Dusk swept the last of the light from the sky, dragging a thin, cold wind in its wake. It slipped into Sabrina Myers's eyes and sharpened them, turning her gaze cool and cutting—yet somehow even more brazen.
She didn't look away. Instead, she met Natalie Pierce's eyes head-on, as if seeing straight through the fragile film of composure down into the messy tangle underneath.
One sentence, and she'd thrown a stone into still water.
The surface of Natalie's heart caved and fractured, waves racing out in tight, tangled patterns across the raw skin of her chest. The cold air felt sharper now, so sharp that even her breathing seemed to freeze in it.
She forced herself to steady, pulled a polite smile carefully over the chaos. "As a human being," she said, voice light, "caring about a friend is pretty normal, isn't it?"
It was the only explanation she could come up with.
Words could be polished, shaped, held at arm's length. Her face could be coaxed into that familiar calm, as if nothing much had happened at all.
But her heartbeat refused to obey, pounding wildly, chaotically—like it had just staggered off a battlefield, armor dented, half the banners torn.
"Caring about a friend is perfectly normal," Sabrina said. Her lips curved, but the angle of her question was merciless. "I just didn't know I counted as a friend."
She prided herself on knowing where she stood with people. With the way Natalie had always kept her at a distance—warm enough to be polite, cool enough to be unapproachable—Sabrina had simply assumed she was just a good customer. Someone complimentary. Someone pleasant.
But customers were not exactly critical infrastructure. Most of the time, they hovered on the margins of a person's life, neither here nor there.
She hadn't expected, not even in passing, to find herself promoted to the rank of "friend".
Honestly, she was a little stunned.
What was she supposed to say? Congratulations to me?
It did feel like something to celebrate. At the very least, she was sitting a lot higher in Natalie's mind than she'd ever dared to imagine.
"Who else would you be?" Natalie's smile stayed fixed, giving away nothing. She crushed her panic into dust and shoved it deep down, like sweeping broken glass under a rug. "If you're not a friend, what exactly are you?"
Sabrina let it go. She only nodded once, as if tucking the answer away somewhere private.
Natalie dropped her gaze again. In the thickening night, she peeled open a bandage and wrapped it carefully around Sabrina's finger. Her touch was feather-light, attentive, smoothing the adhesive again and again until it lay flat and perfect, without a single wrinkle.
"The cut's a bit deep," Natalie said, slipping into the matter-of-fact tone of a nurse. "It took a while to stop the bleeding. To be safe, try not to get it wet tonight if you can help it."
She lifted her head—and found herself face-to-face with Sabrina's mouth.
Those lips were cleanly shaped, neither too thin nor too full, the edges soft but precise. An easy mouth to imagine kissing.
Sabrina held very still, looking at her without blinking, their breaths mingling in the small space between them. The proximity clawed at Natalie's composure, tugging at something low in her chest.
Their eyes met for one unguarded second.
Then Natalie jolted, as if someone had pressed a hot coal into her palm. She let go of Sabrina's hand like it burned. "Okay, done," she said quickly. "Let's go. I'm hungry."
She clicked the toolbox shut and shoved it aside, brushing her hands off as she stood. Her body moved ahead of her thoughts, instinctively seeking distance, walking toward the table where they'd left the food.
Sabrina's lashes lowered as she squinted at her newly bandaged finger, taking in the neat white strip wrapped tight around her skin. Then she lifted her gaze and watched Natalie's back for a long, unbroken moment.
Finally, she stood, reached out, and closed her fingers around Natalie's wrist.
Natalie froze mid-step, turning back in surprise, a flicker of alarm in her eyes. "You…"
"Since we're friends now," Sabrina said, pulling her phone from her pocket with her uninjured hand, "we should add each other on apptalk, don't you think? Ever seen friends who don't even have each other on apptalk?"
She opened the app, pulled up the QR scanner, and held the glowing screen out toward Natalie.
