The text still burns like a coal against my skin, but the music is too loud, the lights too bright, and the crowd too alive. Slowly, I feel my shoulders drop and my heart unclench, and by the time the song swells toward its end, I feel lighter. Nowhere near healed, and not perfect or totally over anything—but lighter.
Hopeful.
Alma grins at me, breathless and triumphant. “See? You look better already!”
I raise my champagne flute in a mock toast. “To emotional progress?”
“To emotional progress,” she echoes, clinking her glass to mine.
A new song starts—bright and triumphant—and the dance floor shifts like the night itself is unfurling in glitter and gold. And for the first time since walking away from the two men who’ve had my heart all year, I let myself believe this resolution might actually stick.
THREE
By the timeAlma and I stumble off the dance floor, I’m sweating, starving, and buzzed—in that order. My mask is definitely crooked, the loose waves of my auburn hair are probably dying a slow death, and I’m pretty sure one of the sequins on Alma’s dress has lodged itself into the crease of my elbow.
“We really need to eat this time,” I gasp. “Not just fill up and abandon plates.”
“God, yes,” Alma agrees, fanning herself with a cocktail napkin. “If I don’t get carbs in the next five minutes, I will perish, dramatically, in your arms—and then you’ll have to drag my body into the new year.”
“That’s not happening,” I chuckle, yanking her toward the buffet. “You dying would absolutely ruin my resolution arc and I can’t afford such a tragedy.”
The buffet line is somehow even more chaotic than earlier. The clock sculpture is dripping like it’s melting under the pressure of Van Corp’s party expectations, some drunk guy (I think he’s from accounting) is arguing with the veggie platter as if the broccoli personally wronged him, and two women inelaborate feather masks are having a whisper-hissed fight over who gets the last stuffed mushroom.
It’s perfect.
Loud, distracting, ridiculous, and most importantly, Klaus-and-Nick-free.
Loading my plate with reckless abandon, I grab mini sliders, the creamiest mac and cheese known to mankind, star pastries, pretzel bites, that smoked salmon thing, and something that looks like a tiny savory empanada but could also be a dessert trap. Alma builds her own edible mountain and hands me another champagne flute as she downs hers with astonishing speed.
“Nowthisis healing,” she declares with a broad smile.
I’m halfway through spooning something unknown and very suspicious onto my plate when my phone vibrates again.
“Oh no,” I mutter, glaring down at my cleavage—the unintentional storage unit of doom.
“Don’t you dare,” Alma warns. “You are not checking whatever that is.”
“I need to at least?—”
“I said no.”
But I do it anyway because clearly I have the self-preservation instincts of a blind squirrel and I’m a fucking masochist. The minute I look at the screen, I realize I should’ve listened to Alma because it’s him.
Again.
Klaus:
Why haven’t I heard from you in months, Noelle?
For a fleeting moment, something tightens in my chest. Not guilt, exactly, but the memory of how messy things got. Hewanted exclusivity, I wanted both of them, he hated that, and I promptly panicked my way into silence. But it’s not like he chased me, either. The man can hold a grudge like it’s a family heirloom. So him playing the confused card tonight?
Absolutely not.
He doesn’t get to pretend like he doesn’t know how we ended up here.
I lock the screen. No reply. My resolution still firmly intact.
Alma takes one look at my face and groans. “So help me, Noelle, I will yeet that phone across the room.”
