I bought the champagne myself. Moët, because Graham always said the cheap stuff gave him a headache. I carried it up in the elevator with my coat still on, the bottle cold through my gloves, thinking about the skyline at midnight and how we'd watch the fireworks from the terrace like we did last year.

I had my key out before I reached the door. I could already hear laughter inside.

I thought it was the TV.

I opened the door.

Presley Tran was standing in the middle of our living room — my living room — in a red wrap dress that barely qualified as one, her arm drawn back, a dart between her fingers. Pinned to the wall, right over the console table where I kept my keys, was a photograph. An eight-by-ten print of my face. My work headshot, the one from the Parker Enterprises website.

She threw the dart. It hit just below my left eye.

She laughed. Bright and open, head tipped back, like it was the funniest thing she'd seen all year.

Graham stood three feet away, a glass of something amber in his hand, watching her with that easy half-smile he used at parties. The one that meant he was comfortable. Entertained.

I stood in the doorway for exactly three seconds.

I know it was three seconds because I counted. Old habit. My archery coach used to say that the pause before you draw is where the shot actually happens. Most people rush it. I never did.

I set the champagne down on the entryway table. Carefully. Then I walked in and closed the door behind me.

"Celeste." Graham said my name like I'd interrupted something.

"What is that?" I asked. My voice came out even. I was a little surprised by that.

Presley pulled the dart from the wall and turned around. Her eyes went wide and soft, the expression she'd perfected — the one that made her look like a startled deer instead of the person who'd just put six holes in my face.

"Oh my God, it's just a silly game," she said. A small laugh, self-deprecating, designed to make me feel like the problem. "Can you not take a joke?"

I looked at Graham.

He sighed. Actually sighed. Like I was the inconvenience in this room.

"Here we go," he said. He took a drink. "Celeste, you're being dramatic again."

"There's a picture of my face on the wall."

"It's a joke. Presley's just messing around." He gestured vaguely, the way he did when he wanted a conversation to be over before it started. "She's like a sister to me. You know that. This insecurity thing — I'm not going to keep managing it every time she comes over."

Managing it.

That was the word he used. Managing.

I stood there and I heard all the other times underneath it. Every time I'd said something felt wrong and he'd called it insecurity. Every time I'd asked for something simple and he'd called it exhausting. Every excuse I had made for him, stacked up neatly in my chest like old receipts I'd never thrown away.

I felt them go.

Not with a crash. Not with heat. It was quieter than that. Like a thread pulled cleanly from a seam.

Presley was watching me with that careful blankness she wore when she was deciding how much she'd won. Graham was already turning back toward the bar.

I looked at the darts in her hand.

Something settled in me then. Very still. Very clear.

I walked over to the board. I pulled out the remaining darts one by one, slow and deliberate, and I turned them over in my fingers. They were cheap bar darts, blunt tips, bad weight distribution. I'd thrown better in my sleep.

Four years on my university's archery team. Three years as captain. I never once mentioned it to Graham. He never asked.

I smiled. Not the polite smile I'd been wearing for two years every time Presley walked into a room that used to feel like mine.

A different smile.

"Let's make it interesting," I said. "Proper rules. High stakes. Truth or dare for every round you lose."

Presley's eyes flickered. Just for a second. Then the performance came back up. "Oh, that sounds fun." She glanced at Graham with a small, conspiratorial smile. We both know how this ends.

Graham shrugged. He looked almost amused. "Sure. Why not."

They exchanged a look over my head. The kind of look that assumed I wouldn't notice. Or that it didn't matter if I did.

I noticed everything.

I set the darts down on the console table beside my keys. I took off my coat. I folded it over the chair.

Mochi padded in from the hallway and wound around my ankles, and I reached down briefly and touched the top of his head. The little camera on his feeding station blinked its steady green light in the corner.

Still recording.

Good.

"Ladies first," I said.

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.