Natalie stared for a second, brain lagging behind, then sighed invisibly and fished her own phone out. She tapped to open her profile and held her QR code up between them.
The scanner pinged, and a new contact popped up on Sabrina's screen: Tide.
The avatar was a simple image of a bamboo grove, all green calm and quiet shade.
Sabrina added her without hesitation.
"Sent," she said. "Check your requests."
"Right." Natalie lowered her phone, the connection sealed, and pointed vaguely at the table. "I'm going to go start eating."
"Okay." Sabrina let her go.
Natalie turned away and exhaled silently, patting her own chest as if to coax her heart back into place.
By then, Grace Barron and Oakley Ponciano had finished grilling the last of the skewers. The whole yard was saturated with the smoky perfume of spices and roasted meat, the kind of smell that could make someone hungry all over again even when they were already full.
They carried heaping platters to the table.
Darkness had fully settled by now, black ink poured over the world. The yard lamps cast warm pools of light over the grass and trees, carving out a little circle of warmth and noise in the otherwise quiet neighborhood.
Grace cracked open a few cans of beer and set them down in front of each of them. Then everyone dug in.
The enoki mushrooms had shrunk and crisped, their moisture drawn out, their edges absorbing the seasoning until they were crunchy and addictive. The beef and lamb glistened, their surfaces golden and slightly charred, insides still juicy. Each bite was a small, perfect explosion of fat and salt and smoke.
Halfway through, Grace twirled a skewer between her fingers."I think our barbecue game is pretty solid," she said. "If we took this on the road, we could probably make a fortune."
"Obviously," Sabrina said, shameless. "There's nothing in this world that a genius like me can't do."
Grace shot her a sidelong look."Just so we're clear, all the good stuff is mine. Thanks."
She pointed meaningfully at the plate of oversized, ominously dark potato chunks. "Those are your masterpiece."
Just as she'd predicted, Sabrina's enormous potato slabs had not survived the grill well. They were blackened on the outside, their surfaces coated in a char that looked like something scraped from the inside of a burned pan. One glance at them, and you could easily imagine the straight line from first bite to hospital admission.
Sabrina snorted.
"You're all uncultured. Real masters hide their brilliance. They may not look like much, but I bet they're delicious inside. If you don't believe me, try one."
Grace recoiled. "No thanks. I'm a married woman. My household still needs me alive."
"Huh?" Sabrina frowned.
Oakley immediately stepped in as translator. She leaned forward, elbows on the table."She means she doesn't want to die early," she said solemnly.
Then she and Grace exchanged a look full of conspiratorial glee, like two kids who'd just pulled off a petty crime.
It stung. Just a little.
Sabrina gave a short laugh through her nose.
"So none of you are going to eat them, right? Fine. I'll shoulder this burden alone. Guess great food is destined to be enjoyed only by me."
Grace played along without missing a beat.
"If it's that good, eat more," she said encouragingly. "Don't hold back."
"Gladly," Sabrina said.
She grabbed a skewer and bit down.
She didn't get far. One chew, and her expression shifted dramatically. She lunged sideways, snatching the trash can and spitting everything out in one miserable, decisive move.
It was hard to describe exactly what the potato tasted like. The outside had the bitter scent of burnt seasoning mixed with something that strongly resembled dishwater. The inside was unevenly cooked—half raw, half mush.
Anyone who swallowed it whole would definitely end up in the ER, probably on a stretcher.
Grace, Oakley, and Natalie all burst out laughing at once.
Sabrina, to her credit, had a thick enough skin to pretend nothing had happened. She flung the skewer aside and calmly drank some water.
But when she looked up and saw Natalie laughing, eyes crinkled, shoulders shaking, she suddenly thought that ruining a whole plate of potatoes might have been worth it.
Across the way, the lights in the yard of the neighboring villa flicked on. The warm glow spilled over their trees and walls, tinting everything with a soft, cinematic hue.
