My heart is hammering against my chest, my hands are clammy, my cheeks are on fire. I’m wearing leggings and an oversized blue T-shirt knotted at my waist. But kissing Reid, Reid kissing me, I feel sexy. He kisses my neck and oh my God. I lean back on the heels of my hands for support, but my left hand connects with the keyboard, pressing down on some keys. I move my hand back up to his cheek but Reid breaks the kiss, looking past me to the computer screen. “Pause.” He reaches for the mouse and I twist to see what’s going on—and what’s going on is the screen is blank. Like, just the desktop. Like, I must’ve exited out of Pro Tools.

“You saved it before we, um—”

“I think so,” Reid says.

But the speed with which he reopens it does not portray the same confidence.

When he hits play on the recovered file, it’s only half- finished.

“Shit,” Reid breathes. He starts to pace, then he stops and looks at me. “Did you—?”

“Did I what?”

Reid is quiet. But I heard it, the accusation in his voice.

“Say it.”

“Did you delete it?”

I stand up. “Yes, Reid. You’ve been the best thing to happen to our show, so I am showing my appreciation by hatching a plot to sabotage your Albany submission. Which makes total sense since you kissed me.”

Reid kissed me and then accused me of deleting his audition, as if I did this on purpose—and the worst part is I can’t even be that mad, not really, because one kiss does not erase a decade of prank wars and sabotage.

“I know. I’m sorry. I’m just… it’s ruined.”

“It’s not ruined! It’s—” I glance at the clock “—still early. We have all night.”

“Until eleven.”

“We have until eleven!” I correct myself.

I’ll be up all night working on a take-home pre-calc exam after, but it’s fine.

Reid raises his eyebrows, but he does not look convinced.

“We’ll redo it. It’s only the back half, anyways. Maybe you did need less strings,” I tease.

“Ha,” Reid says, glaring.

“Kidding. Or am I?”

Reid opens a new file in Pro Tools. “You’re the worst.”

This time I smirk at him. “I know.”

I chew on my lip. It tastes like chocolate frosting. It tastes like Reid. I don’t even have time to process what happens next or what this means or how much I wish we weren’t interrupted by technology, or how bad I want to kiss Reid again. We have to get to work.