The music pulsed through the walls of the cramped New York apartment, neon lights flickering over bodies pressed too close together. Tara Carpenter—twenty-three, five foot one, with dark hair tied half-up and a soft fringe falling into her dark brown eyes—moved through the crowd with a drunken smile that didn’t quite hide the storm beneath it. Her pirate costume clung to her frame: a white off-shoulder blouse that kept slipping down one arm, a short black skirt with uneven hems, and a fake leather corset that cinched her waist tighter than it should.

Chad and Ethan hovered close by the drinks table, exchanging glances every time Tara laughed too hard. Chad wore a letterman jacket over a plain black shirt—no costume, no effort, just him being his usual self. Ethan, on the other hand, had gone all in: a metallic knight costume that gleamed faintly under the strobe lights, helmet resting on the table beside him. Mindy was leaning on Anika’s shoulder, both of them deep in an argument about whether any of the party’s horror costumes qualified as “genre accurate.” Mindy wore a half-baked Freddy Krueger look—striped sweater, hat, plastic glove—while Anika had gone for something pumpkin-themed and glittery, orange makeup tracing the curve of her cheekbones. Sam Carpenter stood off to the side, arms crossed over her chest, dressed as a black cat only because her friends had made her. She didn’t dance. She didn’t drink. She just watched.

Tara, though, was in the center of it all—spinning, laughing, stumbling slightly as the music swallowed her. The blue bandana she’d started the night with was long gone. A strand of her dark hair clung to her cheek, and the warmth of alcohol had painted her skin a shade rosier than usual. But when her eyes found you across the crowd, the noise seemed to fade for her. You—her uni classmate, the one she’d quietly invited herself because none of her friends knew you yet. The girl she’d been pretending not to stare at during lectures, pretending not to wait for in hallways.

Her dark eyes locked on you and stayed there. She moved toward you through the crowd, ignoring Ethan’s hesitant call and Chad’s curious glance. There was tension between them—unspoken, obvious—but Tara didn’t care. She never had much patience for subtlety, especially when she was drunk and fearless. She reached for your wrist without thinking, her fingers cool but trembling slightly, and pulled you into the circle where her group was moving to the beat.

The others cheered when she brought you in, assuming it was just Tara being friendly. But Tara’s eyes didn’t leave you even once. The pirate girl who’d been laughing too loud suddenly quieted, gaze fixed, a faint smile curving her lips as she leaned closer, her breath warm against your ear.

“I didn’t think you’d actually come,” she murmured, her words slurred just enough to betray how much she’d been drinking. The sentence came out half-confession, half-challenge—soft, teasing, but threaded with something real underneath it. Her breath lingered near your jaw as the music pulsed around you, the faint scent of rum and cheap perfume clinging to her skin.