New hypothesis: sleep is a drug.

During the aftermath of my breakup, when I felt anxiety wrapping its skeletal fingers around my throat every waking minute, when I looked to my future and saw nothing but broken promises and emptiness and lies, sleep became as much a crutch as any other drug. Some days, it was all I thought about—a glorious promise, a golden beacon that got me from one gray hour to the next. Tuning out the world gets addictive. Dangerously so.

My favorite part was a sliver of time in the morning, right before I woke up, when my mind would linger between consciousness and nothingness. I knew that I was in my bed, safe in my room, but fragments of dreams still fluttered behind my eyelids. My body felt light. Detached. As if I wasn't even real; as if my problems existed in another universe, dancing and twining light-years away.

That's exactly where I was when consciousness started filtering in the next morning—in a pocket between something and nothing. I eased into the soft mattress below me, gripping my pillow as if doing so would help me stay under for a little while longer. Just a little while longer.

But I felt like my head was floating. Up and down. Up and down. Like my pillow was alive. Like it was dancing beneath my head. It was soft and firm all at the same time. I smiled, tracing a finger mindlessly over its cotton pattern.

It responded. Like it was human.

Eli, my sleep-addled mind told me. Warmth surged through me, a lovely glow encasing my heart. Why did that feel strange, feel foreign? I burrowed into him, into his chest, my hand resting atop his ridges of hard muscle. Hard—but he responded to my caress. Eli's arm came around me, a broad hand settling on my lower back and nudging me closer, cradling me gently.

Far more gently than he usually did.

Love with Eli was nothing if not constant touches and physical declarations. It all only intensified after the first time we'd slept together—the first time we'd broken our years-long vow of chastity. And ... he smelled different. No sea, no brine. He smelled fresh, like citrus and grass cuttings and something spicy, something addictive. I leaned in closer, and when a sleepy groan slipped out of his lips, I smiled and pressed the softest kiss to his chest.

His breathing turned shallow. I grinned, my eyes still closed, kissing him through his shirt again. And again. One glancing peck after the other, slow and soft and lower and lower, only ...

Sense rocked through me. Only ... no. No. I didn't want to kiss Eli. I didn't want to cuddle Eli, or be held by Eli, because Eli had lied and cheated and broken my heart. This wasn't real. Or maybe it was real, but ...

My eyes sprung open. Horror burrowed under my skin. I wasn't in my bed at home. I wasn't even in my dorm room at Camden. I wasn't cuddling Eli, and my head certainly wasn't on my pillow.

James was my pillow.

I was cuddling—and kissing—James.

I bolted upright, the abruptness of the movement causing my vision to cloud over in white, bright flashes. I pressed a hand to my head, shading my eyes from the morning light streaming in from the window behind me. The memory of a hollow pain danced through my fingertips, nagging through the drowsiness cloaking my mind.

"Morning, Watson," James uttered, his voice raspier than usual.

I jerked around to face him, my vision slowly rethreading. He was peering at me through his golden hair—not a single strand disturbed during his slumber, might I add. A stark contrast to mine, I realized bitterly, which had tangled itself into a complete bird's nest.

"Why did you let me sleep here?" I asked.

He rolled onto his side, propping himself up onto his arm. His arm, corded with muscle, tensed under the weight, and it occurred to me that that arm had just been slung over my waist. Occurred to me at the exact moment that the flipping in my stomach curled a bit lower.

James' chiseled features glistened in the morning sun as he drew a long, sobering breath, still seemingly caught on the fringes of content nothingness himself. The beginnings of light stubble dotted his sharp jawline. "Would you have preferred it if I kicked you out?" he asked, voice ruffled by sleep. "Threw you into the hall?"

I reined in an eye roll, but amusement flashed in his sleepy eyes, the outline of a charming smile teasing his lips, like he sensed my irritation—and like he liked that he'd gotten under my skin. Actually, I didn't know how a person could possibly look that charming first thing in the morning. How long had he been awake? Oh, god, did he ...

