“I know,” she says, nodding, and god, I’m so close to kissing her it’s almost painful.
But I don’t.
I force myself to hold back because I want to do this right. For once in my life, I want to do right by her, and from what I can gather, the kiss comes at the end of the date.
You don’t rush it.
You earn it.
“You’re not a bad person, Phoenix. You’ve got… many red flags, and fuck me, you’ve done some straight-up life-in-prison type of shit. But I know you. I know where it comes from.”
I brush my lips across her forehead, then quietly lead her up to the roof, never once letting go of her hand. I step out ahead of her, still holding her tight, and she follows.
Slowly, she straightens, her eyes sweeping across the rooftop.
Heaters glow warm against the cold night. Pillows and blankets are arranged carefully after I googled “How to make a rooftop look romantic and not desperate.” Wine, takeout containers—all that cliché book-boyfriend shit I spent hours setting up. And inthe background, all her favorite songs play quietly—songs I pulled from her recent social media posts and the ones she repeats on a loop when she’s home alone. She doesn’t say anything. She just stands there, spinning in slow circles, taking it all in.
In my head, I’m losing it, screaming,Please like it, please let this be enough that you don’t run from me again.
“Phoenix—” she breathes out, still looking around with wide eyes. “I… this is?—”
“It’s okay?”
“It’s perfect,” she whispers, her gold eyes shining as they finally meet mine. “This is… beautiful.”
I step toward her and wrap my arms around her, pulling her close because the tip of her nose is already turning pink from the cold. The last thing I need is to give her pneumonia on our first real date.
“I know we can’t lie back and watch the stars here the way we used to when we were kids.” I glance up at the polluted, starless sky. “So if I can’t give you the stars above us, then the least I can do is bring you high enough to see the ones below.”
The city stretches out before us like another universe. Skyscrapers glow like constellations, and headlights move like shooting stars, while windows flicker like distant galaxies mid-explosion.
We used to count stars.
Now we count lights.
Different sky, same feeling.
Same girl.
“There… that’s our starlight now.”
“Ours,” she whispers.
One four-letter word, and I’m ready to drag her into the nearest chapel and put a ring on her finger before she can blink.My mind is already rewriting the next fifty years as if it’s a done deal—rings, vows, my name replacing hers, her in my bed every night for the rest of our lives.
I force myself to breathe and to look like a man with patience, not one who’s two seconds away from dropping to his knees and begging her to let me chain her to my side for the rest of her life.
Obviously, I ordered Shannen’s favorite Chinese.
She doesn’t say anything at first; she just raises an eyebrow when she sees the spread. The noodles, the rice, the dumplings, all of it. Everything but the mushroom chop suey, because even I have my limits.
“Let me guess.” She smirks, popping the lid off a container. “You still think I’m a savage for eating mushrooms.”
“Think?” I laugh, leaning back and tearing open a spring roll wrapper. “No, baby. I know you are.”
She rolls her eyes with a small laugh. “It’s a vegetable.”
“No, it’s a fungus.”