But the atmosphere over there was nothing like theirs.
There was noise—raised voices, sharp and heated, the anatomy of an argument. A door slammed open a moment later.
Grace and Oakley both turned to look. A woman stormed out of the house and marched straight to her car. She wrenched the door open, threw herself inside, and slammed it shut, the bam ringing across the quiet street.
The engine revved, too loud for the peaceful night, and the car shot away, leaving behind only the man pacing in the yard.
He lasted a few seconds before kicking the door shut with so much force that the bang echoed in the air. The sound made Oakley flinch, her whole body giving a small shiver.
"Were they fighting?" she asked, turning back when the other yard fell silent again.
"Yep," Sabrina said, narrowing her eyes at the villa opposite. She lifted her hands in a helpless little shrug. "I haven't been here that long, and I've already seen them fight at least three times. Every time, someone storms out and slams the door. Then the next day, they're back again."
And when they came back, it was always the same. Smiles, soft words, like nothing had ever happened. As if the shouting and slammed doors were part of a script they were all tired of but still performing.
"That's scary," Oakley murmured.
Natalie laughed quietly."It's normal," she said. "If you're with someone long enough, that's what it turns into."
Compared to what she'd seen, this level of conflict barely registered.
Sabrina glanced at her, remembering what Grace had told her earlier. She held her tongue.
Oakley felt her stomach twist. She'd always had a temper. Not all the time, but enough that she could picture herself blowing up if she got stubborn about something.
The thought of becoming like that couple across the way—slamming doors, raising voices, circling the same fights over and over—made her skin crawl.
She turned quickly to Grace."What if we start fighting like that one day?" she asked. "What do we do then?"
That was the one kind of life she never wanted to experience. But everyone said the same thing—after the honeymoon phase, after the hormones faded, couples stopped seeing each other through rose-colored glasses. Everything that had once been cute became a flaw. Little things turned into landmines.
She couldn't imagine living that way with Grace. If it happened to them, what would be left of the joy they had now?
"I'm not going to fight with you," Grace said at once, shaking her head.
She wasn't someone who liked clashing with people, especially not at home.
"But," Oakley said, wrapping her arms around her waist, thinking it through, "what if I insist on fighting? What if I'm wrong but still insist on arguing with you?"
She wasn't worried about Grace. She was worried about herself. She was, objectively, a bit of a hothead.
"Then I'll figure out how to coax you out of it," Grace said seriously.
"So good?" Oakley's face broke into a grin. "Well, for the record, I'm actually very easy to coax. Just buy me lots of things I love to eat, and I'll forget what I was mad about in, like, two seconds."
Grace huffed a laugh, rubbing her chin thoughtfully."You've thought this through way too far in advance."
Oakley shrugged.
"I'm not overthinking. I'm just… me. I'm Chuck Bass Oakley, remember? Have you ever seen a version of Chuck Bass who's soft and gentle? The gentle one is always someone else."
She said it with a perfectly straight face, which somehow made it even funnier.
Grace couldn't stop herself. She watched Oakley for a long beat, then leaned over and pressed a quick kiss to her cheek.
Oakley giggled, pointing at the same spot."One more?"
At the same time, Sabrina tapped her knuckles meaningfully on the table.
"Would you two mind remembering there are other people here?" she said dryly.
Grace's eyes sparkled.
"You can't blame me." She turned to Oakley again, gaze soft enough to drown in.
"It's her fault. She's too adorable."
Sabrina rubbed her forehead like she had a headache and shook her head with a look that clearly said, beyond saving.
If murder were legal, she'd have strung Grace up over the grill and turned her into the night's main course, then tossed the leftovers to stray dogs.
She reached for another skewer, but her phone buzzed in her pocket.
Her hand stalled mid-motion, the skewer clinking into her plate as she let it go. She wiped her fingers quickly on a wet napkin and fished the phone out.
