"Earth to Esté, are you awake yet? Over."

The walkie-talkie on Esté's bedside table crackled with Tony's voice, almost making her jump out of her skin as she read her book in the morning sunlight streaming through her bedroom window.

She picked up the device and held down a button on the side, giggling to herself as she spoke, "I'm awake, you can come in. Over."

It wasn't abnormal for Tony to stay over at the Goldwyn's house on a Saturday night, in fact, it would've been unusual if he didn't. The kids had fallen into a routine of spending Saturday mornings with their families alone, Esté going to ballet class while Tony tinkered with things in his father's workshop that he probably should've have touched, waiting for the afternoon to roll around so he could spend time with his best friend.

That weekend had been no different. The pair had spent Saturday evening making pizzas in the kitchen and watching a horror movie in Esté's room with a huge bowl of popcorn in between them. They said goodnight around one in the morning, Tony retreating down the hall to a guest bedroom that had more of his clothes in the dresser than he did at his own home.

He always slept better at The Goldwyn's house, though never figured out why. Whether it was the white noise of kitchen appliances from the floor below him or something else sending him off into a peaceful sleep, Tony didn't know, but he always woke up feeling refreshed with a smile on his face.

He padded down the hallway in his pyjamas once Esté answered his call, knocking twice on her door before pushing it open to see her the same way she always was, sitting in the middle of her king sized bed with a book in her hands.

"What are we reading this week?"
A thirteen year old Tony asked, closing the door behind him.

She smiled as he walked over to the bed and laid down across it, crossing his legs at his ankles and linking his fingers together behind his head.

"You still want me to read to you?" Esté asked, rubbing sleep from her eyes with her knuckles.

Tony turned his head to look up at her, smiling at her red cheeks and messy hair from a good nights sleep.

"I'll always want you to read to me."

Estélla had said goodnight to Tony at two-thirty in the morning. She'd very nearly caved under his enticing stare and gentle lips, though the bell of rationality that had been silenced for a while started to ring, a shrieking what if stopping her from taking things any further with him, just in case they'd made a mistake.

Tony didn't mind that he was told to go home, in fact, the anticipation of something more with Estélla was perhaps more of a gift than getting it straight away. And so, he left her with a kiss on her doorstep before walking home by himself, a spring in his step and a head full of things to dream about.

Both of them had wondered in the back of their minds whether they would wake up and feel nothing, whether the raptures they'd been bound in the previous day and night had been finite the same way they had been before. It worried them both to the point where they didn't want to fall asleep, but somewhere between panic and daybreak, they both slept like babies.

Esté sat down in a dressing room with a sigh, pulling her feet up onto the leather couch and stretching, yawning loudly with her arms above her head. Her phone rang and she picked it up from the table in front of her, answering the call with her eyes closed while she tried to wake herself up with a cup of coffee.

"Hello?"

"Hey, it's me."

"Tony," Esté's eyes flew open then and her tone lifted, "How are you?"

"I'm good, I just...well, I wanna see you. Can I come over?"

Estélla smiled to herself at his words, breathing out a silent sigh of relief that the feeling she still felt when she woke up that morning was flying just as high inside his heart, too.

"I'm actually working right now, I'm at a fitting. Maybe later?"

"How about I take you out? We can have a real first date."

She sighed and sat upright, crossing her legs and sipping on her coffee with the phone to her ear, "We can't, this has to stay private, Tony."

"Well the world thinks we're still just friends, can't we go out as friends? I'll keep my hands to myself."

Esté just scoffed, "Yeah, right."

"I will!" Tony argued, "Swear it, hand on heart. I'll send a car at seven, that work for you?"

"I should've wrapped up by mid-afternoon so yeah, that'll work."

"Perfect. Just out of interest, what's the fitting for? It's not lingerie by any chance, is it?" Tony cleared his throat.

"Actually, it is."

The dressing room door swung open and a runner poked her head inside, giving Esté a smile, "Back fitting in 5, Estélla."

