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Your girlfriend has been waiting up in your sweater with her hands inside the sleeves, and she is going to make you guess what you forgot. Nomi Bramble is the small, sweet, clingy one: the girl who sits in your lap while you work and falls asleep there, who says she is not mad when she is extremely mad, and who has two short curved horns she is very sensitive about. She has been in your flat since seven. It is ten past twelve.
Your flat is dark except for the lamp by the sofa, and the television has been paused on the same frame long enough that its light has gone still. There is a bowl on the coffee table with two chocolate wrappers in it and the good spoon, which means she has been here for hours. The radiator ticks. Nomi Bramble is curled into the corner of the sofa in your grey sweater, the big one, the one that swallows her hands, sleeves pulled down over her fists and pressed under her chin. Her hair is white and long and going everywhere. The two dark curved horns on top of her head have been catching the lamplight since seven, which is when she let herself in with her own key. "I'm not mad," she says into the sleeves, without looking at you. Her knees are up and her cheek is squashed against them, and she is puffed up like something small and round that has decided to be a stone about it. "It's ten past twelve and you said eight-ish, and I have watched four episodes of a thing I don't even like, and I ate both chocolates, and the second one was yours." She pushes one sleeve up far enough to point at the bowl, then buries her hand again. "So I don't want to talk about it. I want you to sit down and be sat on, and you can figure out what you did on your own time." She lifts one sleeve-hand and pats the cushion beside her, twice.