Ellie

“It’s been perfect,” one of them said, smiling. “No rain, not too cold. You picked a good week”

Kimmy nudged me lightly. “See? I told you.”

“Yeah,” I said, forcing a small smile. “You were right.”

For a moment, I almost believed it. That maybe this would be simple. That maybe I had been overthinking everything.

That feeling disappeared the second we opened the trunk.

At first, I didn’t process it. I just stared, expecting my tent to be there, folded and obvious like it had been when I packed it. I moved a bag aside, then another, giving it space to appear, like maybe I had just missed it. The longer I looked, the clearer it became that it wasn’t there at all.

“Kimmy,” I said, already feeling something tighten in my chest.

“Yeah?”

“I don’t have my tent.”

She turned towards me, her expression shifting slightly. “What do you mean you don’t have your tent?”

“I mean… I don’t have my tent,” I repeated, because there wasn’t another way to make it sound better.

We both looked at the trunk again, “Oh, okay” she said finally, exhaling “Lets relax and think” she said immediately. “Maybe you lost it on the gas station but thats very unlikely, call your mom. Maybe it’s still at your place.”

My phone barely had signal, but the call went through just long enough for my mom to confirm exactly what I already suspected—that I had, in fact, left the tent behind. She had tried to call me earlier, she said, her voice breaking apart as the connection started to fade. I tried to respond, but the signal was already slipping away, cutting her off mid-sentence until the call dropped completely.

I stood there for a second, staring at the empty screen, before looking back at Kimmy.

“Well?” she asked.

“I forgot it,” I said.

She shrugged, like the solution was already obvious. “Okay. Then you’ll sleep with me.”

I blinked. “What?”

“In my tent” she clarified. “We used to do it all the time. Girl Scouts, remember?”

“I remember,” I said, a little too quickly.

And I did remember. That was exactly the problem.

Outwardly, I nodded and thanked her, keeping my voice steady enough to pass as normal. Inside, though, something much louder was happening. Because while the missing tent was an issue, it wasn’t the real problem. The real problem was that I had been counting on that tent to quietly rip ass in peace.

I had been planning—very deliberately—to have a moment alone. Just a small window of privacy where I could deal with the consequences of everything I had eaten without turning it into a shared experience. It had been a simple plan, a necessary one, and now it was... gone.

Now there was no private space, no backup option, no graceful way to handle it. Just the reality of sharing a tent with Kimmy, of being in close proximity for hours, of having absolutely nowhere to hide.

And the worst part was that she wouldn’t even care.

That was what made it so irrational and so frustrating at the same time. Kimmy had already proven she didn’t mind. She laughed about it, treated it like something harmless, something human. If anything, she found it funny.

But that didn’t help. If anything, it made it worse.

Because the problem wasn’t her reaction. The problem was the fact that I had somehow gone all these years without ever letting that side of myself exist in front of her. Not once. Not in high school, not during sleepovers, not during long days spent together where it would have been completely normal. I had maintained that line so consistently that it had stopped feeling like a choice and started feeling like a rule.

And now that rule was about to be broken in the worst possible way.

I followed her around while we set up the tent, handing her things, trying to stay present, but my mind kept circling back to the same thought over and over again. I could still try to find a moment, maybe come up with an excuse to step away, maybe pretend I needed something from the car, anything that would give me a few minutes alone.

But as the light started to fade and the air grew colder, as the tent stood there waiting and the evening settled in around us, it became harder to ignore what was becoming obvious.

There wasn’t going to be a moment like that.

Not a real one.

And sooner or later, whether I wanted it to or not, this was going to become something I couldn’t keep to myself.

By the time we finally crawled inside the tent, the cold had settled in enough to make everything feel tighter, closer, more immediate. I realized almost instantly that I had made another mistake, because my sleeping bag had been packed with the tent I had so efficiently forgotten at home. For a second I just stood there, processing it, before Kimmy noticed and let out a small laugh under her breath.

“Wait,” she said, already amused, “you don’t have a sleeping bag either?”

I shook my head, already feeling the situation stack itself against me.

“That’s fine,” she said quickly, like none of this mattered. “Mine’s huge. I move a lot when I sleep anyway. I basically wake up like a starfish.”

When Kimmy said her sleeping bag was huge, I nodded like if that was the only relevant part of the sentence, even though my brain immediately went somewhere else. Of course it was huge. She was huge. Not in a bad way—just tall, solid, athletic in that effortless way that made her feel like she naturally belonged in any space she occupied. She was all long lines and confidence, like everything about her had room to exist without apology.

And then there was me.

