Triston doesn’t let go of my hand, even as he’s pulled into half a dozen back slaps and chirps. The guys have been good since the gala—curious and kind, measuring their jokes before they throw them. Tonight, they decide measuring is for work.
“About time,” says Tyler, the smirking wing with a heart he pretends nobody can see. “Captain needed a W and he finally sealed the deal.”
“Count the rings,” another pipes up, pointing at my wrist. The ribbon is there, velvet tucked under my cuff, more habit than signal tonight. His girlfriend elbows him with precision. “Not that ring, idiot.”
“Language,” I scold, delighted, and the room laughs because nobody here believes I can weaponize a scold. They’re wrong, but I like being indulgent.
“Drink?” asks Mari, the PR lead who is off duty and wearing sneakers like a manifesto. She has glitter liner and the face of a woman who will not be answering emails until January third. “We made a punch that is technically legal.”
“Water first,” Triston inserts, because he’s himself, and I love him for being unsexy and right. He hands me a glass and a look that saysbe freein a language only we speak.
“Fine,” I huff. “Then a tiny cup of legality.”
We tour the house. Every surface holds something celebratory: bowls of chips, graham crackers, a tray of tiny hot dogs stabbed with toothpicks wearing foil stars. The TV over the mantel streams the Times Square crowd, already freezing for the privilege of being part of a countdown that the rest of us can do from a couch. Someone has hung a banner that reads NEW YEAR, SAME MENACE. I don’t ask who made it. I suspect the rookie girlfriends with a Cricut and an agenda.
The music drops into a beat that begs bodies forward. I’m two sips in when Triston turns, the movement a clean, quiet orbit until he’s right in front of me, palm open.
“Dance with me, Samantha Michael,” he says like it’s a marriage proposal and a dare. The room hoots because the room hoots at everything. But the way he says my full name removes the walls, removes the house, removes the calendar.
I take his hand.
We’ve danced twice in rooms that wanted us to be other people. Once at the team party, where the dance was a promise we were too cautious to cash. Once at the gala, where the dance was the fuseand the kiss the explosion. Tonight the dance is neither. It’s easy. It’s what happens when your ribs remember how to expand and your feet remember how to carry joy without asking permission.
He fits me close, not proprietary, not performative, just… aligned. I hear us exhale at the same time. My temple finds his jaw. His breath finds my hair. The floor isn’t polished or lit by professionals. The song isn’t good. The moment is perfect.
“You’re smiling,” he murmurs, amused reverence.
“I forgot I had that setting,” I confess.
“Keep it,” he says softly. “I’ll maintain it for you.”
“Like a car?” I laugh into his throat.
“Like a cathedral,” he corrects, and my knees think about giving out because he is a ridiculous, earnest man who looks at me like I am something holy and somehow makes it feel accurate.
Tyler slides past with a tray of Jell-o shots like he’s auditioning for a frat musical; he pretends not to see us and obviously sees us. “All right, no making out near the snacks, save it for midnight.”
“Jealousy doesn’t suit you,” I tell him sweetly.
He clutches his heart. “She’s savage. Captain, control your woman.”
I start to bristle on principle and then the meaning catches up—your woman—and my insides do a dangerous, happy thing. Triston’s hand flexes at my waist, easy as sayingyes. “I could not,” he says cheerfully. “I can only witness.”
The song flips. Someone howls lyrics by memory. We stay where we are, swaying, stealing kisses that are appropriate for kitchens but still make the room whoop. I taste apple something on his mouth and decide I like it because I like anything that ends on his tongue.
“Remember that you belong here,” he says into my ear when the volume peaks into chaos, and I have to closemy eyes because belonging is a word that blooms from the inside and breaks things on its way out.
“I do,” I say. “I do tonight.”
“Then make a memory on purpose,” he says. “Pick a corner of this room and decide you’ll think of it when you’re sixty.”
I scan. The dog in the bow tie is asleep under the coffee table, snoring without shame. Over the fireplace, someone taped a Polaroid from October—Andrew grinning with a cupcake, frosting on his thumb, my eyes smiling so hard they almost shut. I pick both, the sleeping dog and the boy we still love, and file them underjoy worth keeping.
The party bends toward the backyard as if gravity has a schedule. The firepit is already flaming, a circle of cold-resistant fools gathered around, roasting marshmallows because humans are eight years old at their core. I let myself be tugged among them. Triston drapes a blanket over my shoulders with the air of a man who will never again watch me shiver without doing something about it.
“Tell us something true,” Jamie challenges, cheeks bright, his beanie crooked over ear number two.
“About what?” I ask, amused.
