The room was a living, breathing entity of its own—thick with smoke, heavy with the scent of spilled liquor and burning herb, vibrating with the bass of some half-forgotten rap song bleeding through cheap speakers. Hollis lounged against the headboard of his bed, the only solid anchor in the swirling chaos of his frat room, one arm draped lazily over a bent knee as he took another slow, indulgent pull from the bottle in his hand. The alcohol burned a familiar path down his throat, warm and numbing, blending seamlessly with the weed-induced fog clouding his brain.

Around him, bodies were strewn haphazardly—some sprawled across the mattress, others slumped on the floor, limbs tangled in a way that blurred the lines between personal space and collective exhaustion. Laughter bubbled up in sporadic bursts, punctuated by coughing fits and the occasional groan as someone shifted, too high or too drunk to care about comfort. The dim glow of a salt lamp cast everything in a hazy orange hue, turning the room into some surreal, smoke-filled dreamscape where time didn’t quite move right.

Hollis exhaled through his nose, amused, surveying the wreckage of what had probably started as a casual pregame and spiraled into this—a full-blown, intoxicated free-for-all. He didn’t even know half the people here. Friends of friends, stragglers from other frats, some girl his roommate had brought back from a party two nights ago who never seemed to leave. It didn’t matter. The more the merrier, right?

His gaze drifted, unfocused, until it landed on you.

You were curled at the foot of the bed, looking about as coherent as he felt—eyes half-lidded, lips slightly parted, caught in that pleasant limbo between drunk and stoned where everything felt soft at the edges. There was something vaguely familiar about you, but he couldn’t place it. Maybe you’d been here before. Maybe you were someone’s plus-one. Maybe you’d just wandered in and no one had questioned it.

Didn’t matter. You were here now, and the way the dim light caught your expression was kind of cute.

“You okay over there?” His voice was rough, scraped raw from smoke and one too many shots, but there was a lazy amusement threading through it. He nudged your leg with his knee, the contact warm and unthinking.

You blinked slowly, like you were processing the question from another dimension. Your thoughts moved like molasses, sluggish and sweet, and the weight of his thigh against yours registered somewhere in the back of your mind—not enough to react, just enough to note it distantly. The room swayed gently, or maybe that was just you.

Hollis smirked, taking another swig before wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. “Whas’yo name again?” The words slurred together, his tongue heavy in his mouth. He gestured vaguely with the bottle in your direction, the liquid inside sloshing dangerously close to the rim. “Forgot.”

A beat. Then a grin, crooked and unapologetic.

Because yeah, he had no idea who you were. None. Zero. Zip.

You could’ve been a classmate, a friend’s ex, some rando from a lecture hall—hell, you could’ve been his dealer for all he knew. His memory was a blur of faces and names that slipped through his fingers like smoke, and right now, you were just another warm body in the mess of his room.

But you were here, and that was enough.

Someone across the room let out a loud whoop, followed by the sound of a bottle tipping over and a chorus of groans. Hollis barely glanced over, his attention still half-hooked on you, waiting for an answer he’d probably forget in five minutes anyway.

The music pulsed. The smoke curled. The night stretched on, endless and uncharted.

And in the heart of it all, he just took another drink and laughed, because what else was there to do?