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“Maaaaax!”
Max groaned, already irritable enough by her inability to sleep without having to hear Caroline’s incessant calling of her name. She burrowed into as tight of a ball as her breasts would allow her, her sheets and blanket tightly wound around herself, as she answered back in a sarcastic imitation of Caroline’s whining tone.
“Caaaaaaaaroline!”
“Max, I’m freezing!” Caroline complained, ignoring Max’s response as though she hadn’t heard her at all. Which was possible, given that her teeth were chattering so loudly Max could hear them through the admittedly thin walls of her bedroom.
“Caroline, you have announced that fifteen times in the last five minutes. I might ignore you as much as possible, but I’m not deaf,” Max grumbled back.
“But my circumstances haven’t changed in five minutes,” Caroline whined, her clicking teeth seeming to increase in noise and speed. “I’m still very, very cold!”
“And very, very annoying,” Max returned. “This is your own fault, you know. Your skinny ass can’t survive a broken heater in Williamsburg November, you have no padding and you’re so white you’ll get frostbite from the smoke of your own breath. My boobs alone can keep me alive through a blizzard.”
But despite her flippant response, Max had to admit to herself that Caroline was not wrong. Boobs or not, she too was feeling the bitter sting of the cold in their apartment. The only thing keeping her own teeth from clicking in cacophony along with Caroline’s from the frigid temperature was her stubborn clinching of her jaw and her refusal to rise to Caroline’s level of dramatics.
Caroline, shivering and quivering in her Murphy bed, was wearing several layers of her warmest clothing and her vivid pink sheets, but it was not enough to keep out the cold. She had always thought that their sputtering, ancient, and inconsistent heating and air conditioner was hardly worth having, since the supposed heat in the winter and air in the summer always felt more lukewarm to her than genuinely hot or cold. But now that the thing had, per Max, decided to stop working entirely, she was all too aware of how badly she had taken it for granted. Whatever its imperfections, it was clear to her now that it had been better by far than having no heat at all.
It occurred to Caroline then as she thought about Max’s claim of the heater “breaking” that it was a rather suspicious timing, given that their bill had been due weeks ago. And Max was not exactly known for her scrupulous honesty.
“Max!” she called out, her voice sharper now that suspicion colored her thoughts. “Did the heater really break down, or did you just not pay the bill this month?”
“Damn, I was hoping that would slip past you,” Max muttered, but Caroline was sitting up in bed now, her indignancy momentarily strengthening her against the cold.
“Max! Not again! Why are you the one who pays the utilities when you’re the one who’s way more likely to forget or use the money for something else? Hey- did you spend our heat money on marijuana?” Caroline’s eyes narrowed with heightened suspicion. “Because having a five minute blaze is not going to keep us warm through the night!”
“It might, depends on how good the strain is or what it got laced with,” Max shot back. “Besides, you know why I pay utilities, it’s because I’m the one who gets us a discount by letting the dude who takes the chance sample my goodies. And no, I don’t mean the baked kind.”
She paused, rethinking that. “Well, I probably am baked, most of the time-“
“Max, can we stay on target here and resolve the problem of me becoming a human popsicle?” Caroline headed her off. “It’s dangerous and painful, and not just to me, potentially! My nipples are so hard, I could literally stab someone with them.”
Max snickered, her voice taking on the throaty, sarcastic drawl that often colored its tone when she was making sexual innuendos. “Hey, I’m into it. Can I watch?”
“Maxxx!” Caroline moaned, quickly crossing her arms over her chest, just in case Max somehow could see her nipples, even through a wall, her sheets, and several layers of clothing. “It’s your fault that it’s so cold, and it’s your fault that I don’t even have a blanket too!”
“Hey, the toilet exploded, and we were down to two towels,” Max shot back. “I already share way more with you can I am okay with, I don’t want to share my towel too. Your blanket was nearby and available, and besides, a little toilet bowl contents can’t make that shade of pink look any worse than it already does.”
“It exploded because you put a tampon and a lit cigarette down it!” Caroline reminded her testily.
“Whatever, I thought the water would put it out,” Max shrugged from under her blanket burrow. “That was a freakish thing against nature, I think that was just the toilet’s day to rebel.”
“Max, can you just come in here and check if my skin has gone blue?” Caroline shifted subjects, her voice returning to its former plaintive tone. “I really think my blood is starting to shut down.”
“That would involve getting up out of my bed and my blanket, exposing myself to the cold,” Max immediately shook her head, although she knew Caroline could not see it. “I might be callous, cruel, and cold, in both definitions of the word, but one thing I’m not is crazy.”
“But Max-“
“Caroline, if you say my name one more time, you’re going to get stabbed with something other than your hard nipples,” Max warned. “Go to sleep!”