"What's the address? I'll be there in-"

"I'm hanging up now." Estélla laughed and shook her head, swallowing the rest of her coffee before standing up and checking her reflection in the mirror.

"You can't just tease me like that and-"

"Goodbye, Anthony."

After a long day of being taped and measured, dressed and pinned, photographed and videoed, Esté finally walked through the doors of her home in the West Village at five o'clock.

She hadn't had much time to think about anything besides work that day, though as soon as the last lingerie set was measured and good to go, Estélla couldn't think about anything but Tony.

She found herself fighting a flurry of nerves in the pit of her stomach, something that had never been there when she'd made plans with him before. It was strange at first, to feel so nervous about the evening when it was still just Tony, the same boy she'd known her entire life, and the same man that had kissed her like no man had ever kissed her before.

Esté curled her hair and did her makeup, brushing a dark brown shadow across her eyelids and lining them with a black kohl liner. She painted her lips a glossy nude shade and picked out a little black dress and her favourite Saint Laurent heels, not needing a jacket now that summer was warming the city of New York well into the later hours of the day.

Sure enough, a car arrived just before seven o'clock outside Esté's house. She made small talk with a gentleman called Happy that she hadn't met before, though recalled Tony mentioning a few times, while he drove her across the city. She was still none the wiser about their destination that night, though was undoubtedly taken aback when he stopped the car on the edge of the Hudson River.

Happy opened the door for her and offered his hand to help her down, wishing her a good evening before Tony ended his conversation with a gentleman in a white suit and walked over to her.

The air was still that night and the sun was setting, an orange sky reflecting on the water that rippled gently against the banks as boats bobbed up and down on the dock, only a handful of other people around.

"What's going on?" Esté said with a sheepish smile.

Tony smirked as he approached her, one hand in the pocket of his dark jeans as he placed the other on her waist, pressing a gentle kiss to her cheek.

"I thought about what you said, and what I said, and I decided that I probably wouldn't be able to keep my hands to myself. So," he spun on his heels and gestured to a silver yacht tethered to land by a short jetty, "I thought, where's more private than the ocean? Or, the ends of the Hudson River, at least."

Esté wasn't a stranger to the lavish lifestyle. She had been wrapped in luxury since the moment she entered the world and that hadn't changed while she'd grown up, nor had it changed in the six years she spent in a relationship with one of the most famous football players in the world.

Tony knew all of this, but the way Esté's blue eyes lit up like sapphires when she saw the boat on the water seemed like she was seeing the sun for the first time. Her smile was wide and her brows raised in disbelief, perhaps not at the yacht, but at the gesture, Tony thought.

"Are you serious? You planned all of this for us?"

He hadn't expected Esté to be so floored at his date night plan, wondering how she wasn't used to men doing outlandish things like chartering a yacht for her for an evening. Regardless, he was glad he could raise the bar for her, confident that he'd always meet it, too.

"I want to do this properly, Esté. And for the record, I've never taken anyone else on a boat."

He offered her his arm and Esté linked her own through it, resting her hands together around his bicep as they walked towards the water.

"Good," was all she said.

The captain sailed Esté and Tony around the bay as the sun continued to set, eventually plunging themselves and New York into a beautiful cover of darkness. The stars looked as beautiful as they always did but there was something magical about looking up at them from the water, feeling a sway of something not created by man, but perhaps by the same force that made the stars sparkle and moon glow.

The couple spent their night on a beautiful terrace on the boat, a single red Juliet rose in a glass sat on top of a white tablecloth, two chairs facing one another with ambient lighting from spotlights around the edge of the deck.

Estélla looked beautiful in low lighting, Tony thought. She looked beautiful in any lighting and after knowing her for his entire life, he felt qualified enough to say he could make that claim with confidence. That evening, though, she looked different. Tony wasn't sure it was because he was maybe seeing her for the first time through the eyes of a man that wanted more than a friend, or another reason entirely, but he thanked whatever force was greater than him for his sight that night.

