I picked up the first dart.
My fingers found the grip without thinking. Barrel between my index and middle finger, tip angled slightly up, elbow high. Four years of muscle memory, sitting right there under my skin like it had never left.
I exhaled once. Slow. All the way out.
Then I threw.
Bullseye.
The sound was small. A soft, definitive thunk. I was already reaching for the second dart before either of them reacted.
Presley made a noise — something between a laugh and a cough. "Beginner's luck," she said.
I didn't answer. I threw the second dart.
Bullseye.
I heard Graham set his glass down.
The third dart left my hand and I already knew where it was going. I knew the way you know your own heartbeat — not by thinking about it, but because it has always been there, steady and exact, waiting for you to stop ignoring it.
Bullseye.
The room had gone very quiet.
I turned around. Presley was still holding her darts. She hadn't thrown yet. Her expression had shifted — the performance was still up, but something behind it had gone very careful. Graham was watching me with a look I hadn't seen from him before. Not the easy half-smile. Not the dismissive glance. Something tighter. Something that looked almost like recalibration.
I walked back to the line and gestured toward the board. "Your turn."
She threw. Outer ring. Then again. Near miss. Her third dart clipped the edge of the board and dropped.
We played four rounds.
I won every one.
I never rushed a single throw. I breathed the way my coach taught me — slow in, slower out, release at the bottom of the exhale when your body is at its most still. The darts went where I sent them. They always had. Graham's smile had stopped happening somewhere around the second round. By the fourth, he was just watching me with his arms crossed, and I could see him running back through two years of assumptions.
Good. Let him run.
When the last dart hit, I set the remaining ones down on the console table beside my keys. I turned around.
"So," I said. "The dare."
Presley crossed her arms. Her chin was up. Still performing. "Fine. What is it?"
"You two spend the night in the master bedroom. Together. Alone." I kept my voice light. Almost friendly. "Door stays closed until morning. Since you're just friends, it shouldn't be a problem."
The silence that followed was very loud.
Graham opened his mouth. Closed it. I watched him do the math in real time — two years of telling me I was dramatic, two years of insisting Presley was like a sister, every dismissal and every sigh stacked up into a trap he had built himself, brick by brick, and now had to walk into or admit what it meant to refuse.
"That's — " He stopped. Started again. "This is ridiculous."
"You said she's like a sister," I said. "So it's just two friends sharing a room. Unless there's a reason that's a problem?"
Presley laughed. It was a beat too late and a note too high. "I have nothing to hide." She looked at Graham with that sideways glance, the one that had always been meant to go over my head. "Come on. It's fine."
Graham looked at me for a long moment. I looked back. I didn't fill the silence.
He picked up his glass and walked toward the hallway.
I followed them to the bedroom door. Presley went in first. Graham paused at the threshold and turned back, and for just a second I thought he was going to say something real. Something true.
He didn't.
I closed the door behind them.
I stood in the hallway for a moment. Then I walked back to the living room, turned off the overhead light, and sat down on the couch.
Mochi appeared from somewhere and stepped into my lap, turned twice, and settled. I put one hand on his back and felt him purr.
I picked up my phone with the other hand.
The pet camera app opened on the first tap. The feed came up — the master bedroom, the wide-angle lens, the green-tinted low-light image that showed everything clearly. I'd installed it three months ago, officially to check on Mochi when we traveled. The camera sat on the bookshelf near the window. It had a good angle.
I watched.
Outside, the Manhattan skyline glittered hard and cold against the dark. Somewhere below, the city was counting down. I could feel the anticipation of it in the air, the low collective hum of a million people waiting for the moment to change.
On the screen, the drinking started. Then the laughter. Then the distance between them collapsed in the way I had always known it would, the way I had been told for two years I was imagining.
I watched it all.
My breathing stayed slow. My hands stayed still.
I already knew what I was going to do at midnight. I had known since the moment I walked through that door and counted to three in the entryway.
I just needed the footage first.
