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"And this is..."

"Yeah, I know," you interrupt, staring down the woman across from you. Of all the parties in LA, Yuna had to be at this one. You didn't want to see her, fuck, you could go the rest of your life without seeing her again, and it'd be a mercy. But here she is, her hair a little longer, wearing a dress so simple yet expensive.

The stranger who made the introduction, a lanky filmmaker named Ben, looks between the two of you, eyes wide with dawning understanding. He holds a plastic cup halfway to his lips. "Oh. Oh, shit. Okay. I'll... I'll just go. Over there." He makes a hasty, awkward retreat, melting back into the thrumming bodies and thumping bass of the party.

Silence descends on the decking for a beat. Too long. The warm evening air, thick with the smell of jasmine and chlorine, feels suddenly cold. Behind you, the pool lights cast an aquamarine glow on the rippling water. Laughter erupts from inside the house, a distant, alien sound.

"What are you doing here?" she asks. That sweet voice - as fake as fucking ever now, but it still hits you where it hurts.

You give a short, bitter laugh. "I could ask you the same thing."

"I'm here with someone," she says, her chin lifting a fraction, a defensive gesture you remember all too well.

"Aren't you always?" The words slip out, quiet but sharp enough to cut.

A muscle in her jaw tightens. She takes a sip of her own drink, her gaze shifting to the dark, manicured garden behind you. "I didn't know you'd be here. I wouldn't have come."

"Likewise." You can't stand looking at her, but you can't look away either. She's got that haunted look in her eyes, the one she gets when she's been drinking. You hate that you still notice these things.

She takes a step closer, the scent of her perfume - something with gardenia and sandalwood - wafting over, a ghost of intimacy. "Listen, we can't just..."

"Just what? Avoid each other forever? Yes, we absolutely can. In fact, I'd pay good money for that privilege."

"Fine. Be an asshole about it," she snaps, the facade cracking for a second, revealing the rawness underneath. That, too, is familiar.

"I am being an asshole about it. I'm a world-class asshole. You should know that better than anyone."

She scoffs, a small, humourless sound. "You're not a world-class anything. You're just... you. Immature. Same as the last day I saw you."

The last day. You remember the heat of that afternoon, the suffocating humidity that clung to your skin, mirroring the atmosphere in your shared apartment. You remember the shouting, her throwing that ridiculous ceramic cat you hated against the wall. You remember her face, streaked with tears and anger, as she yelled, "He was just a friend! We were at work late!" and the way her voice broke when she screamed, "And Chloe was just a lab partner, right?"

The memory is so vivid that it is a physical blow. It feels like it's happening all over again.

Without a word, you walk away, back to the comparative safety of the party's thrum. The sliding glass door to the main room is slick with condensation. You push through it into a wall of sound and heat and bodies. The bass from the speakers vibrates through the soles of your shoes, a physical heartbeat for the house. The air is hazy, a visible fog of vapes and artificial smoke from a cheap machine, and the sweat of too many people packed into a space not built for it.

You need a drink. Something strong, something to numb the reverberating echo of her. You shove your way through the crowd, past a girl in a sequined top laughing too loudly at something a guy with a man bun is saying, past a couple making out against a wall, their bodies pressed together as if they're trying to merge into one being.

Three quick, strong drinks later, and you're feeling single and seeing double. You find yourself leaning against a makeshift bar set up on the dining room table, the varnished wood sticky with spilt cocktails. You're nursing your fourth. Whiskey. Neat. It burns going down, and you welcome the pain.

"Impressive," a familiar man says next to you. You glance over. It's Ben, the well-meaning idiot who introduced you. He’s holding a beer, looking apologetic. "Sorry about that earlier. Outside. I had no idea."

"Everyone's got a past," you say with a low rasp. The whiskey is starting to do its job, blurring the edges of everything. "I've got several. Mostly bad."

He offers you a small, sympathetic smile. "Yeah. Well, if it's any consolation, I think she was just as thrown as you were."

You scoff, drink, and then reply, "She has a way of looking thrown that's really more of a dramatic flourish. She learned it from a movie, probably."

Ben chuckles, a nice, easy sound. He seems okay, for a stranger. For a reminder. "I see. You guys have, uh... history."

"You could say that." You look at Ben - an utterly forgettable face - and then down at your drink. Finally, to the crowd, where you spot her, ass pressed against the hip of some guy in a tailored jacket. She's laughing, head thrown back, exposing the elegant line of her throat. She's giving him that look, the one that says you're the only person in the room, the one that had felt so real when it was aimed at you. Now it's a performance, a cheap trick. It’s a performance you remember every line of. "I think we wrote the first few chapters. Then she started writing in a different book."

Ben winces. "Ouch. End in a storm?" he prods, before pouring you another drink. You almost wave him off, but the bottle of amber liquid is a tempting shield.