A chef prepared them a dinner and a waiter served champagne followed by free flowing dry rosé, Estélla and Tony enjoying each other's company the same way they always had and the same way they always would. They ate and drank and talked about their day, complained about work and recalled old memories lost in time the same way they had done before they'd kissed.

In fact, they hadn't kissed once since leaving the shore, not even so much as a brush of hands. Things felt natural, it felt normal to be relaxed around one another and there was no tension like Esté was scared there might be now things were different. It was almost as if nothing had changed at all, and they both might've believed that, had they not been suppressing the urge to close the gap the table forced between them the entire night.

"So," Tony said, leaning back on his chair with his leg crossed over the other, "Where does this rank on your long list of first dates? Better than Bradley Cooper?"

Esté's jaw dropped and her brows furrowed when Tony spoke, her reaction coaxing a laugh from him as he stared at her, wine in hand.

"First of all, what makes you think it's a long list? Second of all, I don't know what you're talking about."

Tony rolled his eyes, "Because you're beautiful, so you're bound to have been on a million first dates. As for Bradley Cooper, everyone under the sun saw those pictures of you and him in Rome."

"You're insufferable," Esté shook her head and glanced out at the water while she sipped on her wine, Tony noticing how elegant her fingers looked wrapped around the glass and how pretty the diamond ring on her hand was.

"I know, but don't avoid the question," he said, leaning forward on the table, "Do I beat Cooper?"

Esté huffed and pursed her lips as she looked across the table at Tony. He looked feverishly handsome that night, rugged with tousled hair and a charming smile, the top buttons of his shirt left undone and the cuffs rolled up just a little. She noticed the small things like the veins running down his forearms, finding herself staring at him far more deeply than she'd ever done before.

"He tried to hook up with me in the bathroom of a restaurant."

Tony narrowed his eyes, "Is that a positive or a negative? Because I can certainly try and hook up with you in a bathroom on this boat if that's what you want. There's like seven-"

"I will not hesitate to push you overboard, Tony."

He grinned and took a swig of wine, feeling his heart flare up at her witty tongue. Tony was relieved that their dynamic hadn't changed after admittedly spending some time worrying that they might not know how to act around each other after their kiss, though his concerns were buried almost instantly when she stepped out of the car earlier on.

Tony wasn't sure whether he'd always wanted to kiss Estélla and just hadn't realised it, or if something genuinely was different after their fifteen years apart. He looked at her with the city skyline illuminated past her shoulders and wondered how she could still be the brightest thing he could see, unable to recall what it felt like to not want to feel her lips against his own.

"You know I'm only messing with you, come here."

She stared at him for a moment without moving, prompting him to widen his eyes and raise a brow, beckoning her over to him with a wave of his hand, "Come here."

Estélla rarely did what men told her but for some reason, she rose up onto her feet and walked around the table, standing in front of Tony as he just looked up at her, a soft smile on his lips as he reached out and took hold of her hand inside his own.

"Sit."

Esté glared at him, "Do I look like a dog? In fact, don't answer that."

He chuckled and stood up, pulling her along by her hand behind him until they reached a padded curved couch on the edge of the deck. He sat down and lazily tugged on her hand, pulling her down on top of him with an arm around her waist.

"You're so sleazy, has anyone ever told you that?" Esté asked, truth in her words but equal excitement in her chest at how she felt sitting on his lap, arms resting around his neck.

"Many, many people have told me that, sweetheart."

She scoffed at his words and tried her best to play it cool, biting down on the insides of her cheeks to contain a smile that was desperate to cover her face. Tony was doing the same thing, a cold gaze toying with her while his eyes darkened with the night sky, hands trailing lightly across her waist and her thighs.

"And now you're starting with the pet names, does this usually work?" She mused, her tone laced with playfulness that fired up a beat in Tony's heart harder than ever before.

"You tell me," he said lowly, tilting his head as he felt her fingertips graze against his neck, "Is it working, Stella?"

She looked at him with her lips sealed for a long moment, having to remind herself how to breathe when she felt herself lose her body and her mind when his hands gripped her upper thigh with a force that matched the devious curve of his eyes.

"As if you even have to try."