Small like two heads smaller than Kimmy, on a good day, built more like something compact and forgettable, people always compared me to a K-pop idol, like if that was supposed to be flattering because I’m asian. It didn’t help here. If anything, it made me feel even smaller, like I had been designed to take up as little space as possible, physically and otherwise.

The idea of sharing a sleeping bag suddenly felt less practical and more… overwhelming. Not because there wasn’t enough room, but because there was too much awareness of it—of her size, her warmth, the way I would fit into that space without effort, like I could disappear into it if I wasn’t careful.

We ended up squeezing into her sleeping bag together, adjusting awkwardly at first until we found a position that worked, or at least didn’t feel completely unnatural. It was warm, warmer than I expected, and the closeness that came with it made it impossible to ignore her. Every small movement shifted the space between us, every breath felt louder than it should have.

I told myself to stay still. To focus on anything else. To survive the night with some version of dignity intact.

That lasted a few minutes.

“You’re doing it again,” Kimmy said quietly after a while.

“Doing what?”

“Being weird.”

“I’m not being weird.”

“You are,” she insisted, turning slightly toward me inside the sleeping bag. “You’ve been like this all day. What is wrong with you?”

“Nothing is wrong with me.”

She let out a small breath, somewhere between amused and confused. “Sarah… why are you so shy about this?”

I didn’t answer.

“Seriously,” she continued, softer now but more direct, “it’s just… farting. Why are you acting like it’s illegal in front of me?”

That did it.

Something in me snapped—not loudly, not all at once, but enough that holding everything in, physically and emotionally, stopped being an option. I turned toward her, frustration hitting first, words coming out sharper than I intended.

“Because I like you,” I said.

She blinked. “What?”

“I like you,” I repeated, the words pushing forward now that they had started. “I’ve liked you since senior year, and then we went to different colleges and I spent a whole year missing you, waiting for this trip, thinking it was going to be—” I cut myself off, exhaling hard. “Not this.”

She was staring at me now, completely still.

“I didn’t picture being this bloated since we made that stop at the gas station” I pointed to my stomach that it looked like If I had swallowed an entire cantaloupe. “I thought I could at least pretend to be normal for one week.”

“Sarah—”

“No, it’s fine,” I cut in quickly, already feeling the embarrassment catching up to everything I had just said. “It’s fine. I just—” I let out a breath, shaking my head slightly. “Whatever. Forget it.”

There was a pause. A real one this time.

And then something in me gave up completely.

“Fuck it,” I muttered.

Finally I could let go this huge stomach pain.

It wasn’t subtle. It wasn’t controlled. It was long, loud, and immediate in a way that made it feel like the entire sleeping bag could became an inflatable balloon. For a second, I just lay there, staring into the dark, fully aware of what I had just done and unable to undo any part of it.

A brief silence followed.

Then Kimmy started laughing.

Not a small laugh, not something she tried to hide—full, uncontrollable laughter that shook through both of us inside the sleeping bag.

“Oh my god,” she managed between breaths, “that smells so weird.”

I groaned, immediately covering my face. “Don’t smell it!”

“I can literally feel the gummy worms tickling my nose” she continued, laughing harder. “It’s like—acid candy in the air.”

“Kimmy, oh my god, stop,” I said, half-laughing, half-horrified, trying to push her away even though there was nowhere to go. “Don’t analyze it.”

She kept laughing, and somehow that broke something in me again, but this time it wasn’t just embarrassment. I could feel it building in my chest, sharper, heavier, until my voice came out smaller than I meant it to.

“I just… didn’t want you to think I’m gross,” I said, my throat tightening slightly. “I didn’t want to ruin this. Or us.”

The words hung there longer than anything else had.

“I don’t want to lose you,” I added quietly.

She stopped laughing.

Not abruptly, just gradually, like the weight of what I had said settled in. I felt her shift closer instead of away, and a second later her hand moved gently to my face, wiping at the tears I hadn’t even noticed starting.

“Hey,” she said softly.

I didn’t look at her.

Her fingers slid under my chin, lifting it just enough so I had to.

“I could never think you’re gross,” she said, her voice steady in a way that made it impossible not to believe her. “You’re just a nervous wreck. You silly.”

Before I could respond, she leaned in and kissed my lips.

It wasn’t rushed or uncertain. It was direct and simple.

For a second, I just froze, my brain trying to catch up with what was happening, and then everything else fell away. The tension, the embarrassment, the ridiculousness of the entire situation—it all disappeared under the fact that she was right there, close, real, choosing this.

My heart was beating so hard it felt like it might actually hurt, and I wrapped my arms around her without thinking, holding on tighter than I meant to.

