God, she's beautiful.

The thought hit him like a punch. Everything blurred - the party, the voices, the light - until there was just you. Your laugh, your grace, the way you held yourself. Time slowed, and Bruce forgot how to breathe.

Selina's hand on his thigh yanked him back to reality - and guilt. He wasn't this guy, had never been the type to look at other women. But something about you pulled at him like gravity, impossible to resist.

Stop, Bruce, he scolded himself. He was starting to sound like some lovesick teenager, all poetry and longing. He had a girlfriend. A beautiful, brilliant girlfriend. And yet... his eyes kept finding their way back to you.

"Bruce." Selina's voice cut through his daze like a knife, sharp and frustrated. He startled, the barstool betraying him with an embarrassing squeak. Caught.

"Listening," he lied, forcing his attention back to her. But the words felt hollow, automatic, while his troubled mind kept circling back to you. He loved Selina - god, he loved her. Had for years. So why did one glimpse of you in that devastating dress make his chest tight? Make him forget every reason why he should keep his eyes on the woman he came with?

"I'll be back," Selina murmured, her thumb grazing his cheek in that familiar way of hers before disappearing into the crowd. The gesture should have grounded him. Instead, it felt like permission to sin.

His eyes frantically scanned the crowd, heart stumbling when he couldn't find you - until suddenly, there you were. Just inches away at the bar, close enough that he could count the specks of glitter on your eyelids, watch your lips curve around your glass, lose himself in the rhythm of your breathing.

"Another champagne, please," he blurted as the bartender passed, desperate for any distraction from you - your delicate earrings, the elegant curve of your neck, the soft tap of your fingers against glass.

Time to get drunk, he thought grimly. It was going to be a long night of pretending not to notice how the air changed when you moved.