The door opens at three-oh-seven, and I pull Maddie into a hug before she's fully inside.
She makes a small noise of surprise, but I don't care because she's here, solid and real after forty-eight hours of catastrophic thinking.
"Hey," Maddie says, muffled against my shoulder. Her arms come up slowly to wrap around me, and the gesture feels obligatory rather than automatic.
I pull away enough to look at her face. She looks put-together, hair in a neat ponytail, makeup carefully applied. Her expression is neutral, completely unreadable, and my stomach clenches because I know this face.
"How was the weekend?" I ask, keeping my voice light even though my heart is hammering against my ribs hard enough to hurt.
Maddie steps past me to drop her bag beside her bed. "It was fine. My parents were nice. We had dinner Friday night, watched a movie Saturday, had brunch this morning before I left."
Fine. That word again, the placeholder for everything she's not saying. She starts unpacking with methodical precision.
"Did you talk about anything important?" The question comes out carefully, each word measured.
She pulls out a sweater, shakes it out, folds it. "Not really. Just surface stuff. School, skating, neighbors, their kitchen remodel."
I sit on my bed, hands gripping my knees. "Did they mention me? Us?" I shrug casually, as if it doesn’t matter, even though it does.
Maddie's hands still for a second before resuming. "No. They completely avoided it. Didn't bring it up once."
Relief and dread hit simultaneously. Relief because they didn't try to convince her I'm the problem.
Dread because the avoidance feels strategic, like they're playing some long game.
"How do you feel about that?" I'm trying to be supportive, not immediately jump to conclusions. Maddie sets down the shirt and looks at me. Her expression is thoughtful but guarded.
"I don't know," she says quietly. "Maybe it's good they're at least trying to have a relationship with me even if they can't talk about everything yet. It's more than I had a month ago."
I want to argue that avoiding reality isn't acceptance, that their silence is erasure. But I swallow it because Maddie looks fragile, and I'm terrified of breaking something between us.
"Come here," I say, holding out my hand. She crosses the space and takes it, letting me pull her down beside me.
I wrap my arms around her, pressing my face against her neck, breathing in her scent. "I missed you," I murmur against her throat. "Forty-eight hours felt like years."
Maddie leans back into me. "I missed you too." Her hand covers mine where it rests on her stomach. I pull her closer and kiss the corner of her jaw.
The kiss shifts something. The careful distance evaporates, replaced by desperate need to reconnect. I kiss along her jawline to her mouth, and when she turns to meet me, the kiss is hard and searching.
Her hands frame my face, holding me close as she deepens the kiss, and I can taste the desperation in it, the same urgent need I'm feeling. We shift on the bed, Maddie turning fully toward me without breaking the kiss.
My hands slide under her shirt, finding warm skin that's familiar and perfect, and she arches into my touch with a sound that sends heat straight through me.
"Emily," she breathes against my mouth, and I'm tugging at her clothes, needing her closer, needing to feel her everywhere. We fumble with buttons and zippers, hands clumsy with urgency, stripping away layers until we're skin to skin.
I press her back against the mattress, my body covering hers, and the weight of her beneath me feels grounding. Her legs wrap around my hips, pulling me closer, and I can feel how ready she is, how wet, when I slide my hand between us.
The first touch makes her gasp and arch. I watch her face as I move against her, fingers sliding through wet heat, and her eyes flutter closed, lips parting on a moan that makes my own arousal spike.
"Look at me," I say, voice rough. Her eyes open, dark and hazy with want, and I hold her gaze as I push inside her with two fingers. The way her breath catches, the way her hips roll up to meet my hand, the way her face flushes—I catalog every reaction, trying to memorize this moment of perfect connection.
I set a harder rhythm than usual, driven by desperate need to make her feel me, to make sure she knows I'm here and we're real. Maddie's hands grip my shoulders, nails digging in as she moves with me, meeting each thrust with her own desperate energy.
"God, Emily," she gasps, voice breaking on my name. Her internal muscles clench around my fingers, and I can feel how close she is, can read it in the tension of her body.
I lean down to kiss her, swallowing her moans as I adjust the angle, thumb finding her clit and circling with just the right pressure.
She breaks the kiss to cry out, her head falling back, and I watch her come apart, face flushed and beautiful and completely open in a way she hasn't been yet since she got back.
The orgasm crashes through her in waves, her whole body tensing and shaking, and I work her through it until she's gasping and oversensitive, pushing weakly at my hand.
But even as I pull back and she's catching her breath, I feel the distance creeping back in. The openness in her expression fades, replaced by something guarded, more careful. She reaches for me, pulling me down for a kiss that tastes like gratitude and avoidance in equal measure.
We shift positions, and she touches me with hands that know exactly what I need, where I need it. The pleasure builds fast and sharp, but even as my body responds to her touch, even as I feel myself getting close, there's a hollow feeling in my chest that has nothing to do with physical sensation.
I come hard, Maddie's name torn from my throat, my body arching into her hand. But when I collapse beside her, both of us breathing heavily in the quiet of our dorm room, the satisfaction feels incomplete. We're here together, bodies still pressed close, but something essential feels missing.
Maddie curls into my side, her head on my chest, and I wrap my arms around her automatically. She fits perfectly against me like she always does, but the space between us feels wider than it did before she left.
The weekend with her parents sits between us like a third presence in the bed, and all the things we're not saying fill the room with uncomfortable weight.
I close my eyes and try not to think about it. Try to focus on the warmth of her body, the sound of her breathing evening out, the fact that she's here and safe and in my arms.
But the hollow feeling in my chest won't go away, and I know that desperate sex and careful avoidance aren't going to bridge whatever gap is growing between us. I just don't know how to fix it.