The world felt fake after midnight.

Maybe it was the wine you snuck from your mom’s cabinet. Maybe it was the heat that stuck to your skin like glue, or the music rattling through Hazel’s old Honda speakers like it had something to prove. But mostly, it was her — Hazel, wild-eyed in the driver’s seat, wearing glitter she forgot to wipe off and a cherry lip tint she definitely meant for you to notice.

You were both a little drunk. Not just on the wine — on each other. On the fact that no one else knew you’d disappeared, just the two of you, headlights off, parked behind the abandoned gym. Laughing too hard, talking too fast, hearts too loud.

And Red Wine Supernova was playing, her playlist on shuffle, that breathless, hot-pink yearning spilling through the car like a secret.

Hazel turned the volume up and yelled over the chorus, “I like, I LIKE, what you like, WHAT YOU LIKE, long hair, NO BRA, that's my type, THAT'S RIGHT!"

You laughed. Not because it was funny — because it was so stupidly romantic you couldn’t breathe.

“You just told me, WANT ME TO FUCK YOU” you shouted the song back. Hazel grinned wide and leaned closer. “Yes I will babe cuz i really want to”

The song swelled. You could barely hear yourself think — and maybe that was the point.

She kissed you with that red wine mouth, sticky and sweet. Her hands were in your hair, on your face, shaking just a little because everything felt like too much and not enough. When she pulled back, her breath hitched.

“I think I’d die for you,” she said suddenly, too honest.

You blinked. “What?”

Hazel laughed — a little frantic, a little giddy. “I mean — not literally. I just — God — I feel so much. And I don’t know how to be casual about you.”.