My stomach knotted, then sunk. Did he feel me snuggling into him? Kissing him? It'd been a game between Eli and me; whoever woke up first would kiss the other one awake. I hated that I'd reverted to such an old, stupid habit. Hated that I'd done it with James. Oh, god. Oh god god god—

"Besides," he added, "you're so pleasant when you're sleeping. It was a nice change."

And there goes the charm.

Heat pricked my cheeks, his inference registering in my brain. An image of me, asleep, nestled into that far-too-small space between James and his bedroom wall. An image of him, probably irritated as all hell, having to put up with me practically pinning him down to the bed for the sake of civility.

I scanned the room, trying to look anywhere but at James or his stupidly handsome grin. Dex's bed was empty, but the jacket he'd worn on his date with Holly was draped over his desk chair. Which meant that, at some point, he'd been back. He'd seen us.

I was mortified. I wanted to throw James' expensive quilt over my head and die.

Instead, I turned to reach for my phone, masking my embarrassment behind my tangled hair.

A knot of dread tangled in my stomach as I recovered my mobile, the memory of what had transpired between James and Elijah racing through my mind. There was a very good chance that Eli, in true Eli style, had flooded me with angry text messages during the night. There was an even better chance of him running to my mother and her berating me on his behalf. And then she would ask about James, and why he was in my room, and ... Oh, God.

I swallowed my fear and dared myself to press down on the home button. To my surprise, though, the screen remained black. I pressed it again. Still, nothing.

I groaned loudly. Of course. My impromptu journey into dreamland meant that I'd probably left my phone on all night. AKA, I hadn't charged it. AKA, the battery was drained. The only thing worse than facing those inevitable texts was not facing them, was lingering in the unknown as my fears spiraled and dread compounded. Why, why, why had I fallen asleep?

"Jeez," James mused from his side of the bed. "It's later than I thought."

I turned to follow the sound of his voice. He was in the middle of lifting his tee-shirt over his head, a new one clutched and ready in his left hand.

I couldn't stop my eyes from peering down, from tracing the shadows that emphasized every sculpted stomach muscle. Abs. Literal abs. Ohmygoodness there were abs under there, inches below where my fingers had been seconds before. And my lips ... My lips—

James cleared his throat.

I looked up.

He was staring directly at me, a single eyebrow raised above his twinkling blue eyes.

For the second time that morning, I passed away.

I averted my gaze quickly, busying myself by looking down at my phone for the time. Forgetting that it, too, was dead. Good thing it was—it was the only asset I owned worthy of putting in my last will and testament.

"Do you want to get something to eat?" James asked.

I dared to turn around, finding him fully clothed and sitting back down on the bed. But the knowledge of what lingered underneath his black shirt caused my heart to flop in my chest. Weird.

I furrowed my brow, playing it oh-so-cool. "What time is it?"

"Ten-thirty."

I nodded. But just as I was about to entertain his breakfast invitation, another thought hit me. Another thought entirely.

Oh, no.

Oh, shit.

"Fuck," I yelped, jumping over James and frightening him in the process.

His groggy eyes followed me as I scurried to the mirror on his closet door, desperately trying to straighten out my outfit and hair. It was no use. If James looked like the Statue of David, then I for sure looked like a disassembled gargoyle.

He jerked forwards, his face contorting with concern. "Your hand—"

"I'm fine," I snapped far too harshly, my anxiety at an all-time high.

He clamped his mouth shut. "What's wrong?"

What wasn't?

"What's wrong?" I repeated. I choked on an irritated breath, wiping the remnants of black, smudged eyeliner from under my eyes. "Some of us were supposed to be in class"—I conferred his alarm clock—"an hour and a half ago!"

It wasn't just any class that morning, either. It was Devi's class. And what a fine way to make an impression. Hey, Professor, please give me the internship. I'm perpetually late and look like I just rolled out of a guy's bed ... because I just did.

