.

The nest had finally stopped changing.

I lay inside it with my knees pulled against my stomach, too exhausted to move anything else. My fingers throbbed against my chest. Every few breaths, my body shivered despite the heat trapped beneath the blankets.

The scent my body wanted was somewhere I couldn’t reach. Again.

My body gave up before my instinct did.

I fell asleep.

I stayed inside the nest for another few hours after waking, waiting.

Experience had taught me not to trust the first moment of clarity. Every now and then, I touched something near me and waited for the restlessness to return, for my body to tell me the blanket was wrong or the shirt beneath my arm needed to be moved.

Nothing happened.

Eventually, thirst became stronger than everything else. I unlocked the door. A bottle of water was sitting on the floor outside. I drank most of it on the way to the bathroom.

The shower hurt. Water found every split in the skin around my fingers, and shampoo stung beneath my nails badly enough that I had to stop twice. I stayed underneath the water anyway, until my hair was clean and I no longer smelled like several days spent buried beneath my own clothes.

When I came back, my bedroom door was open.

My mom was already inside.

She had stripped the bed and was sitting on the floor, sorting my clothes into piles.

“I left clean clothes on my bed,” she said. “I’ll wash these and make yours again. Can you pick up the books later?”

“Yeah.”

She nodded and reached for another shirt. There was something unbearable about how normal she made it look every time it happened.

The torn pillowcase went into one pile. The shirt with the spots of dried blood went into another. She picked up one of my sweaters, checked whether it needed washing and folded it over her arm.

“Mom…” My throat closed. I started crying.

My face crumpled and I covered it with my hands, only to pull them away when the pressure hurt my fingers.

My mom stood immediately. “Oh, baby.”

I went to her and buried my face against her shoulder. Her arms tightened around me.

That made me cry harder.

“I’ll call my doctor,” I whispered.

She rubbed the back of my head. “Okay.”

My mom finished gathering the clothes while I changed in her room. When I came into the kitchen, Alex had already reheated some of the leftovers and left a glass of water beside the plate.

I managed to eat more than I expected. My stomach protested at first, but hunger eventually won, and by the time I finished, my mom had started another load of laundry.

I checked my phone.

There were several messages from Romina and a few notifications I didn’t care enough to open. I answered the ones that needed answering and left the rest for later.

Geonsu’s name was farther down. I opened our conversation.

The last message was still from Christmas night, letting me know he had gotten home. Nothing after that.

I stared at it for a while. Relief came first. I hadn’t answered anybody for days. At least I didn’t have to explain to him why.

Still, my thumb remained over his name. I wondered if he had thought about me. The question embarrassed me enough that I locked my phone and placed it facedown beside my plate.

I opened our conversation once more.

You.

I could still hear exactly how he had said it. I looked toward the door even though nobody was there. Then I typed.

[Are you working tomorrow?]

I stared at the message. My thumb hovered over the arrow. I deleted it. Put my phone down. Picked it up again.

[Are you working tomorrow?]

This time, I sent it.

It vibrated less than a minute later.

[Yes. Why? :)]