My heart nearly broke open my ribcage. 

"I'm sorry," Carl said, "I didn't mean to scare you."
I took a deep breath. "It's okay," I said.
"Back to my question then," Carl said, "I thought you were so tired?"
I shrugged and said: "Hopeless. I kept thinking about sleep so much that I couldn't sleep."
He opened the door further. "Come in," he said, "we'll see what we can do about that."

I walked into the living room. The walls and the ceiling were very bright green, and the floor was the same as in the hall. The curtains were closed and the light, mostly coming from spots in the ceiling, was dimmed. On the left side there was a table with two chairs, on the right side there was a fireplace with another two chairs. Carl walked to the right and sat down on the chair that was the closest to the fire. I sat down on the other one. 

"Aren't you going to take off those gloves?" Carl asked.
"No," I said, rubbing my red, fingerless gloves over each other. "They're very important to me."
"May I ask why?"
I laughed. "You've obviously never been to one of my shows, or you would've known."
"I'm not a metalhead," Carl said, "but I am curious about these gloves."
"I started wearing them when I was almost sixteen," I said, and I moved a bit back in my chair. "The thing about them is that they're red, and in my mind that represents calmness and control. If I wear them, I can keep thinking about my actions and dangerously strong emotions can't make me do things I shouldn't do." I smiled proudly. "Simple yet effective."
"That's very clever," Carl said. "So you also wear them on stage?"
"Not always!" I said. "That's the thing. There are some songs, like Zombie Cars for example, that I just can't do right wearing these. There's a part in there with screaming, where I just have to surrender to the emotion in the lyrics, or it won't go well. I always ask a person in the front row to hold my gloves if I'm going to sing that song, and I do that every show... That's how you could've known if you had been a metalhead."

I yawned. I really was tired. If I hadn't been tired, I would probably have payed more attention to the light that had appeared in Carl's eyes. Instead, I wondered what time it was and I yawned again. 

"You should go back to your room," Carl said. "I think sleep will come now."

I didn't really want to move away from the fire, but I also didn't want to fall asleep right in front of Carl. That would be too dangerous. So I stood up. For the second time that night we wished each other goodnight, and this time I did go to bed.