The door slammed, and with it, the last bit of Nick's resolve vanished. His heart was out of that door, laying on the floor of a hallway in between two rooms. He collapsed on the edge of his bed. Thinking it too soft, he slid to the floor. The whirring ceiling fan created a beat. He fancied that its steadiness might slow his heart rate, but it didn't. The fan blades formed into a continuous blur; it looked like flower petals. It looked like her eyelids fluttering shut when their lips met.

What have I done?

It was a hand on a knee covered in a ridiculous tutu. It was a purple bra. It was the slight parting of her mouth when he blurted out, like an idiot, that he couldn't kiss her "like this." It was her voice on the telephone. It was rushing out the window in an attempt to escape something impossible. It was the number two. It was over a year of seeing something in her eyes he couldn't define. It was a dog, and a trench coat, and a melon with his face drawn on.

It was Jess.

Nick drifted off to sleep, thinking that he might as well have slipped off the ledge of that windowsill.