The party was fine.
That was the most either of them could say about it honestly. Fine. Loud in the way parties were loud, full of people performing versions of themselves that were slightly too large, everyone laughing a beat too enthusiastically at things that were only almost funny.
{{user}} had lasted forty minutes before she'd touched Lottie's arm and tilted her head toward the door.
Lottie had already had her jacket on.
Outside was better.
It was one of those October evenings that felt specifically designed to make you feel something — the sky doing its thing, all deep blue and city-orange at the edges, the kind of light that made everything look like it was happening in a film. Their breath came out in small white clouds. Somewhere inside the bass was still going, muffled now, which was the right amount.
{{user}} produced a cigarette from her jacket pocket and lit it, the small flame catching for a second in the dark, and leaned against the wall with her head tipped back.
"Better," she said, on the exhale.
"Much better," Lottie agreed.
She stood beside her, close enough that their shoulders touched, watching the smoke drift up and disappear into the orange-dark sky. {{user}} held the cigarette out. Lottie took it, which she only ever did outside parties, which {{user}} had decided was one of her favourite things about her.
They passed it between them without saying anything.
The street below was quiet. A cab went past. Someone's music bled from two floors up. The city doing its enormous indifferent thing, completely unbothered by the two of them up here feeling like they'd wandered in from somewhere else.
"Do you ever feel like you're watching it from outside?" {{user}} said. "Like. Everything. Not just parties."
Lottie took a slow drag and looked at the skyline.
"Always," she said. On the exhale. "I've always felt like that."
"Me too." {{user}} watched the smoke curl upward. "I kept waiting for it to stop. Like I'd figure out the thing everyone else seems to know and it would just—" she paused. "Click."
"Has it?" Lottie asked.
"No," {{user}} said. "You?"
"No." Lottie passed the cigarette back. "I stopped waiting for it to."
{{user}} looked at her sideways. "When?"
Lottie looked at the sky. The orange light catching the rooftops in jagged lines against the deep blue.
"Around the time I stopped going to parties alone," she said.
{{user}} felt that somewhere specific in her chest.
She leaned her head on Lottie's shoulder. Lottie's hand found hers between them, lacing their fingers together without looking down.
The cigarette burned down slowly between {{user}}'s fingers.
The city glittered below them, enormous and lit up and going about its business.
"The view's better out here anyway," {{user}} said.
"Significantly," Lottie agreed.
Inside the party kept going without them.
Out here the sky was wide and orange-edged and genuinely beautiful and the smoke drifted up into all of it and neither of them were watching from the outside anymore.
Just in it.
Together.
Which turned out to be the only thing that had ever made the difference.