“Hey, Mace.” His voice was thick and happy.

I bit my lip to keep from laughing. “Have we had a couple of cocktails, Mr. Petropoulos?”

“One or two.” He laughed. “Apparently I’m a lightweight.”

“Because you’re not a drinker.” Moving deeper into the quiet hallway, I leaned against the wall there. The clamor from the party faded into an array of background noise: voices, glasses clinking, music. “Where are you?”

“Party.” He fell quiet, and I heard shuffling in the background, the sound of a doorbell in the distance. “At, um . . . someone’s house.”

“ ‘Someone’?”

He hesitated, and with the intake of air I could hear on the other line, the way he held it, I knew what was coming. “Christian’s.”

I was quiet for a beat. I knew only enough about Christian to feel faintly uneasy about his influence. Things always turned too wild when Christian was around, at least that’s how Elliot spun it. “Ah.”

“Don’t ‘Ah’ me, missy,” he said, voice low and slow. “It’s a house party. It’s a party with lots of people in a big house.”

“I know,” I said, taking a deep breath. “Just be careful. Are you having fun?”

“No.”

Grinning at this, I asked, “Who else is there?”

“People,” he mumbled. “Brandon. Christian.” A pause. “Emma.” My stomach clenched. “Other people from school,” he quickly added.

I heard something fall and crash in the background, Elliot’s quiet “Ow, stop,” and a girl laughing his name before he seemed to move somewhere quieter. “And, I don’t know, Mace. You’re not here. So I don’t really give a shit who is.”

I laughed tightly. This call felt like a shove forward, into a life where we had beers together, and dorm rooms, and hours upon hours alone. I felt our future looming, teasing.

Tempting.

“Where are you?” he asked.

“I’m at the glitzy soiree.”

“Right, right. Black tie. Society.”

I looked back over my shoulder into the wide ballroom. “Everyone around me is hammered.”

“Sounds awful.”

“Sounds like your party,” I shot back, watching Dad across the room, talking with a pretty blonde. “Dad seems to be having a decent time.”

“Are you wearing something fancy?”

I looked down at my shimmering green dress. “Yeah. A green sequined dress. I look like a mermaid.”

“Like, Disney princess?”

I laughed. “No.” Running my hand down my stomach, I added, “But I think you’d like it.”

“Is it short?”

“Not really. Knee length?”

“Tight?”

Biting my lip, I lowered my voice. Unnecessarily, for sure: the party was roaring. “Not skin-tight. Fitted . . . ish.”

“Eh,” he grunted. “Wouldn’t you rather be wearing jeans and a sweatshirt with me? On my lap?”

I giggled at his missing filter. “Definitely.”

“I love you.”

I froze, closing my eyes at the sound of these words.

Say it again, I thought, and then immediately wondered if this was really how I wanted to hear him confess this: while he was drunk—for the first time, as far as I knew—and many miles away.