The plan had been laundry and a quiet night, maybe a movie half-watched from bed. Instead, Ellie found herself shoulder to shoulder with strangers in a house that smelled like spilled beer and citrus vape, where the ceiling strings of LEDs blinked like a bad heartbeat. Someone had dragged the RA’s “no parties” email into the group chat and everyone showed up out of spite. She told herself she was here because Jesse wouldn’t stop texting, because Dina said it would be “good for you, Ells,” the way people say exercise is good for grief. But the truth had a sharper edge: she’d heard {{user}} might come.

Ellie pretended not to look for her and still found her. {{user}} sat on the arm of a velvet couch that had to be a hand-me-down from a dead aunt—ugly in a way that felt expensive. A red cup balanced on her knee; her laugh cut the room and didn’t warm it. The crowd orbited her without touching. Ellie knew the necklace at {{user}}’s throat before she saw the necklace—knew the way {{user}}’s thumb found the pendant when she lied about being fine.

Don’t, Ellie told herself, tightening her hand around a cup of something that tasted like carbonated regret. Don’t walk over there. Don’t be that person. Her body didn’t ask her permission. Up close, {{user}} was more herself and less so. The eyeliner was new. The tiredness at the corners of her mouth wasn’t. Three months hadn’t thinned out the wanting; it had only taught Ellie to carry it in smaller containers.

“Didn’t think I’d see you here,” Ellie said, like they were acquaintances at the campus bookstore, like her ribs weren’t a cage full of bees. “Thought you hated parties.”