The night air slaps my face—a blessed relief from the suffocating heat of bodies packed inside. I collapse onto a deck chair, muscles aching with a fatigue that has nothing to do with physical exertion. Uncapping the bottle, I take a long pull, welcoming the burn as it scorches down my throat. Better to feel something, even if it's pain. My fingers work automatically, rolling a joint with practiced precision. The first hit fills my lungs, and I exhale slowly, watching the smoke twist and curl into the darkness above. There's poetry in that smoke—how it appears substantial then dissipates into nothing. Like everything else in this godforsaken life.

Years of constructing elaborate fictions. Years of lying, distracting, deflecting. It's fucking exhausting, but I've grown accustomed to the weight of the lies I carry. They've become part of my skeletal structure—remove them and I might collapse entirely.

All I want—all I've ever wanted—is to feel weightless.

Free.

But self-pity is a luxury I abandoned years ago, leaving nothing but hollow echoes where emotions used to live. Sometimes I wonder if I even remember how to feel anything real anymore.

The moon hangs overhead like a silent witness to everything we are and aren't. Funny how we're just these insignificant specks with our colossal problems while that rock has watched empires rise and fall. There's a strange comfort in that cosmic perspective—knowing we're all just trying to navigate this chaotic existence, brief flashes in an endless narrative that everyone forgets. Everyone except that cold, dead rock floating above us all.

Images of Nora infiltrate my thoughts like persistent ghosts.

Why now? Why tonight?

She's always had this hold over me, even when we were kids. It's as if part of me is perpetually searching for her in my darkest moments—her eyes, her voice, the way she moves through space like she was born to command it. But I forfeited any right to her, even in my thoughts, when I din’t show up for her, for Ollie. The hurt and suspicion that clouded her face earlier today cut deeper than I expected.

Deeper than I deserve to feel.

I scan the sea of strangers around the pool, all too wasted to remember their own names, let alone mine.

Thank fucking god.

I stub out the joint and light a cigarette instead, drifting toward the pool's edge where the water fractures the party lights into disjointed patterns. The conversations washing over me are shallow, slurred echoes of the same pretentious bullshit I've navigated my entire life—people chasing money, status, or some illusion they'll never catch no matter how fast they run.

My moment of solitude doesn't last.

Of course it doesn't.

Nothing good ever does.