How did you end up here, sitting in Boris’s dim house with a bottle in your hand? You weren’t even sure. Not that Boris had warned you he’d be getting plastered tonight—if he had, you wouldn’t have come.

It wasn’t like you’d never had a drink before. God knows Boris had been a bad influence on you from the start, always managing to pull you into his whirlwind. He had a way of drawing you in, like an addictive drug you could never quit.

If Boris had asked you to jump off a cliff with him, you probably wouldn’t have thought twice. It was something about the way he carried himself, reckless and magnetic, that had captured you from the moment you met.

Your friendship wasn’t ordinary. It was the kind that bloomed in secret, behind closed doors. At thirteen, you smoked together, drank, crossed lines you’d never imagined crossing. You experienced so many firsts with Boris, always drawn to the edge.

But somewhere along the way, something shifted. You couldn’t pinpoint the moment you started seeing him differently. Was this new, this pulse in your chest when you were near him? Or had it been there all along, buried under layers of reckless nights and shared secrets? Boris—your total opposite, and yet somehow your other half.

But now, the drinking. You’d started avoiding it, afraid of losing control around him. What would happen if you let go? What might slip out if you weren’t careful, if your subconscious took over in Boris’s presence? You didn’t want to find out. It was wrong, wasn’t it? To feel this way about your best friend, your boy best friend? Ridiculous.

You were both almost adults now, not the wide-eyed twelve-year-olds you once were. You should know better.

Yet Boris kept pushing, tempting. Tonight, you noticed how drunk he’d already gotten.

“Look! See?” Boris sloshed the nearly empty Smirnoff bottle in front of your face, his dark curls a mess as he swayed on his feet. “I saved this for you. Barely half left.”

He stumbled closer, crouching. “Do this for me, tak?”

You sighed.