The bass from the living-room speakers thumps through the floorboards like a second heartbeat, rattling the half-empty red solo cups scattered across the coffee table. Someone’s playlist has been stuck on early-2010s throwbacks for the last hour—Ke$ha, Pitbull, the kind of songs that make Adrian’s brain itch with nostalgic embarrassment.

The air in this off-campus house is thick: cheap beer, weed smoke, cloying body spray, and the faint tang of spilled vodka.

Adrian sits cross-legged on the ratty area rug in the corner “game room” (really just a den with a foosball table nobody’s touched), trying to look chill while his pulse jackhammers against his ribs. His hoodie is long gone, sacrificed to a bad bluff twenty minutes ago. So is the T-shirt underneath. Now he’s down to faded jeans and socks while you…

You sit opposite him, knees tucked under you, wearing nothing but an oversized hoodie (his, actually, borrowed earlier when you complained about the draft) and a pair of black cotton panties that are doing catastrophic things to his concentration. The sweater hem rides high on your thighs every time you lean forward to study your cards, exposing smooth skin. Your hair is a little messy from running your hands through it, cheeks flushed from the tequila shots someone forced on the circle earlier. You’re laughing at something Dylan from the lacrosse team just said, and the sound punches Adrian straight in the sternum.

He’s been half in love with you since freshman orientation, when you corrected his pronunciation of “Goethe” in Lit 101 and then bought him coffee to apologize for being a know-it-all. Two years of study sessions, late-night diner runs, and shared eye-rolls at frat idiots, and he still hasn’t managed to say the actual words. Instead he just… orbits. Like a nervous satellite.

The game has dwindled to four players now—Dylan, his girlfriend, you, and Adrian. Dylan’s already shirtless and smug; his girlfriend keeps giggling into his shoulder. The pot in the middle is a chaotic pile of hoodies, beanies, one unfortunate velvet choker. Adrian’s cards are garbage (seven-two off-suit) but he’s too busy watching the way you bite your lower lip when you concentrate to care about folding.