Elena was in bed, phone upside down beside her, the soft shuffle of lo-fi playing through her speaker. Her makeup was off. A face mask had dried and been peeled away. Her muscles hummed from practice. She should've been asleep already.
But her thoughts weren't tired.
Not tonight.
She'd been thinking about him again.
Not actively. Not obsessively.
Just... casually, in the way you think about something that left an impression.
The way his voice slowed down when he asked about her dancing.
The way his car smelled faintly like bergamot and engine oil.
The way his hoodie sleeves had swallowed half his hands when he leaned on the railing last week.
It wasn't romantic—she told herself that.
Not really.
It was just... comforting.
A person-shaped kind of calm she didn't realize she'd been learning to crave.
She was halfway through mentally rearranging her weekend when her phone buzzed softly against the comforter.
Screen down.
The instinct to check it battled the voice that said, It can wait.
She gave in. Turned it over.
Alex
| i've been working up the balls to ask this, but | do u maybe wanna go out to a movie sometime?
She blinked.
Then blinked again.
She didn't move.
Didn't breathe.
Just stared at the message like it might disappear if she exhaled wrong.
Of all the things she expected him to say—that wasn't even on the list.
And it wasn't that it was dramatic. Or sudden.
But it was just... different.
The first time the undertone between them had spoken out loud.
Even with the self-deprecating humor and lowercase letters, it felt like a shift.
A hand extended, not just casually.
But intentionally.
Her brain did a weird thing—started playing a carousel of questions before her fingers even moved.
Did he mean a date? Or like... a friend thing?
Has he been thinking about it for days? Weeks?
Why now? Did something change? Did she miss a sign?
Was this his version of a risk?
The weight of that last question landed somewhere square in her chest.
Because if it was, then it meant he cared enough to feel nervous.
And that—God, that mattered.
She stared at the message for another full minute, rereading it like the subtext would reveal itself with enough passes.
Her heart beat a little faster. Not like fireworks.
More like a hum.
A quiet, persistent yes building in her ribs.
She finally set the phone on her chest, one arm flung across her forehead like she was in a scene from a drama.
"Seriously, Alexander?" she whispered to the ceiling.
She laughed—softly, without bitterness.
Because it figured he'd do this when she'd just started convincing herself that maybe, maybe she was imagining the tension. That maybe she just liked the attention. That maybe this comfort they had was something small and passing.
But no.
Of course not.
He had to go and say it.
And now she couldn't not feel the shift.
When she picked the phone back up, her fingers hovered over the keyboard.
She didn't want to overthink it.
Didn't want to scare it away.
Didn't want to treat it like more than it was—but also... didn't want to treat it like less.
So she typed:
| wait | was that like | a date date?
And then, without letting herself spiral, she sent a second one:
| or am i just special enough to be the BMW's friday night copilot 👀
Then she hit send.
And smiled.
Small. Real.
Maybe this was something.
Maybe not everything had to be defined tonight.
But for now?
This felt like a beginning.
And she was curious enough to follow it.