She expected Caroline to inform her, as she already had multiple times, that she was far too cold to sleep. But the other girl surprised her.
“Can I get in your bed with you?”
Max’s brow furrowed as she briefly considered and then quickly rejected this request.
“No. Definitely not. You snore, you talk in your sleep, and worst of all, you cuddle.”
“But we need that right now,” Caroline reasoned. “With this cold, the shared body heat is the only thing that might keep us alive through the night. We have to, Max, it’s our only hope to survive.”
“Oh, come on, you are not going to die, my mom used to send me out to sleep on the roof when it was snowing and my heart is still beating on,” Max rolled her eyes. “This might be cold, but you’re not clinging to an iceberg in the Atlantic, and even if we were off Titanic, I’m with Rose, there was no way I’d let someone else share that damn door, and there is no way I’m sharing my damn bed.”
She waited for Caroline to argue back, but instead, there was a strange and somewhat unsettling silence. Max was starting to grow uneasy, wondering if it was possible that Caroline really had managed to somehow freeze to death, but then she heard the creaking of their floor under Caroline’s feet and the squeak of her bedroom door’s hinge as Caroline eased it open. Wrapped in her sheet like a very pink mummy, Caroline shuffled forward, moving awkwardly, as though her legs were too cold to bend enough to walk normally. Her visible breaths mingled in the air with Max’s as she grew closer.
“Please, Max? Please let me share your bed? I can see my own breath!”
“And I can see your own face, which means you’re way too close to me now,” Max muttered. “Go back to your vagina bed, Caroline.”
“Please?” Caroline persisted. “I’ll give you a back rub tomorrow!”
“Ew,” Max scrunched her face up with distaste. “You know how I feel about affection. Especially after someone stays the night, way too much.”
“I’ll buy you a bag of chips,” Caroline tried again. “Any flavor.”
Max paused, suddenly alert, interested- and suspicious. “Where did you get the money to buy chips?”
“I might have taken one of your tips,” Caroline confessed, a small bit of color coming into her pale cheeks even as she lifted her chin in defiant pride. “Or, um, five of them. You were smoking in the bathroom, I was doing all your tables anyway!”
But Max wasn’t angry; in fact, she broke out into an appreciative smile, shaking her head. “Damn, Caroline, I really am starting to rub off on you. So does that mean you’ll get me name brand, not the cheap dollar store brand kind?”
“Yes, one bag of chips, any flavor, name brand, all to yourself,” Caroline promised. “Please, Max, please!”
Max huffed loudly, but her eyes were glassy with anticipant enjoyment of her very own name brand bag of chips, and she grinned, practically salivating.
“Fine, get in here. But I get three quarters of this blanket, and don’t think just because I skipped out on high school math that I don’t know that means I get most of it.”
Caroline beamed in victory as Max untangled the blanket from around herself reluctantly to give her access to slip underneath. Scooting in close to Max, she wound her arms around the other girl’s waist and burrowed against her, leeching off of her body heat as she buried her face into the crook of Max’s neck and shoulder. Max gasped, sputtering in shock at the chill of her nose against her own skin.
“Holy hell, Caroline, touching you feels like my cousin Nancy must have felt that time she tried to masturbate with an icicle!”
“I told you I was cold,” Caroline muttered, her voice muffled against Max’s neck as she tightened her grasp.
“You tell me a lot of things,” Max shot back. “ I try not to listen most of the times once I see you open your mouth.”
Caroline didn’t answer. Max frowned, a niggling beginning concern for her starting to creep over her, to her own discomfort. Even under the blanket with the shared space close- too close, in Max’s opinion- to Max, she was still shivering pretty badly, and her breath against Max’s neck was icy enough to make Max herself shiver.
At least, she was telling herself that it was Caroline’s breath, and not Caroline’s body clinging to her like a piggybacking pygmy.
“I guess you weren’t kidding, you really are cold,” she commented, without the usual sarcastic bite that Caroline was accustomed to hearing every time Max addressed her- or anyone, really. “You’re still shaking.”
“Uh huh,” Caroline managed, and Max shivered again as her breath hit a particularly sensitive spot of her throat. She shifted uncomfortably, suddenly aware of a rush of warmth coursing down her legs and other lower extremities, and tried to blame it on Caroline’s clinging rather than any other possibility.
“God, whatever. Here,” she huffed out loud.
Acting on impulse as much to stop her own dangerous line of thought as to help Caroline’s coldness, Max turned slightly, ignoring Caroline’s squeak of protest to momentarily break the other girl’s hold on her. Lying on her other side, she wrapped her arms around Caroline, drawing her against her chest and slipping her hands underneath the several layers of Caroline’s clothing to warm the cool skin of her back. When Caroline squeaked again, this time sounding more stunned than upset, Max rested her head against hers, muttering a sulky explanation.
