I wake up to the kind of headache that feels like someone’s taken a baseball bat to the inside of my skull. The ceiling above me isn’t mine—it’s got those tacky glow-in-the-dark stars half-peeled off, and I don’t know a single Harrington who’d ever let something that sentimental within ten feet of a wall. So that’s strike one. Strike two is that the sheets smell like fabric softener I don’t own. Strike three is the soft, warm weight of someone breathing against my shoulder.

“Shit,” I whisper to myself, rubbing my eyes. My mouth tastes like beer, cheap vodka, and a couple of bad decisions I can’t quite remember yet.

There’s an arm draped across my stomach. Small. Bare. Definitely not Heidi’s.

Heidi. Right. I came here with Heidi.

Everything comes back in blurry flashes—her squealing when she saw her friends, the way she disappeared into the kitchen with them without so much as a “be right back,” how I’d stood there feeling like an idiot with a six-pack and a stupid amount of optimism.

“Perfect,” I mutter, pinching the bridge of my nose. “Classic Harrington. Can’t even keep a date’s attention for more than ten minutes.”

The girl beside me shifts, and a piece of her hair falls across my chest. Last night… I don’t have the whole reel, but I have glimpses. Her laugh—loud and unfiltered in a way girls around here usually aren’t. The feel of her knee bumping mine on purpose under that crappy oak table. The little challenge she tossed my way when she said, “You’re not half as smooth as you think you are, Steve Harrington.”

And my answer—God, I can hear myself, cocky even when drunk: “Yeah? Stick with me awhile. You’ll see my better material.”

Hours of talking. About nothing and everything—because that’s how it always starts. Music, parents, how long it takes to fix up a bat if you accidentally cover it in demogorgon guts. I didn’t tell her that part, obviously. But I got close. Closer than I should’ve.

I remember her eyes. That’s the clearest piece. Warm, open, like she actually gave a damn what I had to say.

And then—we’re in the hallway. Her fingers hooked in my belt loops. My forehead pressed against hers. Me whispering something stupid like, “I don’t want this night to end.”

And the parents’ bedroom door swinging shut behind us.

I swallow hard.

The girl stirs. Her voice is sleepy, quiet, unfamiliar.

“…Steve?”

It hits a little too deep in my chest. I force a crooked smile she can’t see.

“Morning,” I say, keeping my voice low, easy—like I do this all the time. Like I’m not actually panicking. “Uh… you comfortable? Because I gotta tell you, this bed is… surprisingly not terrible.”

She lets out a soft laugh—God, that laugh again. It sparks another shard of memory: her head thrown back in the moonlit hallway, laughing at some dumb joke I made about the wallpaper.

“You were pretty out of it last night,” she says.

“Yeah, well.” I rake a hand through my hair. “I wasn’t exactly planning on impressing anyone.” A beat. “Except maybe I kinda was. But don’t tell anyone that.”

Silence stretches, warm and not awkward—not yet. The kind of silence that makes the room feel too small and too honest.

And that’s when something cold curls in the back of my mind. A familiar dread. Like I can sense the Upside Down breathing underneath the floorboards again. Hawkins has a way of ruining nights like these. Good nights. Human nights.

I exhale slowly. “I, uh… I should probably find my shirt. And… figure out where my car is. And also, maybe where the hell we are.”

She props herself up on her elbow. I can feel her eyes on me before I look at her. And when I do—there it is again. That magnetic pull that didn’t disappear with the alcohol.

“You don’t remember the address?” she asks.

“I barely remember my own name,” I admit. “But I remember you. So that’s gotta count for something, right?”

Her cheeks flush. She looks down. And something in my chest twists—because it’s been a long damn time since a girl looked at me like that.