“This is fucking incredible,” I say out loud. “Those trees weren’t here yesterday.”
Each edge of the ballroom is lined with staggeringly tall, lit-up rows of Christmas trees, four on each wall. The ornaments reflect and shine the light, nestled between slowly pulsating tiny white twinkle lights. Paper lanterns hang from the ceiling. The live band is playing up on the raised stage that I watched people help build yesterday. The music fills the room, making it feel alive.
The wholespaceis alive.
And people are filling the ballroom wall-to-wall, far more people than I ever expected to see at a winter formal. It feels like the whole student body of Crimson College is in attendance, far more than just the secret societies.
And he’s here with me.
Oliver.
With those fucking gorgeous eyes. Right in front of me, reaching back to clasp his hand in mine.
Something’s happening.
I can feel it, by now.
A rush of euphoria that came on slowly at first, but is falling over me in a burst, now.
I know this feeling.
I know it.
Why do I know it?
“Niko, come with me,” Oliver says.
“I will do fuckinganythingwith you,” I tell him. “Do you know how much I mean that?”
“Just come here.”
He drags me through the sea of silver and blue, past the heat of a bunch of bodies, everyone dancing, talking, and having a good time already. I catch bits and pieces of thetype of conversations I might usually hate, one girl chatting about a bunch of pompous shit like flying on private jets and another guy talking about how many girls he fucked last year.
And none of it bothers me.
It almost sounds sweet, in some strange way.
All of these people, just trying to find something. Sex, validation, love.
Isn’t it normal, to want those things?
I’m lost in my thoughts as Oliver pulls me through the crowd and toward a narrow, dim hallway at the far edge of the ballroom.
He pushes open a wooden door and takes me into a bathroom, stopping in front of a mirror.
“Look at your pupils,” Oliver tells me. “Mirror. Now.”
I love the sound of his voice.
I watch him for a moment, then raise a thumb to his mouth, dragging it over his lower lip.
“So fucking soft. Your mouth is made for me, Oliver.”
“Look in the mirror.”
I don’t want to stop looking at him, but I want to do what he says right now. I tear my gaze away and look into the mirror.
Yep.
