"You're drunk."

"Am not," Tony grinned, sitting on the floor of the balcony outside Esté's bedroom in the Hamptons, "You are, though."

"Am not."

The truth was, both the sixteen year olds were drunk. It was George's birthday and as usual, a large soirée was taking place downstairs, spilling out onto the garden beneath them.

It was dark by that point in the evening and pretty lights illuminated the garden and the pool, the full moon reflecting on the rippling surface of the ocean past the lawn and the sand.

Adults were congregated on sun loungers sipping alcohol and picking at leftover food while mighty laughs and terrible singing filtered through the floorboards from downstairs, a light breeze in the summer air cooling down hot skin.

Tony and Esté made light work of stealing alcohol without their parents noticing, nailing down the operation after around two years of practicing and plenty of scoldings when they had been caught in the past.

That night, the plan went smoothly and after scavenging some slices of pizza and taking them upstairs, the teenagers were several beers and a bottle of white wine deep when the adults sang an ear-splitting version of Happy Birthday to George.

"Can I ask you a question?"

"Sure," Esté shrugged and filled her glass up with more wine.

Tony shifted awkwardly, scratching the side of his neck before looking at her with knitted brows. She was waiting patiently to hear his question, a content smile on her face and eyes a little glazed over from the alcohol.

She looked beautiful, but that wasn't a new thought to cross Tony's mind. He thought Estélla always looked beautiful. Since he was old enough to think flowers and stars were pretty, he thought she was too.

"Do you like him? The guy from school?"

Esté paused in thought, "Luke?"

"Yeah," Tony answered, "That guy."

"Why do you ask?"

He shrugged his shoulders and avoided her gaze, looking down at the floor and picking at some chipped paint by the edge of the balcony.

His silence irritated her and Esté kicked the bottom of Tony's foot lightly, prompting him to look up at her then as she raised her brows and shook her head, coaxing him into giving her an answer.

Tony sighed, leaning back on his hands and tilting his head, the sky spinning around him and the trees appearing to melt into the ground if he stared at them for too long.

"Because I don't want you to."

"Why?"

"I just don't."

"But why?"

Tony grew agitated, regretting even asking his question now her pressing counter was forcing him towards an answer he didn't want to give.

"You're so annoying," Esté eventually said.

She huffed at his silence and put down the wine, lying down on the balcony beside him. Tony waiting for a few moments before joining her, lying down on the wood with his hands resting on his torso, eyes staring up at the stars above their heads.

"Because I want you to like me."

Esté turned her head to look at Tony, their faces just a few inches apart. His brown eyes were wide and sparkled with flecks of green, his skin tanned and hair fluffed up, the collar of his navy dress shirt twisted ever so slightly.

"I do like you."

"No," he whispered, gazing into her ocean eyes with a smile on his lips that he couldn't repress, an urge in his chest that controlled him as he lifted a shaking hand and touched the side of her face gently, "Not like that. Like th-"

"Estélla!" George's voice boomed from the garden beneath them, "You better not have taken my last bottle of Pinot!"

Estélla woke up with a gasp, snapping bolt upright in bed as she held the covers to her chest, panting with sweat dripping down her forehead.

The room was light now the sun had risen and for a few moments, Esté had no idea where she was. She couldn't remember anything that had happened the night before, let alone falling asleep, and as she sat there desperately trying to catch her breath after a premature awakening from a deep slumber, everything came back to her at once.

"Hey, hey, you alright? It's me, calm down."

Tony jumped out of his skin when Esté awoke beside him, leaving him with the same breathless shock in his lungs that took a few seconds to heal. He watched the panic flash in her eyes as she darted her gaze around the room before realising where she was, a wave of calmness washing over her as she closed her eyes and leant back against the headboard.

"Sorry," she whispered, running a hand through her hair, "I freaked out, I guess."

"Don't be," Tony shook his head and sat up beside her, wiping sleep from his eyes with his knuckles, "You want some water? A coffee? Anything?"

Tony had called Happy and successfully managed to weave himself and Estélla out of her party without being seen, hopping straight in the back of Happy's car and heading to the Stark Tower.

Esté was still, understandably, practically tearing her hair out with stress, worry and everything in between for the first hour when they got back to Tony's place, but after drying off in a fluffy robe and sipping on some hot tea, her head seemed to float back down from the clouds.

To her surprise and somewhat upset, not many people had noticed she'd even disappeared from the party. Of course she had an angry number of missed calls from Christian and a stream of texts and calls from Katy and Alicia, but once she'd told them what had happened in a brief phone call while Tony took a shower, it was one less weight pressing down on her shoulders.

When it came to confronting Christian, however, Esté wasn't sure that she had the energy within her to have another conversation that would end in one of them watching the other leave. As much as she burned red with resent after finding out the truth from Tony, Esté knew that looking into Christian's eyes and having to listen to him apologise would only make her feel worse.

And so although it might've been cowardice, she text him telling him to pack his things and leave. He sent her a single response asking why and when that message went unanswered, he text her again at five o'clock in the morning telling her he'd left the key under the mat.

