I smiled slightly. “Okay.” Let her keep it.
People cling harder when you try to take it from them.
Noise swelled. Someone shouting from the living room. Glass breaking somewhere.
She flinched. Barely.
“You want to get out of here?” I asked.
Eye contact. Full. Unfiltered.
Her eyes weren’t soft. But they were alert. Like she was trying to figure out if I was safe. Or if I just looked like it.
“Where would we go?” she asked.
Not no.
I let a second pass before answering. Not rushing. Not filling the space. “Anywhere quieter.”
She hesitated, looked me over briefly one more time as if to make sure I didn’t have ‘Serial Killer’ tattooed discreetly anywhere, and then she nodded.
That’s all it took.
We didn’t tell anyone. Didn’t need to. The kind of people at that party wouldn’t notice absence unless it affected them.
Outside, the air was cooler. It smelled like the leftovers of a bonfire and cheap cigarettes. She exhaled like she’d been holding it.
I watched her instead of speaking. Let her settle. Let the silence stretch.
“Do you do this a lot?” she asked finally.
“Leave college parties where everyone is being drunk and loud and obnoxious?”
“With strangers.”
I smiled. Just slightly. “You don’t feel like a stranger.”
She smiled back, her guard down.
Not fully trust—not yet, of course not—but something close.
We walked. Didn’t talk much. Didn’t need to.
She kept glancing at me like she was trying to place me. Like she should already know something she couldn’t quite reach.
I liked that.
At one point, her hand brushed mine. Accident.Probably.
I didn’t react. Didn’t grab. Didn’t close the distance. Just let it happen. Let it pass.
We stopped under a streetlight.
She looked at me again, longer this time. “You’re different,” she said.
I didn’t ask how. I already knew. “You noticed.”
Her lips parted slightly.