❝it was new year's eve,
there's too much noise
i could barely hear my own voice.❞
— pale waves, new year's eve

♥

LEVI DID ALWAYS SAY that I had the perfect face to hit.

To clarify, I only knew it was one minute after midnight because the numbers flew at my face. 12:01. Blindingly, those thin white numbers blinked, and then an iPhone collided with my forehead.

Her hand followed across my cheek.

"Ow!" I hissed, staggering away only to be thrust back into her by the crowd. "What the fuck?"

It was like fucking whiplash.

Fireworks exploded across the horizon, casting her into a faint glow of crackling sparks. The colors flickered and flashed, and jagged shards of glassy light traced down the edges of her silhouette. I blinked down at her with a stinging cheek, and all that met me was an indignant glare. Anger glinted in her dark eyes.

Fuck.

Levi would tell me to run. Because this bitch was not DTF.

But I never listened to Levi, so instead, I stood there like a fucking idiot, somehow stupidly enchanted by the way her lips twisted into a murderous scowl. Her lipstick was smudged. I did that, and it... looked like she wanted to push me off the roof for it.

Okay.

Maaaaaaybe it was time to go.

"Why the fuck did you kiss me, asshole?"

Or, or, or, wait for it, Nick, it would be an even better idea to stay here with her... on the edge of said roof. Instinctively, I shot a wary glance around us to be sure that there was a human barrier to prevent her from tossing me to my untimely death. It was the New Year. I couldn't die yet.

I had to at least give 2020 a shot.

"Um, it was just a midnight kiss," I said, but the music and the crowd and the fireworks drowned out the pathetic excuse. So I leaned in closer. "It was just a midnight kiss!"

Her hands met my chest, and once again, this girl shoved me. "Did I ask you to fucking kiss me?"

My head spun. It was surreal. Really.

Every girl wanted a midnight kiss on New Year's Eve. Honestly, I'd only picked the girl beside me because I'd been caught up in the moment. She was pretty and alone. But fuck, apparently I'd picked the only girl in the tri-state area who didn't want to be kissed.

"It was just a kiss," I said again, shrugging impatiently. I'd initially thought this could only end two ways: we parted ways amicably or we hooked up later. It was a simple sentiment, a rite of passage, a fucking tradition.

I didn't know that she was going to slap me into the New Year. What was her fucking damage?

She flicked a piece of hair over her shoulder, cocked a hip, pressed her lips together. There it was. The full fucking treatment. I'd just kissed a stone cold bitch. "Just a fucking kiss."

"My bad," I snorted. "Was it your first kiss?"

"Fuck you."

I rolled my eyes. Okay. "Seriously? Take it easy. It's 2020. It's the New Year."

"Yeah, thanks for reminding me," she snapped, smoothing down her hair and dress as if I'd ruined her outfit with my fucking presence. It was almost hot in a... self-loathing type of way. "I started 2020 with your tongue down my throat."

"New Year, New You," I snickered, giving her a tight smile, but then a ripple of white light washed over us, a searing hot flash from a phone camera. I barely caught it—the flush in her cheeks.

Shit.

Guilt clogged my throat. "Okay, I... I didn't stick my tongue down your throat," I said, but it came out low and raspy. Her eyes flickered up to meet mine, and I froze, suddenly stuck watching her long, dark lashes flutter in a veil of darkness. "It was supposed to be... I mean, it was romantic."

A stampede of fireworks erupted behind her in vibrant bursts of color across the Manhattan skyline, but fuck, it was nothing compared to the impending explosion in her eyes. "It wasn't consensual, dick."

I blinked. It wasn't consensual? It was a fucking kiss. I didn't... I didn't hurt her.

Before I could fumble for an argument, she ducked down to swipe something from the ground between us, straightening to reveal a flashing screen. I watched in bewilderment as she delicately answered a call and then pressed the iPhone to her ear.

The iPhone that she used as a violent weapon to bludgeon me with.

"Hey," I started cautiously, raising my hands in surrender. There was something about her expression, drawn tight into that murderous warning that told me not to pick a fight with her. I would lose. "I didn't—"

"Yeah, whatever, I know." She clipped by me brusquely. I stumbled back, caught off balance by the force of her shove. Fuck. She really could have pushed me off the roof. 2020 would have been over before it even started. "Just like eveeeeery other asshole from Bushwick who thinks he owns the city."

Um. What? Who the fuck was she?

I bit down on my tongue to keep a nasty response from breaking free. Not tonight, Nick.

"Yeah, hey," she muttered, and her disgruntled tone twisted me around to watch her push through the throngs of people crowding the roof. She was a streak of red and black, curled black hair cascading down her back, bare shoulders half-concealed by a thin leather jacket, a tight red dress hugging her hips, and... some hot black heels. "I'm leaving now."

Good fucking riddance. Sexy couldn't justify crazy.

"Bitch, no." The icy refusal took my breath away, lined with a jagged hostility, but it was the way she flicked her hair over the shoulder to cast me one last dark look that actually froze me. "No fucking men." Her eyes flashed. "Not tonight, Carly."

Ooookay. Maybe she was a lesbian. Maybe.

"Yeah, I just met the biggest douchebag..."

Ouch.

I swallowed hard, letting the slowly thinning crowd carry her away from me, but I couldn't tear my gaze away. Numbly, I watched her for as long as I fucking could—a ghostly streak of red and black, lost in the flickering fireworks and devoured by twisted silhouettes.

"...and I... need... get... drink..."

The faint words cut out between laughter and noise, swallowed and chewed up, regurgitated, until I couldn't make out anything beneath the conversations, until there was nothing but the blissfully ignorant sounds of a New fucking Year.

Until she was gone.

Like a cruel, cosmopolitan Cinderella, abandoning me at the stroke of midnight. Except she only left me with a burning cheek... and half the self-esteem I started 2020 with. In one minute.

Yeah. It was going to be a better year.

Definitely.

—THIS CLUELESS MF. First of all, I absolutely HATE when men just... assume that you're a lesbian because you don't want to be kissed by THEM. I just CAN'T—

BUT Y'ALL. I'm actually having a lot of fun with his character. Sue me. I think this cabrón is mad salty and shady, but I also think he's a genuine guy. I guess we'll... see if that changes. 😅

Thank you to everyone who's given this story a chance! ❤️