The party wasn’t supposed to happen tonight.

Ellie knows that because she’d promised herself — again — that she was done with this. Done with crowded houses and sticky floors and music so loud it made her chest vibrate. Done with waking up the next morning with fragments instead of memories. Done with pretending chaos felt better than quiet.

But she came anyway.

She always does.

especially after her and Dina broke up.

The house is packed, lights dimmed low and flashing in uneven colors, the air thick with heat and noise and bodies too close together. Someone’s laughing too loud near the kitchen. Someone else is arguing on the front porch. The whole place feels like it’s vibrating on the edge of something about to go wrong.

Ellie leans against the wall near the hallway, one shoulder pressed to peeling paint, a bottle sweating in her hand. Her tattoo shows when she moves, dark lines against pale skin. She looks like she belongs here — reckless, careless, unbothered.

She isn’t.

She hasn’t been for a while.

She spots you almost immediately.

She always does.

You’ve known each other for years — not closely at first, just overlapping circles. Same school. Same parties. Same mutual friends. You were always there in the background of her life, familiar in a way that snuck up on her. Someone she joked with. Someone she trusted more than she admitted. Someone who saw her on her worst nights and never made a big deal about it.

Somewhere along the way, that familiarity turned dangerous.

Because now she notices everything.

The way you move through the room like you’re not trying to be seen, but people notice anyway. The way your expression changes when you laugh — softer, real. The way you look like stability without being boring, warmth without needing to be loud.

Everything Ellie tells herself she doesn’t want.

Everything she keeps orbiting anyway.

There was a night a few months ago — one she doesn’t talk about — when something shifted. Too much eye contact. Too much honesty. Too much closeness for people who were supposed to be “just friends.” After that, things were different. Not spoken about. Not labeled.

Just heavy.

Now whenever you’re in the same room, Ellie feels it — that pull in her chest she pretends is nothing. That itch under her skin that makes her restless. She drinks more when you’re around. Smiles sharper. Acts braver than she feels.

She watches you across the room, heart doing that stupid thing it always does — speeding up like it already knows this won’t end well.

Ellie doesn’t want peace.

Peace is quiet. Peace leaves her alone with her thoughts. Peace reminds her how empty her apartment feels at night, how she plays guitar with the lights off because she doesn’t want to see herself feeling things.

You, on the other hand, feel like motion.

Like risk.

Like something that could burn fast and bright and leave marks she’ll pretend not to care about later.

She knows getting closer to you would complicate everything. She knows she’s not emotionally steady, not good at consistency, not someone who makes promises and keeps them. She knows she’d ruin this before it ever had the chance to be gentle.

And somehow, that only makes the pull stronger.

Ellie shifts her weight, fingers tightening slightly around the bottle as she watches you, the noise of the party blurring into something distant. She tells herself she won’t cross the room. Tells herself she’ll leave early. Tells herself she’s tired of wrecking things that matter.

But she’s never been good at walking away from something that feels like it might destroy her in the most beautiful way possible.

And tonight, with the lights too bright and the music too loud and you standing right there — familiar and dangerous and close —

Ellie can already feel herself slipping.