I take his hand.
The two-step is nothing like I remember—it’s slower, more intimate, a gentle rocking rhythm that almost feels like cheating. The band plays a lonesome cover of “Stand by Me,” and Asher guides me through the pattern with nearly embarrassing tenderness, one hand on my lower back, the other cradling my right hand as if protecting it from injury.
He spins me once—ridiculous, we’re both a little drunk—and when we land, our faces are unreasonably close. I can smell the sweet burn of whiskey on his breath, see the flecks of gold in his irises. The whole world’s a blur, but he’s in focus, every detail rendered in high definition. “Never said you could dance,” I mumble, grinning because I don’t know how else to hold onto the moment.
He leans in, resting his forehead against mine, voice barely audible over the music. “There’s a lot I haven’t told you yet.”
The song fades, and people roar, and we stumble off the impromptu dance floor laughing so hard I nearly trip over his shoes. He steadies me, hands lingering at my waist much longer than necessary.
The party doesn’t wind down. There are even rumors of an after-party at someone’s Airbnb in South Congress, and a cluster of us—Parker, Gatlin, a trio of girls in matching feathered earrings, and a tech guy everyone calls “Egg”—pile into a convoy of Lyfts. Inside the car, crammed thigh-to-thigh, Asher tucks my hair behind my ear with a care that makes my throat tight. I rest my hand on his knee, just to see if he’ll flinch. He doesn’t; he covers mine with his and squeezes once.
At the party, the house is packed with more Austinites, mostly soft-drunken and friendly, everyone in denim or pajamas. There’s a pool out back, and a hot tub, and already people are shedding clothes. Parker shouts, “Last one in’s a New Yorker!” and cannonballs in cowboy boots.
Asher and I stake out a corner by the fire pit, away from the blast of the stereo. He wraps his arm around my shoulders, casual but not casual, and pulls me in close. “You’re freezing,” he says, which is a lie. I’m burning.
He looks at me like he’s trying to read a script that’s been redacted. “What do you want out of this?” he asks, like he’s afraid of the answer.
I want everything, and I want nothing to change. I want to keep this feeling, the feeling I haven’t had since I was seventeen, when nothing was set in stone, and every brave choice was still possible. I say, “I dunno, but it’s not... this. The press, the show. I just...” I’m so tired and so honest. “I just want to pretend a little longer, but only if it’s you.”
He closes his eyes. “Nobody pretends better than me,” he says, but then he kisses me, fast and soft, the kind of kiss that tells me he’d rather be awful at pretending than good at anything else.
We make out a little, on a patio chair, while the rest of the party sets off bottle rockets into the inky dark. It’s chaste, kind of—no tongue, just a lot of heat and more clumsy nose bumps than I’d ever admit. Whenever we break apart, he buries his face in my hair like he’s starved for oxygen.
After a while, the party dials down to embers. The air is thick with smoke and the mosquito whine of a late night. Inside, people are falling asleep on couches, their SXSW badges drooping from lanyards, stained with ramen and lime. I motion to leave, but Asher shakes his head and says, “Come with me.” He leads me up a flight of stairs to the roof terrace: private, nearly dark, the whole city unspooling in silent neon. He sits down hard, back against the wall, and tugs me gently into his lap. I go, not because I’m drunk or because people are watching, but because it’s the first thing tonight that feels true.
We sit like that, my knees curled under, cocooned in his arms like two kids at a sleepover. He hums old country tunes, off-key but heartfelt. I feel him harden under my thigh and giggle despite myself; he flushes, but doesn’t shift away.
“You’re one hell of an actor, Asher Dixon,” I whisper, nipping his ear. “You ever break character?”
He turns me to face him, dead serious in the dark. “I did,” he says. “After our first date.”
I kiss him then, all the way, tasting the salt from his neck, the bitterness from his jawline. When I pull back, he’s staring at me like he’s trying to memorize every syllable of my face. “What?” I say, shy now.
He shakes his head. “Just never want to forget this.” The confession spills out between us, raw and pulsing.
I can’t answer. Not with words. So I slide down and kiss him again, this time not holding anything back. His hand finds the small of my back and pulls me closer, flush, until there is nothing but him. The city lights below, the drunken insects, the muted holler of partygoers—gone, as if the world has been staged just for this single beat of two hearts drumming out the same wild measure.
He breaks away first, rests his chin atop my head, and strokes my shoulder in slow, absent circles. For a wonder, we don’t say anything. Maybe the sake and tequila have burnt out all the pretense, or perhaps the space is just too fragile to fill. I drift, weightless for the first time in years.
After a while, the chill creeps up, and Asher laughs against my hair. “You’re shaking,” he says, though he should know by now that I’m always cold, always just a little braced against whatever the next scene brings. Still, he shrugs off his jacket and drapes it around me, smoothing the collar with exaggerated care.
I want to freeze the moment—not a literal freeze, but a capture, an encapsulation of this rare warmth and safety. How it feels to be in the arms of someone who maybe isn’t pretending, or at least, not with me. The script says I’d never admit this, but my lips are numb, and my guard’s been hijacked by tiredness and joy.
“You know what’s weird?” I murmur, half to myself, half to his shoulder.
He murmurs back, “I can guess.”
“I never thought I’d like this. Any of it. The scene, the people, the—” I circle a lazy finger on his chest. “—the circus. But with you, it’s just, I dunno.”
“Bearable?”
“Real,” I say, and his chest shakes with laughter.
“That’s a first,” he says. “Guess there’s a first for everything.”
There’s an urgency now, humming under my skin. I’m not sure if it’s the city or the night or just the knowledge that tomorrow the whole world will snap back into place, but I want to be reckless. For once, I like what everyone else has: the story, the memory, the chance to do something stupid just because it feels good.
So I cup his jaw, run my thumb along the stubble there, and say, “Let’s get out of here.”
