The Co-Op Mission

I'd been **running** on three hours of sleep and pure anxiety since Maya messaged me Friday night: u wanna play zombies later? I'd spent the whole weekend practicing, my thumbs basically numb, but when the notification finally pinged—**running** late, sry—I almost threw my phone against the wall.

Now I was sprawled on her bed while she sat cross-legged beside me, somehow still radiant after literally pulling an all-nighter. We were thirty minutes into Zombie Apocalypse IV, my character repeatedly getting eaten because I couldn't focus on anything except the fact that our knees were touching and I was forgetting how to breathe.

"You're playing like a **zombie**," she laughed, nudging my shoulder. "You good?"

"Yeah," I squeaked. Voice crack. I wanted to die. This wasn't supposed to happen—Maya was popular, pretty, totally out of my league, and here I was failing at the one thing I was actually good at because her existence was suddenly too much.

She paused the game and turned to me, and before I could process what was happening, she reached over and pressed her **palm** against my forehead like my mom does when she thinks I'm sick.

"You're burning up," she said softly. And then she didn't move her hand.

My heart was doing something violent against my ribs. The room suddenly felt tiny and infinite at the same time, and somewhere in the chaos I realized she wasn't checking my temperature—she was holding my face, her thumb barely brushing my cheek, and the stupid zombie game was forgotten because something was actually happening between us, something real and terrifying and absolutely worth losing sleep over.

"Tom," she whispered, and the way she said my name made everything else fade into background noise. "I didn't ask you to come over to play zombies."

The game controller slipped from my hands. I wasn't tired anymore.