The house is pulsing with music, every surface of it soaked in a kind of hazy gold from cheap lights and cheaper beer. You’re tucked against a wall in the living room, half-listening to someone talk about a bonfire next weekend, but your eyes keep slipping to her.

Natalie.

Leaning back against the kitchen counter, a red Solo cup dangling from her fingers like a prop. She’s laughing at something the girl next to her says—some girl with dimples and a flirtatious glint in her eye. And Natalie? She’s eating it up.

Your stomach twists, a low, sick coil of something hot and sharp. Because it’s not just that she’s flirting. It’s that she knows you’re watching. And she’s doing it anyway.

When the girl touches her arm, Natalie’s eyes flick across the room. Land on you. Hold.

And she smirks.

You excuse yourself and go outside, the night air biting at your skin. You don’t smoke, but you wish you did. You wish you had something to do with your hands. Something to burn.

She finds you an hour later, barefoot and drunk, her eyeliner smudged into something almost sad.

“Tried to call your name,” she says, her voice low. “You didn’t hear me, or you were pretending not to.”

You don’t look at her. “Didn’t feel like watching you dry-hump your new little friend.”

She laughs, a sharp, humorless sound. “Jealous?”

“Are you serious?” you snap, finally turning. “You wanted me to be jealous.”

“What, you’ve got eyes only when I’m not looking back?”

You stare at her. “You think I haven’t been looking?”

She steps closer, close enough that you smell the tequila on her breath and the citrus on her skin. “No,” she says. “I think you’ve been pretending not to. For months. We do this thing, this back-and-forth—laughing too long, touching too much—and then you pull away like you didn’t mean it. Like I’m the one making shit up.”

You flinch at the truth of it. “Because I didn’t know if it was real. If you were real.”

Natalie’s face twists—pain, fury, something unspoken bleeding out all at once. “It was real. It is real. But I’m not going to sit around and be your almost forever. If you want me, fucking say so.”

“You were flirting with her,” you whisper. “You knew it’d hurt me.”

She shrugs, a flicker of guilt behind her bravado. “I wanted to see if you’d feel anything. You never say it. Never do anything. I didn’t know if you cared.”

Your voice cracks. “Of course I care. I’ve been falling apart trying to not want you.”

Silence stretches between you, heavy and trembling.

“I wanted to be enough for you,” she says, softer now. “Without having to beg.”

You breathe out like it hurts. “I wanted to be yours. I just didn’t know if I could survive the fall.”

She reaches for your hand, her grip tight, trembling. “So fall.”