I woke up to the smell of coffee, and I didn't know where I was. Every part of my body was sore from sleeping sitting up, and my eyes were heavy, like I had hardly slept at all. But the rich, burnt aroma drifting up the stairs almost made me forget my aches and pains, and filled me with a sense of warmth and happiness.

Then I blinked a couple of times and remembered where I was. Kotoko's bedroom. The still-smooth comforter on her bed told me that she too had passed the night sleeping on the floor beside me. Not beside. Across from me. There had been a table between us, of course, never mind the vague memory-it could have been a dream-of her breath warm on my arm as we rested on the tabletop only inches apart.

I got my bearings slowly, unwilling to move too suddenly and strain my sore muscles. My neck in particular felt as though if I turned it the wrong way it might seize up and cause me a great deal of pain.

That stupid girl. We had finals today.

Eventually the pull of the promise of coffee overwhelmed everything else, and I pushed myself upright, feeling unusually heavy and clumsy on my feet. This was why I never studied late into the night. Damn her.

I expected to see my mother in the kitchen preparing coffee and breakfast, even though one look at a clock would have told me it was too early for that. Mom wouldn't be up for another hour, and I had been alone in Kotoko's bedroom, but it still didn't occur to me that Kotoko would be the cause of the tantalizing morning aroma that was calling me.

Nevertheless, there she was. She wore the same shirt as last night, and it was creased oddly right across her chest, from sleeping pressed against the edge of the table. Her hair was a mess, all falling out of its previous arrangement, which hadn't been very neat to begin with. What remained done up was luster-less, flat on one side and sticking out oddly on the other, but the rest was falling in loose curls around her face, which, despite the dark circles under her eyes, played hostess to a bright and hopeful smile.

What happened next only lasted a moment, and I blamed my mother entirely for it. Ever since Kotoko had moved in, I had had a vague idea my mother was trying to set us up, despite my clear signals of disinterest. But Mom always had a way of getting in my head, and so when I first saw Kotoko standing in the kitchen, bent over a pot of coffee, her hair falling forward around her tired, concentrating face, I felt suddenly as though I were somewhere else entirely.

I swear for a moment I felt like we were married. I saw her with perfect clarity, but she was, for a moment, my wife, and when she looked up at me and smiled, I had the strangest urge to go to her and...well.

The image held me captive for a several long moments, so that when she asked me if I wanted some coffee, it took me a while to respond. By the time I did, however, all was as it should have been, and I was able to enjoy the coffee with perfect indifference to the girl who sat across from me with messy hair and dark circles under her eyes.

The coffee was delicious.

And it still is, I think, as I look across the table at my wife, who hasn't gotten any better at math or English but still makes the best coffee I have ever tasted.