“I’m sorry,” I mumbled against her, half-laughing again. “For… all of this. For hotboxing the tent.”

She let out a quiet laugh against my shoulder.

“Oh, darling” she said softly, “you have to know I’ve heard you fart before.”

I pulled back slightly, staring at her. “What?”

She smiled, just a little. “You’re not as subtle as you think.”

And somehow, that made everything feel lighter.

I pulled back slightly, still trying to process what she had just said, my brain lagging behind everything that had already happened. “What?”

Kimmy smiled, not teasing this time, just calm in a way that made it feel like she had been holding onto this longer than I had. She shifted a little in the sleeping bag, her forehead almost brushing mine as she spoke.

“I’ve heard you before,” she said, like it was the most normal thing in the world. “Especially when you’re sleeping. You’re loud as fuck.”

I stared at her, completely still. “You’re lying.”

“I’m not,” she replied with small laugh slipping out. “the thing that always had made me wonder is how can you built so much gas inside you, being so small, is not that I care, but it's intriguing” she giggled in very dorky way.

There was no judgment in her voice, no hesitation, just something simple and honest that made it impossible to argue with. She held my gaze for a second longer before continuing, softer now, like she was stepping into something she hadn’t said out loud before.

“And… I’ve kind of felt the same way,” she admitted. “About you.”

My chest tightened again, but this time it wasn’t panic.

Kimmy let out a small breath and rubbed the back of her neck, like she was trying to figure out how to say something that didn’t come naturally to her. I could tell she was hesitating, which was rare enough to make me pay attention in a completely different way.

“I honestly never thought you could be in love with me,” she said, glancing at me with a half-smile that didn’t quite land. “I mean… I’m kind of a brute, you know? Not exactly subtle. I say dumb stuff all the time.”

I was about to interrupt, but she shook her head slightly, cutting me off before I could.

“I’m studying archaeology because I like being out there,” she went on, her voice quieter now. “In the dirt, in the wild, not thinking too much. And sometimes I felt like… I was forcing that on you. Like every year I dragged you into this whole camping thing.”

There was a pause, and for once she didn’t rush to fill it.

I didn’t say anything. I just watched her, because I love her face when she’s putting into words an elaborate answer, she’s brilliant, but she doesn’t like to show it.

“You’re different,” she added after a second. “You’re more… put together, city girl, you like things clean, predictable. I know you don’t like camping the way I do.”

“But I love that we do this together,” she said finally, softer than before. “We’ve been doing it since we were kids, and it’s always been our thing, so I just thought… you came because of that, because of our friendship and that made me incredibly happy, so… me too, I didn’t want to ruin our friendship with a confession that could go totally wrong.”

For a second, I just stared at her, trying to process what she had said. She had been holding back too. All this time, I thought I was the only one afraid of ruining what we had, and it turned out we had both been circling the same thing without saying it. It felt almost absurd, how much time we lost to that silence, but at the same time, something in me finally loosened and it wasn’t my tummy.

Then kimmy added

“I’m sorry if… all the boyfriends and girlfriends I had made it worse for you,” she went on, her tone steady but thoughtful.“I was trying to figure things out. I thought maybe it was supposed to feel different, you know? But it never really did.”

She paused briefly, her thumb brushing lightly against my arm. “Even when I started dating girls, it still felt off,” she added. “Like I understood it more, but something was missing. I thought it was just… me being bad at relationships or whatever.”

I swallowed, not trusting myself to interrupt.

“But it wasn’t that,” she said, shaking her head slightly. “It was just that none of them were you.”

The words landed quietly, but they settled deeper than anything else had that night.

For a moment, neither of us said anything. The cold outside, the tent, the sleeping bag, the entire ridiculous chain of events that had brought us here—it all faded into the background, leaving just that space between us, finally clear of everything we had been avoiding.

I let out a breath I didn’t realize I had been holding, my grip on her tightening just slightly, not out of panic this time, but because I wanted to stay there, exactly like that.

“Okay,” I said softly, because it was the only thing that felt real enough to say.

She smiled, small but certain, and leaned in again, this time without hesitation.

I came into this second part with a lot more enthusiasm. I had a lot of fun developing the buildup between Sarah and Kimmy, giving it the space it needed was the entire reason this was in my drafts for over a year.

We stayed wrapped around each other inside the sleeping bag until sleep came easily. My last thought before drifting off was that we had an entire week alone in the mountains to figure this out, and for the first time, the weight I had been carrying in my chest started to feel lighter.

________________________________________

How would you feel about a Part 3?

Thank you so much for reading. ✨