Around me, strangers threw arms around each other. Champagne flutes were raised, the air vibrating with possibilities—or the illusion of them, at least.
“Seven . . . six . . .”
I glanced down at my phone, my finger poised over his name, unread message still glowing.
“Five . . . four . . .”
Maybe it was nothing.
“Three!”
Maybe I was hoping it wasn’t.
“Two! One!”
Maybe I needed to get some fresh air.
The room erupted into cheers. Couples crashed together in a series of wet, messy kisses, strangers clapped, someone—Temu Freddy Mercury—howled at the ceiling like a wolf, and I smiled through every second of it, faking it like the pro that I was.
I pushed through the crowd and out the front door, the cold air hitting me like a slap.
And that was when I saw him, hands tucked into his joggers, wearingthathoodie and his signature, black-rimmed glasses.
Nerdy and dirty, just the way I liked them.
The world faded behind me, the noise muffled by the glass door I’d just walked through.
“Hey,” he said softly.
I blinked. “What are you doing here?”
“You texted.”
“I know, but I didn’t think . . .”
I trailed off when he stepped forward, closing the distance between us. And just like that, I wasn’t cold anymore. In fact, I was burning up.
“Happy New Year, Dani.”
Brooks
Three Months Ago
This was a mistake.
I knew it from the second I pulled out of the driveway, when I rolled through not one, but two stop signs during the fifteen-minute drive over to the bar, and then again when I parked across the street and just sat there, staring through the windshield like some creep with poor judgment and even worse impulse control.
Thatwaswhat Dani Bernal did to me.
I hadn’t heard from her in nearly a month, not since my pathetic attempt at sparking conversation about Anne Hathaway movies, like some high-school boy. She had no idea how many times I had drafted a text to her over the past few weeks, all of which I had promptly deleted.
Type, pause, insert emoji, rethink emoji, backspace, backspace, backspace.
Every fucking time.
But whenshetextedme? The second hername lit up my phone, all reasoning went out the window.
One minute, I was watchingBelow Deck: Mediterranean—my latest guilty pleasure, “brain rot” show—and eating vegan chicken tenders, and the next, I was speeding down the hill.
