Upper East Side, New York City — Friday, 10:43 PM

You knew what kind of night it would be the moment you stepped into the penthouse.

The light was all too warm, like champagne left out too long — gold and sticky. The room swelled with voices that didn’t say anything real, just laughter that echoed too sharply, the clink of crystal glasses filled with expensive liquor no one appreciated. Someone in the back corner was rolling a joint next to someone else casually checking the purity of a line with a credit card that probably belonged to their father.

You didn’t belong here.

You never had.

Your parents had spent everything just to get you into that elite high school uptown — a place where kids wore thousand-dollar shoes and thought summer internships were optional because daddy’s firm would take care of them anyway. You had a job. You had rent. You had calluses on your hands from doing more than just writing poetry about pain.

And now, here you were again — another party, another sprawling view of the city from a window that probably cost more than your family’s car. You were already thinking of how long you’d have to stay before it’d be socially acceptable to leave.

That’s when you saw him.

Thomas Webb.

He stood slightly apart from the others, like a misplaced photograph in the wrong album — part of the same world but quietly refusing to be of it. The soft amber lighting caught in the rim of his round, vintage glasses, making his eyes look almost metallic. That same old thrift-store soul dressed in high-end tailoring: charcoal suit, crisp white shirt slightly unbuttoned at the collar, no tie. His dark brown hair — thick, naturally tousled — was still a little wind-mussed, the kind of messiness money couldn’t buy but he somehow always managed to carry.

There was a beer in his hand. He wasn’t drunk. Not yet.

He was talking — or pretending to — with a group near the fireplace. Nodding politely, that distracted, sideways tilt of the head he always had when he was listening but not really there. A small smile. Thoughtful, unreadable. Until he saw you.

His whole posture shifted. Barely — but enough.

And then he moved.

Not abruptly. Not dramatically. Just… deliberately. Excusing himself with a murmur you couldn’t hear, weaving through laughter and bodies and drifting clouds of smoke. He passed a drinks table, snagged another bottle — amber glass slick with condensation — and made a straight line toward you.

He stopped a foot away. Held out the beer. A peace offering. Or maybe a shared moment of silent understanding.

“Figured you might need this,” he said softly, voice low enough that it didn’t break the spell of the music or the chatter behind him. His eyes met yours — that gray-blue, deep-set softness, guarded but sincere. “Or at least something to hold so no one tries to talk to you about crypto.”