In some ways, the simplicity of it all made her want to sob. The lack of fight, lack of desire and passion from Christian made Estélla question whether whatever they had for each other had ever even been real at all. The idea of it all being meaningless was cruel in a way that tore down her confidence and her faith, and although that was the first awful thought that entered her head when she woke up the next morning, it wasn't one that remained.

"I...I think I should just go home."

"Are you sure?" Tony said, concern in the softness of his voice.

Esté nodded as she scrolled through the messages on her phone, reading the last two from Christian before deleting the chain and putting her phone back down on the beside table.

"Yeah I..." she sighed heavily and rest her her head in her hands for a moment, no tears threatening her eyes but a mountain of grief and the unknown bearing down on her instead, "I have work to do, I'm sure you do too. I'm sorry for last night, for dragging you into this, for-"

"Woah," Tony interrupted, holding up a hand, "What are you talking about? Why the hell are you apologising? You didn't drag me into anything, Esté."

Tony cared. Esté could see it written all over his face and in his voice, his gentle eyes and pushed back shoulders. He was open, and he wanted her to choose to take comfort in him.

"I need some time to figure this all out, can you let me do that?"

Estélla wasn't pushing Tony away, and he knew that. He'd been on the receiving end of her turning her back on him, keeping her distance and saying goodbye one time too many for him to not recognise what asking for space looked like.

And so although it hurt to nod his head and watch her slip out of his bed and gather her things, Tony let her go.

He pulled on a pair of sweatpants and tried to keep his eyes to himself as she pulled his t-shirt over her head and changed into a pair of leggings and a hoodie that Tony could never bring himself to throw away after their break up, only found himself glancing over his shoulder to gaze at the line running down the middle of her back and the curve of her waist and hips.

He hadn't forgotten how beautiful Estélla was from her head down to the soles of her feet, but Tony vowed to never take her for granted again.

He'd tried to fill a void, find the next best thing, find something better, but it was an unconquerable quest to head out on and he'd only been lead by a broken heart and a bruised ego. Tony knew now that something better simply didn't exist, and to think he could ever find something close to a body and soul like Estélla was foolish above all else.

Nobody with a mind as pure, heart as golden and lips as soft walked on their earth. Nobody with hands as gentle and moans as heavenly was breathing the same air or seeing the same sky, nobody with eyes as intense and desire as passionate could ever possibly exist at the same time as Esté. She was it, and Tony felt awakened now he realised that, as if the he'd discovered the whole world in the blink of an eye.

He desperately wanted to touch her, wanted to grab her waist and mark her skin with prints from his fingertips. He wanted to kiss her neck and listen to her whisper his name while her nails clawed at his shoulder blades, he wanted to feel her entirely, taste her and breathe her in.

Tony's mind was wild with thoughts that he knew he'd have to keep to himself for potentially longer than he felt like he could manage, but as she turned to face him and her hair fell messily over one shoulder, a subtle smile on her tired lips and eyes curving with something that for the first time didn't feel like ice, Tony would've waited forever.

"Can I ask you a question?" He said, scratching the back of his neck as he walked over to her.

"Sure," she nodded, using a brush from her purse to comb out the knots in the ends of her hair.

He exhaled and looked up, hands in his pockets and chin tilted high, "Did you mean what you said last night? Or is all of this just...to be forgotten?"

Tony was nervous as he spoke, his body tense and his eyes cautiously stern, not daring to look away from her face in case he missed any hint of an answer in a fall of her cheeks or flash in her eyes.

Esté tilted her head in the morning sunlight, eyes crawling slowly across Tony's face and down his neck, along his shoulders and down the veins in his arms and the muscles on his chest and his abs, the way his sweatpants sat low on his hips and the waistband of his boxers showed above the hem, two carved lines above his thighs drawing her eyes down before she stopped herself and looked back up.

His hair was a mess but he looked perfect, at least to her. His eyes were as tired as hers were though where Esté saw dark circles on herself, she saw memories on him. She saw his dedication and his vulnerability, his emotions and his deceit, all of it open for her to kiss away if she so wished.

And she did wish, she wished so desperately to be able to wipe out the past and pretend like nothing bad had ever happened, to feel his hands on her skin and to flutter her lashes at the sensation of his lips on her neck, to revel in the way her name sounded coming from his lips as they hung by her ear in a tangle of bedsheets.

But the past couldn't be erased and it couldn't be forgotten, at least not as easily as they both would've liked.

"I meant it," Esté said, "And I won't forget. Unless you want me to?"

"No," he said quickly, shaking his head and taking a feeble step closer to her, "Don't. Please don't."

She smiled softly, sensing the fear in his eyes the same way she sensed it when she'd dared him to do a backflip off the side of their boat into the Mediterranean Sea when they were nine.

"I won't."

The fact that he would question her hurt a little, but Estélla understood where his concerns stemmed from, and so she reached out and placed a hand on the side of his face, thumb brushing back and forth across the freckles on his weathered skin before she pressed a single kiss to his lips, picking up his hand and holding it against her chest.

"Hand on heart."