James winced, combing through his stupidly perfect hair with his hand. "Oh. Whoops—"

"Yeah, whoops."

I was being a brat. I was being mean. But my embarrassment over falling asleep on him, over cuddling him and kissing him, not to mention my pathetic breakdown the night before ... It was all very quickly mixing with my sense of impending doom about hearing from my mother and Elijah, not to mention my nerves at the idea of arriving late to class. Having to trudge in through the front, no doubt having every eye trace me to my seat, all the while knowing that Devi was taking a mental note of my unreliability ...

I wanted to be invisible. And James saw me.

I spun on my heel to face him, more so to avoid looking at my dreary reflection than anything else. "You should've woken me! You shouldn't have let me sleep here."

He flinched slightly, his eyes widening just enough to convey his shock. He clicked his tongue against the roof of his mouth.

"Well, sorry." He didn't sound sorry at all. "It won't happen again, that's for sure."

The simmering embers of anger and embarrassment and heartbreak inside me scorched at his words, and I spun around to reach for the door.

"Right," I shot. "It won't."

I hadn't spoken to my mother in three days. Three days. It was almost a new record, rivaling the five days I'd spent at Lola's house after my mother had told me that my dad had left us.

I had half a mind to be impressed with myself for ignoring her incessant calls for so long. Only half a mind, that is, because I knew that I was simply prolonging my suffering.

Avoiding Dianna Watson was like avoiding a trip to the dentist. The longer that I put it off, the more pain I'd have to endure later on. I'd also have to concoct an excuse for why I'd been ignoring her in the first place. No one ignores Dianna Watson. No one.

I had an actual excuse on Friday, at least. Professor Locksley required us to turn off our phones during biology for pracs—something about radiofrequency radiation interfering with the integrity of our work. Either that or the annoying buzzing, anyway.

"Did you hear what happened at the mixer?" a student was asking her lab partner beside me.

Since my partner and I had barely spoken long enough to exchange names, and without my phone to distract me, I had no problem listening in on their conversation. Even if I didn't necessarily want to.

"Apparently Millie hooked up with some guy from the student union," the first girl told the second, who dropped her pen with the shock of the revelation. I had no idea who Millie was, but news that she'd bagged a union rep sure was scandalous. "I mean, I know they call it a mixer," the first girl murmured, "but jeez."

"Welcome to college, babe," her lab partner replied with a giggle. "But what happened to that other guy she was seeing—the one who edits the college paper?"

The first girl shrugged, twisting her pearl necklace around her finger. "Welcome to college," she repeated slyly.

One part of me wanted to grimace. Another part was glad that somebody, at least, was making the most out of university.

It was my turn to clean the lab at the end of class. I turned my phone back on so that I could listen to some music as I worked, wiping down the benches meticulously so as not to face Professor Locksley's wrath the next week. Sure, my professor seemed kind and grandfatherly enough, but I had a feeling that he would be quick to turn on anyone who dared leave a seat out of line in his spotless lab.

Just as I was hanging the last lab coat on the wall, my music stopped abruptly. My phone was buzzing with an incoming call.

Dread swirled in my stomach. I'd been lucky to go three days without facing my mother, but I wasn't sure how much further I could push her before she drove up to campus for an in-person interrogation.

As it turned out, it wasn't my mother who was hounding me, but Dex.

"Hey D," I greeted. My voice sounded more excited than I meant it to—not a result of talking to Dex, per se, but one of not having to talk to my mother. At least, that's what I told myself.

I collected the last of my things and headed for the door, floating with a sense of relief. "Are you okay?"

"I'm amazing."

I arched an eyebrow. "Wow. Amazing, huh?"

"Holly wants to—" He cut himself off abruptly. A murmured voice was saying something incomprehensible in the background. "Oh!" Dex asked, "And how are you?"

I stumbled a step. "Fine."

"Having a good day?"

God. Was this what it was like to have a mother who spoke to me rather than at me?