Her mother's name was flashing insistently on the screen.
Sabrina answered and put it to her ear.
"Hey."
The others glanced at her, then, in unspoken agreement, fell quiet and focused on eating.
You could hear the restraint in Sabrina's voice, the frustration threaded through her responses like fine wires. It sounded like a conversation that could turn into an argument at any second.
When she finally hung up, she dropped the phone onto the table face-down. She felt older than she was, suddenly. Not yet thirty, but already exhausted by a lifetime of being pushed and prodded and scolded.
Her expression wasn't particularly cheerful.
Grace picked up a chicken wing and placed it on Oakley's plate before asking, "Let me guess. Your mom trying to set you up again?"
Natalie slid a green bean off her skewer with her teeth and caught it with her lips, chewing slowly. She wiped the oil from the corner of her mouth with a napkin and glanced over too.
She thought back to the last time they'd talked, when Sabrina had mentioned her mother wanting to introduce her to the heiress of Lea Interiors. Evidently, that plan hadn't died.
Of course it hadn't. Why would it? Lea Interiors wasn't just any company. If Sabrina married their daughter, it would be a textbook power match—two households officially linked, advantages compounded.
"Yeah," Sabrina said, picking up the skewer she'd dropped earlier.
"And?" Natalie asked at last, unable to keep it in. "Are you going to meet her?"
Sabrina shook her head."No. I can just tell we wouldn't get along."
She left it there, not bothering to go into more detail. The conversation turned, the four of them drifting into new topics as they ate and drank.
Natalie let it go, too. She clinked her can gently against Oakley's when she called for a toast and tipped the beer back. The liquid burned hot down her throat, spreading out through her chest in a slow, heavy warmth.
An hour passed in the easiest way—little stories, shared jokes, bits of gossip. Eventually, the platters emptied and the trash can filled with skewers. Under the endless dark sky, the four of them lounged in their chairs, bellies full, the wind stroking over their faces like a hand smoothing wrinkled sheets.
Humans were simple that way. Eat enough, drink enough, and the storms inside quieted.
After a long, comfortable pause, Grace checked the time and stood."We should get going," she said. "Let's clean up first."
It was already eight-thirty. By the time they drove back to the Airbnb, it would be close to nine.
"Okay," Natalie said, jolting to her feet.
Unfortunately, her tolerance for alcohol wasn't great. One can of beer was enough to fog her nerves. The sudden movement made everything tilt; she swayed, the world shifting under her feet like an unsteady deck.
Sabrina frowned and caught her arm.
"Maybe don't," she said. "We've got it."
But Natalie wasn't in shape to listen. She reached for a handful of skewers that hadn't made it into the trash yet.
"I'll wash these—"
"They're disposable," Sabrina said helplessly. "You're supposed to throw them out."
"Oh…"
Natalie watched the skewers get gently pried from her fingers and nodded solemnly."Okay."
Sabrina studied her for a moment. Her pupils weren't focusing properly.
"I've got milk inside," she said. "Drink some in a bit."
"Mm."
Natalie lifted the back of her hand to her heated cheeks. Her fingers felt almost cold in comparison. She knew she was fuzzy, drifting in and out of awareness like a ghost. She stood there, swaying slightly, while the others moved around her packing up plates and cans.
After a while, her gaze lifted to the sky and snagged on the moon.
It hung there, small and round and bright, haloed in white. A perfect little coin of light.
She really was drunk, she realized. Her mind wasn't the only thing losing its edges; even her vision was playing tricks on her. Everyone knew there was only one moon in the sky.
She was seeing two.
When Sabrina finished outside, she walked over and stopped beside her.
"Come on," she said softly. "Let's go in."
Natalie pulled her eyes away from the doubled moon and looked at her.
"Okay."
She took two steps and promptly staggered.
Her joints felt boneless, her balance gone. Every movement seemed exaggerated, delayed, like her body had forgotten how to be her own.