“No one can be cold against my boobs, it’s a physical impossibility. Besides, this did not happen. What happens in Max’s bed, stays in Max’s bed. Unless I want to do it on the couch or kitchen counter, and then it ventures out there. Or sometimes in your bed, if your hideous sheets are clean and Nancy peed on mine.”
“Max, tell me you’re kidding about having sex in my bed!” Caroline yelped, and Max grinned.
“Fine, I’m kidding about having sex on your bed.”
“…you just said that because I told you to say that and not because it’s true, didn’t you?”
“Catching on faster the longer you know me, very good for a blonde. But again, this did not happen, and this stays here. Besides, who would believe you anyway? Me, cuddling someone- cuddling you? Ha!” Max snorted.
“Well,” Caroline said thoughtfully, her voice strengthening as her shivering began to taper off. “Actually, Oleg would probably ask for pictures, he assumes roommates is just another word for lovers. And Sophie pretty much assumes we’re some Polish phrase for not married but living in sin. And Earl said something the other day-“
“Keep talking and see how close I let you go back to shivering again,” Max hastened to cut her off, and Caroline was wise enough to go quiet. At least for about five more minutes.
“Mmmm…see, this is much better. Much warmer. Max, why don’t we sleep together more often?”
“Because you like to talk too much and they don’t give out the lesbian version of condoms out for free at the health department,” Max deadpanned. “Will you go to sleep now?”
“Mmm…okay,” Caroline sighed, reluctant.
She loosened her arm around Max’s waist slightly, readjusting her head to lean more closely against her, and gave Max just enough time to close her eyes and start to relax marginally before she spoke again in a loud but slightly hesitant whisper.
“Um…Max? My…um, my lips are still pretty cold.”
Max cracked one eye open, squinting towards her sideways without moving her position.
“Your lips? What exactly am I supposed to do to warm them up, kiss you?”
Her tone was sarcastic as usual; her expectation was that Caroline would stammer, blush, and immediately deny the insinuation. But instead she was greeted with several seconds of silence. She was beginning to wonder if Caroline was so mortified she had been stunned speechless before the other girl’s hand drifted up to cup her face, and cold, chapped, but gentle lips pressed against hers.
Max went rigid with shock, neither returning the kiss or stopping it. A fierce shiver rolled down her spine, and she could not have identified what it had been in response to. She could come up with no thoughts at all, other than the somewhat disconnected assessment of Caroline as far better at kissing than she would have predicted. When a couple of seconds passed, Caroline pulled back, letting her lips lightly graze Max’s in the process in such a way that Max’s lips parted, reluctant to break the connection.
“Was…was that….it just seemed like maybe…”
Caroline couldn’t seem to find the words to start a sentence. She blinked several times, her features pinched with anxiety at Max’s impending response, before blurting finally, “Was that not okay?”
Max considered, somewhat resentful at having to examine her feelings, especially about another human being that she usually liked to pretend she didn’t care about at all. The truth was that Caroline and her friendship with her mattered to her very much, far more than any other friendship she had ever managed to form. Caroline annoyed the hell out of her consistently, differed from her in nearly every possible way on the surface and often beneath, and yet she was the best and most loyal friend Max had ever had. That meant something- it meant a lot. That kind of friendship wasn’t something to shake up on a whim, not even for one night.
And yet, how many times had Max secretly checked out Caroline’s legs in her shortened diner skirt? How many times had she not so accidentally walked in on her in the shower or felt a low down stir of far too much interest as Caroline did her yoga routine in her snug workout tights? And how much was she fighting now to resist simply grabbing Caroline’s face in hers and kissing her back, far harder and more fiercely than Caroline had first initiated?
Caroline was beginning to babble nervously, having already decided for herself what Max must be thinking. Max hadn’t even noticed when she first started speaking and so only tuned in to part of her words.
“I’m sorry, Max, I know I just ruined things, we can just forget it. You can go have some weed, and I can have a really big glass of wine from the cheapest place that sells, and we can go to sleep and forget it and tomorrow can be just like always, we can just be friends again. That’s all, just friends, friends who never did this, friends who-“
“No, you know what?” Max interrupted, on impulse at first, and then with more decisiveness as the idea sank in as resolution. “What the hell, let’s not. It’s not like I’ve ever been a great friend to anyone anyway.”
“What? How can you say that, Max, you’re a great friend! You’re-“
But this time it was Max’s generous lips on Caroline’s smaller ones, cutting off any further words from emerging. And as Caroline rolled with this, much more quickly and fully than Max had been able to at first, her hands clutched the front of Max’s shirt, and Max’s hands fumbled to undo the clasp of Caroline’s bra even as their kissing continued with increasing straying away from each other’s mouths.
The temperature of the apartment may have still been gold, but for two broke girls, they felt warm from the inside out.
End