I locked up the lab, balancing my textbooks. "I'm fine, Dex. What's going on?"

"Holly wants to see me again!" he said, the sentence coming out as one long word. "Tomorrow. Which means that I made it through the friend test!"

"The friend test?"

"You know," Dex exclaimed pointedly, just as I'd done when I'd told him about the texting game. "If she wants to see me again, it must mean that Mila likes me. That our group date went well."

I bit my lip as I considered whether or not to tell Dex the harsh truth. The truth being that Holly wanting to see him again wasn't necessarily a sign that he had secured her friend's approval. That sometimes we women purposely go against what our friends think, or simply ignore their advice altogether. That, somehow, rebelling against their judgment just makes everything seem more exciting.

I decided against bursting his bubble. After all, the specifics of why Holly wanted to see him again didn't matter so much. Not for the purposes of my project, at least.

"She said something about seeing a band at Rocky's. You in?"

"Me?" I repeated, a bit dubious.

"All of us! Ty can't make it, but you, me, James, Noah. Bring anyone you want."

I rolled my eyes. Bring who? Kara? Besides, why did they even want to go on another group date? Weren't they sort of ... past that?

I shook my head to myself, pushing against the door of the science building. "I don't know, Dex—"

"Hey, Madison!" I heard Noah shout in the background. "James and I are here, too."

I stumbled on the last step leading down to the quad, my breath catching in my throat as I regained my footing. I hadn't seen the boys since Tuesday, and I hadn't seen James since ... well, since I stormed out of his room after spending the night in his bed. After a night of crying hysterically, divulging things about myself and my life that I hadn't even told my own mother.

And then waking up clinging to him. Quite literally.

The thought still sent a fresh ripple of humiliation dancing across my cheeks. Melting into the pavement seemed like a better option than seeing him again. Ever, ever again.

By the time I semi-recovered from my wave of embarrassment, the conversation on the other end of the line had spiraled into some kind of argument.

"You promised." The voice was muffled, but I recognized its smoky tone instantly. James. "Don't make me go alone—"

"What am I supposed to do?" Dex moaned back. "Cancel on Holly? I already said that we could catch up tomorrow!"

"Come on, Dex. You knew about this."

"I got excited, okay? Flustered. I forgot."

"Woah," I exclaimed. "What's happening?"

Dex pressed the phone back to his face, his voice far more audible. "Holly and I made plans tomorrow."

I sighed melodramatically. "I know that part. I mean, what's the issue?"

"James' parents are hosting his cousin's wedding at their property this weekend. I promised I'd go with him." I heard him release the phone from his face, directing the rest of his account to somebody else. "Although let's all remember that I promised that before I was courting the woman of my literal dreams."

I stopped in my tracks, distracted by a sudden whiff of freshly cooked burgers and fatty, greasy fries. Peering towards the campus diner, I silently debated whether or not to give in to the salty temptation.

"Okay. I still don't get the problem." On the one hand, a cooked meal sure sounded better than my usual gourmet feast of two-minute noodles. On the other, I was still yet to hit my gym quota for the week. And it was Friday. "Why do you need to go to the wedding? James is a big boy. I'm sure he can crack a weekend with his parents without a babysitter."

Dex sighed, the exhale loud against the speaker but his voice significantly lower. "It's not that simple. His parents are ... a lot."

"A lot?"

"They're just ... well—"

"What're you whispering about over there?" I heard James ask in the background.

"It's complicated," Dex finished.

I scoffed. "Sounds like it."

A student walked by with a burger overflowing with ketchup and lettuce and a fat juicy tomato. It made up my mind for good.

I opened the doors into the diner and took a numbered ticket. "Well, why don't you go to the wedding and take Holly with you? It fits the group date idea."

"That's what I said!" I heard Noah call out.

Which made me realize that Dex had put me on loudspeaker.

Which made me realize that James had heard my babysitter jab.

Which made me want to facepalm my whole head into one