Instead of an answer, the door opened, and the cheerful voice that followed came at the same time.
"Hey, angel."
"Mete! What are you doing here?"
"You… Holy shit. How many people does this bed fit?"
I laughed at my friend, who had completely ignored me to inspect the bed with sincere curiosity, and answered.
"I don't know, but I'm pretty sure four people could fit comfortably."
"Just asking out of curiosity, is this bed only for sleeping?"
He pointed at it and looked at me with comedic suspicion. I stared back at him with a completely dead expression.
"No, sometimes we use it as an altar for religious rituals too. Temples are hard to find these days, you know. What are you talking about? It's a bed. Of course it's for sleeping."
His eyes moved from the bed to me, and his brows knit together.
"If I stop questioning why your boyfriend bought you the biggest bed I've ever seen in my life, which takes real effort, can I ask why you look so horrifying?"
"Oh my God. No wonder you're gay. You're truly terrible at making girls feel better."
"First explain why you look like Bülent Ersoy without makeup, then we'll talk about making people feel better, angel."
He crossed to the other side of the bed and sat with one shoulder propped against the headboard. I sighed and muttered, exhausted.
"Lovely. First car wreck, now Bülent Ersoy. What did I do to deserve the men in my life drowning me in these compliments, I'd love to know."
"Judging by your level of sarcasm, the source of your problem must be your sexy boyfriend. Am I wrong?"
"I want to slam my head into a wall. How many times do I have to say this? We're not dating. What do I have to do for you to believe me?"
"You can start by not making out every chance you get."
He gave the bed another weird look.
"And I'm not even going to touch the gigantic bed thing."
I dragged a hand down my face and sighed.
"Would it help if you knew the man you think is my boyfriend has been treating me like I'm contagious for days? Besides walking around like a volcano about to erupt, since Tuesday morning he hasn't spoken to me unless he has to, he does everything he can to avoid being in the same space, and if he's forced to be near me, he won't even look at my face. Last time I checked, the dating process worked very differently than that."
He studied me thoughtfully, fingers brushing his lips.
"Kerem is avoiding you? That's interesting."
"Avoiding is an understatement. The man who didn't even want me going to the bathroom alone now posts a bunch of guards at the door every night and leaves, then comes back at the earliest around dawn. When I ask if something's wrong, he answers with one-word replies without looking up from his phone, then leaves the room. The closest we get is sitting in the same car on the way to school, but he's so tense I count down the seconds until we get out without crashing. The only time he comes near me is at school, in crowds, when he has to play the boyfriend role. And the fact that he feels obligated to do that pisses me off, so after the second day I stopped leaving the classroom unless I had to. So yeah, forget dating, even calling us friends would be an exaggeration right now."
He frowned, turned fully toward me, sat cross-legged, and pushed my laptop aside.
"Okay, tell me what happened. What was the last thing you talked about on Tuesday morning, what went down before that?"
Like he asked, I told him everything in exact detail, from the moment I woke up alone in my room that night. When I finished, he didn't comment right away. I stayed quiet too and played with Zeytin, giving him time to process.
"So if I summarize," Mete said at last, "the night was basically full of extremely romantic conversations centered on the theme of you two doing anything to protect each other from danger, and the only thing missing was a mutual 'I love you.' Then the next morning Kerem suddenly turned into an ice man and started distancing himself from you, his room is full of angry voices and swearing all the time, and at the same time he goes out every night and comes back in the morning. Did I get that right?"
Without looking up from Zeytin, I muttered.
"You exaggerated what we talked about that night, but generally, yes."
"I'm not totally sure, but I think I have an idea why he's doing this."
"What, he found a real girlfriend, goes to see her every night in his hottest outfit, but can't tell me because he feels guilty, and he's raging like a bull because he can't bring her here? Yeah. That sounds plausible."
He rolled his eyes and shook his head.
"Trust me, sweetheart, I don't think that theory has anything to do with reality. But it would be better if he explained it himself."
"Right. He should deliver the bad news himself, shouldn't he?"
"Enough drama. Now we can move on to the part where I make you feel better like I promised. Don't go anywhere, I'll be right back."
He ignored my tone, got up from the bed, and winked with a cute smile.
"Where are you going?" I asked, but he was already out of the room.
With Zeytin's rebellious little grumbles and wiggles, I set him down near his food and water bowl beside his basket. I flopped back onto the bed. The tiny glow-in-the-dark stars above me made me smile without meaning to.
Ever since I was a kid, staring at stars from bed had been my favorite thing. Whenever I looked at them, my imagination would run wild.
A soft crackle came from my window. I pulled my eyes away from the ceiling and turned toward it. In the dark, I couldn't see anything. I slowly got up and walked to the window. Parting the sheer curtain, I scanned outside, curious, and then I saw it.
A dark silhouette stood near one of the trees at the far corner of the yard.
I narrowed my eyes and focused harder. For a second, my breath caught. As if it knew I was looking, a horrifying smile appeared beneath the hood, visible in the small area the hood left uncovered.
I let the curtain fall and stumbled back on instinct.