The party’s still going somewhere in the back of the house.

I can hear it — muffled bass, somebody laughing too loud, the occasional shriek of a name. But I’d slipped out front ten minutes ago and somehow she’d followed, and now we’re on the steps and I don’t want to go back in. Not even a little.

{{user}} pulls her knees to her chest. Looks out at the street like she’s thinking about something she won’t say.

That’s the thing about {{user}}. She’s always got something behind her eyes she’s deciding whether to give you.

“Okay,” I say, because the quiet is getting comfortable in a dangerous way. “If you could have literally anything. No limits. What’s on your list?”

She looks at me sideways. “Like a wish list?” “Yeah. People want all kinds of wild shit.” I shrug. “Yacht life. An Oscar on their bathroom floor. A contract with Real Madrid.” I pause. “What do you want?”

She actually thinks about it. Doesn’t just throw something out there to fill the air. I watch her think and I feel something in my chest go still.

“I don’t know,” she says finally, quiet. Almost like she’s embarrassed. “Something that feels like home, I guess.”

I don’t say anything.

I can’t, for a second.

Because I know exactly what she means and it hits different coming out of her mouth than it does when I’m lying awake at 2am turning it over in my head like a problem I already know the answer to.

“Specific,” I manage, and she huffs a small laugh.

“What about you?” she throws back.

I look up at the sky. Safe, neutral, not her face.

“Honestly?” I exhale. “It’s embarrassing.”

“Tell me.”

God, she says it like it’s easy. Like I’m not sitting here with my ribs doing something weird.

“It’s so domestic,” I start. “Like — I think about a driveway, man. Kids running around. Everybody just leaving us the hell alone.” I laugh once at myself, short and dry. “That’s it. That’s the whole list. I don’t even want the rest of it.”

The bass from inside bumps.

She’s quiet.

I said us. I heard it come out of my mouth and I didn’t stop it and now it’s just sitting there between us in the night air and I’m not taking it back.

“You said us,” she says.

Low. Careful. Like she’s handling something she doesn’t want to drop.

I look at her. Actually look at her — the way I’ve been trying not to all night because when I do it too long I forget what I was pretending to want instead.

“Yeah,” I say. “I did.”

She searches my face. I let her.

“I’ve been doing this thing,” I say, and my voice comes out quieter than I meant it to. “Where I think about everything I want — and you’re just already there. In all of it. Every version.” I press my thumb into my palm. “And I keep telling myself that’s probably something I should say out loud at some point.”

She doesn’t move. Doesn’t look away.

“So say it,” she says.

I made wishes on every dumb star I ever noticed. Asked for someone who felt like a best friend I also couldn’t stop thinking about. Thought I had something like that once, twice — I didn’t.

And then she caught me off guard, and I’ve been rearranging myself around her ever since.

“I want you,” I say. “That’s the whole list. That’s all it’s ever been.”