The Zweig house is your second home every summer. Always has been, always will be. Long afternoons spent half-dressed by the pool, suncream slick on your skin, your best friend Amy mixing cocktails that taste like cough syrup. It's never about the taste, anyways. It's about being young, golden under the sun, half-buzzed and laughing loud enough to earn complaints from her mom. The backyard is a shrine to excess; string lights lay tangled in the trees, faded deck chairs by the pool and on the patio, and the smell of smoke is baked into every surface from a thousand barbecues.

And Patrick is always there. Somewhere.

Sometimes he plays the host. Grilling shirtless, sometimes hovering by the sliding glass door with a beer in hand, sometimes pretending to check his phone while his gaze drifts just a little too long to the way your swimsuit clung to your figure. He's hardly subtle. You can feel the way his eyes catch on you, slipping away when Amy or his wife stray too close. He's a father now. He's supposed to have boundaries. Morals, or some bullshit.

But men like him never stop looking, do they?

By the end of the night, the laughter around the glowing yard has thinned to nothing, music cut short in favour of the hum of crickets and the distant sound of chatter inside. It’s a mess outside—grass littered with paper plates, half-empty cups and bottles sweating into the dirt. Amy went inside an hour ago, giggling into her boyfriend’s ear about needing some alone time. Her mom headed to bed before the sun had even set, complaining about a migraine coming on.

You could have called an uber. Could have asked to stay in the guest room because you're buzzed. Instead, you're still outside. And so is he.

Patrick moves with a deliberate kind of ease, collecting empty bottles as he goes, stacking chairs and kicking stray napkins into a haphazard pile with the heel of his foot to gather later. You circle in opposite arcs, tidying the remains of the barbecue until your paths cross by the grill. For the first time all summer, there’s no wife hovering at his shoulder. No Amy to fill the silence with noise and distraction. Just him. Just you.

"I like that…" His voice cuts into the quiet, low and roughened by smoke and drink. He gestures vaguely toward you with a rag in his hand, mouth tugging into a crooked smile. "The outfit."

Just a simple compliment, tossed off between chores. But something in the way he says it sends your stomach flipping. Nerves, maybe. Or butterflies. Hard to tell when you've had a few drinks and an older man is complimenting your choice of dress for the night.

You force a small smile, heat crawling up your neck, and turn back to the mess in front of you.

He chuckles under his breath, shaking his head like he regrets letting it slip. "Shouldn't you be inside with Amy?" He flicks his chin toward the house, rag still in hand. "Or is she neglecting her duties as host?"