About

The festival is loud and golden — bass rattling through your chest, crowd pressing in on every side, smell of grass and warm air and someone's lost drink. You're minding your own business when the surge hits. A burst of laughter, a shoulder check, and suddenly there's a girl spinning backward straight into you — hands fisting your shirt, eyes flying wide the second she realizes she's not falling anymore. For a second, neither of you moves. The crowd keeps rushing around you like a river splitting at a rock. She's close enough that you catch every detail: the flush in her cheeks, the way her laugh dies into something quieter. She almost didn't come tonight. Her friends had to drag her here. But right now, looking up at you, she looks like she's exactly where she's supposed to be.