White dress

You weren’t surprised to see Mrs. Yu at the Met Gala. What you were surprised by was how cute she looked.

Nothing about her screamed vixen or siren — just a pretty girl in a very pretty dress. You snapped a few frames when you realized the crowd was sleeping on her visuals, and then her eyes found yours through the noise and a goofy smile broke across her lips. I see you, she mouthed, all confidence, before she disappeared into the gala. Your cue to pack up. Red carpet’s over.

You got into your car.

Your phone buzzed before you’d even pulled out of the lot. You grabbed it without ceremony, expecting your editor — it was Karina. You laughed before you even opened it. A smaller Karina smiled back at you from the last photo shoot you had with her.

A dinosaur meme. Then: peek-a-boo.

“Hey, stupid cheese cat.”

A smile emoji came back. Then a devil. Then an eggplant followed by an arrow.

You laughed. “Sure, where.”

“Im at the xxxxxx hotel”

You stared at that for a second before texting back: no way. me too. Room 212

The typing bubble sat there for a few seconds like it was thinking things over.

“oh you’re cooked tonight. well done even.”

You were still laughing when you merged onto the highway, already mentally rearranging your edit queue.

Back at the hotel, you worked through the edit queue. Sabrina Carpenter, Emma Chamberlain, a handful of Colman Domingo. Great shots, technically. Clean exposures, good timing. But they felt overdone to you — theatrical and expressive, sure, but everyone at every outlet would be running the same frames tomorrow morning.

You kept drifting back to Karina’s pictures.

She just looked normal. Radiant in a way that didn’t announce itself — like an angel had quietly decided to become a girl. A girl with obvious appetite and mischief behind her eyes, but also someone you could split a Jack and Coke with and not say anything for a while. You sat with that thought longer than was probably professional.

You sent the batch to your editor and were closing the laptop when the knock came.

You already knew. “Who is it?”

“Room service.”

You laughed and opened the door to find Karina standing behind an actual room service cart stacked with trays. Steak, bar-style pizza, sushi, gimbap, things you couldn’t immediately identify. Enough food for a small production crew.

“Were you hungry?”

“Like you wouldn’t believe,” she said, already laughing as you helped her push the cart through the door. “This is my first meal all day.”

“I believe you, but — dang, girl.”

You’d barely finished the sentence before she had most of a gimbap roll in her mouth. She looked over at you mid-chew with the most unself-conscious smile, and something in your chest did something inconvenient.

“I want you to be my girlfriend.”

It was out before you’d cleared a single thought. Karina looked at you — genuinely startled, cheeks still full — then swallowed and said, very seriously: “Can you handle death threats?”