"End in a hurricane," you correct, your words slurring just enough to feel deliberate. "Category five. And we both forgot our umbrellas." You wrap your fingers around the cool glass, the condensation slick against your skin. "She was fucking some arsty guy with a man-bun and a typewriter. A 'creative spirit'. I was fucking Chloe from my stats class. Turns out, she had a boyfriend who looked like a quarterback. I think we broke even."

Yuna's grinding on her new guy now, her hips moving in a lazy, hypnotic circle to the beat. You know that move. You taught her that move, one humid Tuesday night in your cramped living room with the curtains drawn and a bottle of cheap tequila on the coffee table. She'd been clumsy at first, self-conscious. You'd laughed, held her hips, guided her. "Just feel the music," you'd whispered against her ear, her shampoo smelling like coconut and summer. "Feel me." And she had. For a while, she had.

"Sounds messy," Ben says, pulling you back to the present. "I hate messy."

"Everyone loves messy. Just not when they're the ones stuck with the cleanup," you say, knocking back the whiskey in one smooth motion. The room tilts, then rights itself. The cheap fog from the smoke machine curls around the strobing lights, turning the writhing bodies into a series of disconnected, jerky images from a damaged film. Someone shoves past you, their elbow digging into your ribs, the jolt a sharp, physical reminder that you're here, now, not then. You're standing in this loud, bright house full of people you don't know, and the woman who broke your heart is giving a private dance to another stranger ten feet away.

"I should..." you start, but you don't know what you should do. Leave? Start a fight? Drink another? The options blur into a single, meaningless impulse: move.

"I get it, man," he says, backing away, sensing the shift in your mood. "Live long and prosper, and all that shit." He gives a little two-fingered salute and disappears into the pulsing crowd, leaving you alone with your thoughts and the ghost of gardenia perfume that still seems to cling to the air around you.

You push off the table. The floor is treacherous, a sticky terrain of spilt drinks and god knows what else. You navigate through the mass of bodies, a ship with a shattered compass. All the faces are a smear of neon and skin. You’re not aiming for anything, not the door, not the bathroom, not the crowd. You're just moving, letting the thumping bass dictate your pace, a frantic, stumbling rhythm that echoes the chaos in your chest.

You're headed right for Yuna when a pair of hands grab your arm, pulling you into a clumsy spin. You nearly lose your balance, stumbling into a girl with bright pink hair.

"Whoa there, mister," she slurs, her grin wide and loose. She's pretty in a way that's loud and unapologetic, all glitter eyeshadow and a crop top. She smells like cheap vodka and artificial strawberry. "Dance with me."

It's not a request. She drags you towards the centre of the makeshift dance floor, the space in the living room cleared of furniture. The lights are frantic here, sweeping across the room in reds and blues, catching the sweat on skin. Pink Hair grinds against you, her back to your chest, her hands on your hips. She's trying to pull you in, to make you move with her.

She moves a little awkwardly, but your hand is on her waist, guiding her, a motion you could do in your sleep. You remember teaching Yuna to salsa in your kitchen, her laughter as you spun her, the way her dress flared out, her bare feet sticking to the linoleum floor.

No words between the two of you, just charged energy. Pink Hair, Yuna, the music, the thrum of the bass—it’s all a blur. When the song ends, there's a sliver of silence before the next track begins, something heavier, angrier. You both pull away from each other, breathing heavily.

"Hey," she says, her breath warm and smelling of vodka, her hands still on you, "you're not half bad."

"Yeah, well," you mumble, wiping a bead of sweat from your brow with the back of your hand.

"You've got moves," she continues, leaning in close to be heard over the new song. "Who taught you?"

"Just a lot of practice," you say, your eyes already scanning the room. You find her immediately. Yuna. She's stopped dancing, her tongue lodged in the mouth of the tailored jacket guy.

"You could probably teach me a thing or two," Pink Hair says against your ear.

"Something tells me you know more than you let on," you reply, looking back at her.

"Maybe," she giggles. "Maybe you should find out." She pulls you in again, her body flush against yours. You comply for a moment, letting the music, the lights, the cheap vodka and whiskey wash over you. But your eyes, they betray you, and search, but there's no sight of Yuna.

Pink Hair has her hand on your face now, turning it towards her. "Hey," she says, her tone slightly annoyed. "Eyes on me, buddy."

You blink, focusing on her. Her eye makeup is smudged around the corners, her pupils dilated to black pools. "Right," you say, forcing a smile. "Eyes on you."

She buys it, or pretends to, and moves in to kiss you. Her lips are soft, but they taste of nicotine and desperation. It's a hollow gesture, a mechanical act that does nothing to quell the ache in your chest. You're thinking about Yuna's lips, the way they used to part slightly when she was thinking, the way they felt when she whispered your name in the dark.

Don't fucking think about her. The anger fuels a firm grip of Pink Hair's ass, and you kiss back, a little more fiercely than you intended. She melts into it, her hands tangling in your hair. The music thumps, a primitive beat that matches the frantic, useless energy coursing through you.