Bryce grinned, then caught his lip, teeth pressing briefly like he’d remembered something and wanted to keep it from escaping. He dropped his eyes and started stacking plates. “So… about the last night.”
Here it was. The thing. Sage took a measured breath. “You kissed me because you were drunk,” he said calmly. “We don’t have to make it weird.”
Bryce’s shoulders eased a little. “Yeah. I mean…yeah. Good. Thanks.”
“Okay.”
“Okay.”
Silence descended for a couple of beats, then Bryce added, “I’m sorry if I crossed a line.”
Sage shook his head. “If you’d crossed a line, I would’ve shoved you off the couch.”
That pulled a laugh from Bryce. “Noted.”
They went back to work. The tension didn’t vanish, but it had shifted. The air felt less brittle now as Bryce cracked the first beer and slid it to Sage, opened one for himself, and raised the bottle. “To not being weird.”
Sage clinked his bottle against Bryce’s. “To not being idiots.”
“That one might be tougher.”
“Lizzie’s bringing brownies,” Sage said.
“Bless her,” Bryce replied. “We should hide two for breakfast.”
“Breakfast brownies?”
“Protein.”
Sage chuffed. “That’s not how protein works.”
Bryce leaned against the table, his easy smile back in place. “Don’t take this from me.”
The door buzzer saved Sage from replying. He hit the intercom and let the first wave in. In another ten minutes, the apartment filled with voices and winter coats and the stomp of boots by the door. Someone brought a plastic tub of pasta salad. Someoneelse brought a bag of limes. Sage held the limes and then shook his head. Dan arrived with his playlist and was immediately told he was on probation.
Sage watched their friends as they came in. People windmilling arms out of jackets, calling hellos over shoulders, laughing loudly, putting the odd item on the table. It gave him something to do with his hands as he put coats where he could. He could be the host, the guy with the bottle opener, the one who knew where the extra toilet paper lived. He didn’t have to be the person sitting alone with his thoughts.
Bryce slid into it, too, like he always did, moving that big, loose body through groups, talking to everyone, laughing too loud at bad jokes. A girl Sage had seen in their building gave Bryce a hug that lingered, and Sage felt a faint buzz of… not jealousy. Not exactly. Awareness maybe. He shelved it with the other feelings he didn’t have time for.
“Where’s your tool set?” Gage asked at one point, thumbing at a loose cabinet knob.
“Hall closet,” Sage said. “Second shelf.”
“You and your organized life,” Gage muttered with a smile and a shake of his head.
Someone started a conversation near the window about the campus snowmelt machine and whether it was a scam. Lizzie elbowed her way into the kitchen and cut brownies without waiting for a knife, using a plastic fork instead. Dan pressed play on his playlist and got three songs in before Tara stage-whispered, “I swear if I hear that one more time—” and Sage quietly swapped the queue.
The night moved on. The apartment warmed, and coats piled up. The air took on that party smell of sweat, beer, and cheap perfume. Sage refilled bowls, kept the sink clear, tuned one ear to the room’s hum. He talked, he listened, and he laughed inthe right places. Every so often, his gaze found Bryce without permission. Just a check-in. Just to see where he was.
Bryce was at the far end of the room now, back to the wall, head tipped toward a conversation with Lizzie and Dan. He was smiling. His eyes crinkled when he did. Sage registered that and then registered that he’d registered it. He looked down, took a swallow of beer he didn’t want, and repositioned the stack of napkins that didn’t need to be moved.
“You good?” Tara asked, sliding in next to him to snag a cup.
“Yeah. Why?”
“You’ve rearranged those three times.”
He glanced at his hands and let them fall. “Host fidget.”