Sabrina tightened her hand around her arm.
"Can you really walk on your own?"
"I can…"
Natalie nodded, determined, and tried again, stretching her foot out carefully.
She didn't make it any further than before. The moment she shifted her weight, her body veered sideways, one more nudge away from collapsing.
This time, Sabrina didn't hesitate. Her arm slid around Natalie's waist, steadying her.
As the distance between them shrank, the heat of Natalie's body, the smell of grilled food and perfume and something uniquely her, all poured into the space between them.
Natalie tipped her head up and found herself staring at Sabrina's jawline—sharp and clean, the curve running down into her neck. The lamplight caught on her lashes, casting a small shadow along her lower lids, making her features look even more striking than usual.
"You sure you've got this?" Sabrina asked.
Whether it was the alcohol or the sheer intimacy of being held like this—or both—Natalie felt her entire body heat up, a slow, helpless flush.
"I can…" she repeated, turning her face away, refusing to look at her again.
She shuffled forward, letting Sabrina guide her step by step into the house.
Eventually, they made it into the living room.
Sabrina eased her down onto the soft couch."Sit," she said. "Don't move."
Then she headed into the kitchen, opened the fridge, and grabbed a bottle of milk.
When she came back, Natalie was curled up on the sofa, folded in on herself like a cat. Her legs were tucked up, arms wrapped around them, only her feet poking out from under the hem of her coat. Her shoes were still on, but her eyes were firmly closed.
She was out.
Her breathing was slow and even, the kind of sleep that came all at once, without warning.
Sabrina stood there, one hand in her pocket, the other holding the milk, watching her.
Just then, Grace and Oakley walked in from the kitchen.
Grace tugged her sleeves down over her wrists and gestured vaguely toward the door."We're going to head out," she said. "We've put most of it away."
"Okay." Sabrina glanced at her and nodded.
Oakley's eyes slid to the couch.
And Natalie…?"
Sabrina considered for a second.
"She's pretty gone," she said. "Let her stay here tonight."
Drunk sleep was heavy. Moving her around would be a hassle for everyone.
"That's probably best," Oakley agreed.
Sabrina wasn't some random stranger. She wasn't a man. And, more importantly, Oakley trusted her. Leaving Natalie here didn't feel dangerous.
And maybe, just maybe, it would give the two of them more time together.
"Then we'll get going," Oakley said.
"Yeah," Sabrina said, her gaze flicking between them. "Drive safe."
Grace dipped her head in a small nod, and together she and Oakley disappeared into the night, their footsteps and voices fading down the walk.
Sabrina stood there a moment longer, the bottle of milk sweating lightly in her hand. She paced a few steps back and forth, thinking.
Eventually she went back over to the couch and crouched in front of it.
From this close, Natalie's face was… startling. Quiet, luminous, every line softened by sleep. Beautiful in a way that made your chest ache a little, the kind of beauty that made people think things like, I didn't know the world could look like this.
"Natalie Pierce," she said softly. "Are you really asleep?"
"Mm…"
Natalie answered, but her eyes remained firmly shut. She sounded half-dreaming, as if the word had slipped out on reflex.
Sabrina glanced down at the milk in her hand, then turned her wrist and set the bottle gently on the coffee table.
Leaving her to sleep like this felt wrong somehow. After a second's thought, Sabrina said, "How about this—I'll at least wash your face, okay? Then you can go back to sleep."
She'd barely finished when Natalie stirred.
Even in her foggy, muddled state, she shook her head, tiny and stubborn. "No," she mumbled. "Don't wanna. Don't want to wash my face."
Sabrina frowned. "Won't it feel uncomfortable?"
Natalie shook her head again, still buried in the cushion like a child refusing to get out of bed.
"I… don't want to wash my face…" she muttered, rubbing her cheek against the sofa. Then, in a small, earnest voice, she added,
"I want to take shower."