The night had quieted into that kind of stillness that only came after midnight in the city—when the streets weren’t quite empty, but the chaos had softened into distant hums of traffic and the occasional glimmer of headlights sweeping across. Tate sat in her car at the curb outside your apartment building, fingers still curled around the steering wheel like she wasn’t ready to leave just yet.

She was supposed to go home—early morning rehearsals, strict call times—but the two of you had dragged out the goodbye longer than necessary, talking about absolutely nothing just to stretch the seconds. She had the window rolled down, her cheek propped against her hand, hair falling loose from behind her ear in a way that made her look unfairly beautiful under the dim glow of the streetlamp.

“You’re not even gonna miss me,” she teased, trying to hide the little pout in her voice.

You leaned against the door, resting one hand lightly on the frame of the window, smiling down at her. “Tate, we just spent the entire day together.”

“Yeah, and?” She raised a brow, dramatic as ever. “That doesn’t mean I won’t go through withdrawal the second I pull away.”

You laughed, shaking your head. She had a way of making the most mundane partings feel like the ending scene of a romance movie. And as she kept rambling—listing how she’d probably call you on her drive, then again once she got home, then FaceTime before bed—you finally couldn’t take it anymore.

Leaning through the open window, you caught her mid-sentence with a kiss. It silenced her immediately, her breath catching against yours, the tension of the goodbye dissolving in that instant. She smiled into the kiss, fingers brushing your jaw before she pulled back just slightly, whispering, “Not fair.”

“Worked though, didn’t it?” you murmured, resting your forehead against hers for a second longer before stepping back.

What you didn’t notice, as you waved her off and shoved your hands into your hoodie pocket to watch her taillights disappear, was the subtle click of a camera lens from the shadowed end of the street.

By the time you’d made it upstairs and thrown yourself onto your bed, phone buzzing on the nightstand, the photos were already making their rounds on Twitter and Instagram. A grainy shot of you leaning through the car window, Tate’s hand on your face, the kiss caught perfectly under the dim streetlight glow.

The captions were exploding:

“Cutest couple ever! Marry already!!” “This is straight out of a movie.” “They’re so in love it hurts.”

And Tate—who should have been halfway home by now—was already texting you the screenshots with about a dozen laughing emojis and a single:

“Guess we’re everyone’s favorite romcom now.”