"Is that a hookah?" I gasped, spotting the top of it peeking out from the back of the truck.

Zachariah, who had his arm hooked around my shoulder, leaned in closer so he could get a better look. "Nice."

The night sky was a dark canvas of black and deep blue swirled together with a splatter of stars managing to peek out past the glow of city life light. The temperature dropped significantly colder here than it would be at my apartment due to the higher elevation.

I was thankful for the cool air. My buzz grew stronger, something less in my control. Even though we were outside and I could count on one hand how many people were sitting in the open garage, we all moved around each other so the heat had naturally built up between all of us.

"For you, babe."

Katerina walked over to me with a shot glass in each hand. When I lifted the clear liquid to my face, I grimaced as soon as the smell hit my nostrils.

"What is with you drinking vodka all the time?" I complained. "There's no such thing as good vodka. It all tastes like shit."

She was having none of it and shoved it closer to my lips. "It's an obligatory birthday tradition. You can't fight tradition."

"Yes I can," I countered. "We made that pact when we were fifteen. We shouldn't even have been drinking at fifteen."

Zachariah curled his arm tighter, bringing me closer to him. When I looked up, he eyed the shot curiously, waiting for an explanation.

"Don't ask why because I honestly don't remember, but we have this thing about taking a shot together every year for our birthday."

He glanced around us at all of the drinks that had been emptied and those still yet waiting. "Is that not what you've been doing this entire time?"

"It has to be Smirnoff. For sentimental reasons."

Zachariah didn't look like he understood any of it. I didn't blame him. None of it made sense, but it was something Katerina and I managed to do for the past eight years now, so not going through with it would have been against the natural order of things.

As soon as I knocked the shot back, something tickled my throat and I held a hand over my lips. Zachariah engaged into supportive mode and angled me toward the grass, his hands brushing back my hair.

"I'm good," I waved him off. The moment passed quickly. "It's the Smirnoff. It must be stopped."

"You're so overdramatic," Katerina laughed, though she took pity on me and grabbed the shot glass. "Please sit down before I revoke your brick status."

"Gladly."

I grabbed Zachariah's hand and pulled him to two empty chairs placed off on the side.

"Did you cut your hair?" I asked. I admired the strands of hair sticking up in every direction after he'd run his fingers through them.

He did that thing again, smoothing them back into place. "Couple of days ago."

"It looks good. I can see your face more."

I took the time to explore. Even though we'd known each other for years and had no shortage of opportunities to look at each other, I couldn't remember truly looking at him. Just him, not the person behind that face. Then again, maybe that was impossible—to have a life so closely intertwined with another's the way mine was with his and not see beyond the face.

He'd never admit it but he cared too much about his hair and accepted compliments about it more than any other. I remember when our entire crew went out one time, back when he and Emmie were still together, and he'd drunkenly asked us what we thought his best feature was. I still remembered the way his cheeks blushed like the shiniest red apples I'd ever seen after I'd said he had the best hair I've ever seen on a guy. I was wrong, though, because his best feature was his smile. It looked like sunlight reincarnated.

He had a scar above his right eyebrow, just ever so slightly lighter than the rest of his face. It dipped almost imperceptibly. One night during the first week I stayed over at his house, I remember running my finger over it after he'd accidentally fallen asleep next to me on the couch while we were watching a movie.

Zachariah's face shifted for a second. Barely a second that I almost didn't catch before the smile reappeared. "I like your face too," he said.

Romi's friend called out to us, telling us to move our chairs closer if we wanted to smoke with them. As soon as I stood up, I barely felt my limbs move. It was like being commandeered by some other entity, prodding me to where it knew the night would turn more fun. My brain agreed with all of it, at least.

As soon as we sat down, Zachariah glanced down at my bare legs and noticed something.

"Did you cut yourself?" he asked, pointing at a speck of red on my leg.

I squinted but couldn't make it out clearly. "Uh, maybe? Don't tell anyone but I kind of tripped on the way back from the bathroom earlier."

"Literally all of us heard that," Katerina said from somewhere off in the distance.

Zachariah lifted both of my legs onto his lap and turned the damaged one over so he could get a better look at the cut.

"Yeah, you cut yourself." He looked up, presumably at Romi, and asked, "Do you have any band-aids? And something to clean it off?"

Someone—Romi?—disappeared and eventually, a band-aid and individually wrapped alcohol-soaked pad appeared in Zachariah's possession. I don't know how long it took because I looked at his face the entire time, scrunched up in concentration.

The alcohol pad stung as it made contact with the cut. Hissing in pain, I nearly pulled my legs off his lap but his left arm held them down with little effort while he cleaned the minor wound.

"Stop fidgeting."

"Stop doing that thing."

He just laughed, unwrapping the band-aid to place it on my leg. After it was secured, he smoothed his hand over it.

His hand never left my leg, and my legs never left his lap. The hookah made its way over to us, and instead of letting me go, Zachariah held onto me with one arm while he gripped the hose in his hand.

I felt hot all of a sudden. Like the air had been sucked dry and replaced with something warm pooling deep in my chest. I focused on his face, admiring it, but even that proved difficult when I couldn't help but concentrate on the way his hand gently caressed one of my calves.

"It's mint," he noted after taking a hit. Zachariah turned toward me, his eyelids low. "You want?"

I nodded but didn't move. Nobody was looking. I couldn't feel their eyes on us as everyone was in their own little world, but that didn't stop me from blushing as he leaned forward in his seat, still holding onto my legs, and brought his face in front of mine.

It felt like a spell cast over me, the way the cloud of smoke billowed and left a tingling sensation behind. I let my eyes drift closed until the only sensory registering was the touch of his warm hand against my leg. It drifted up for a moment, just barely grazing my thigh until it was quickly yanked back.

I extracted the hose from his hand and took a puff before tapping Romi's friend on the shoulder so he could take his turn.

"Want to take a walk?" I asked Zachariah.

He looked at me, puzzled. "Where to?"

Zachariah ignored me at first, wrapping his arms around my legs and resting like he wanted to fall asleep. I wasn't sure how much time passed since we sat down since every minute blurred into the next, but I knew there was no way he could be tired already.

His fingers slipped around like he tried to hold me in place. Eventually, after I wiggled around, he laughed and sat up again, reaching for my hand to pull me up. "Fine, let's take a walk."

...

Romi didn't live on a busy street but that didn't make it any less embarrassing when I'd plopped onto the cement.

Zachariah didn't question it. Instead, he dropped down next to me, pulling his knees up and resting his arms on top.

"I'm kind of a mess," I remarked out loud.

"We're a couple of messes that go together," he replied.

Under the faint yellow hue of the street light, it was hard to truly appreciate his face, but I still managed to catch hints of green peaking through his brown eyes. "We kind of do, right?"

"If we don't, I should probably find a new best friend."

"You're my best friend too."

I wasn't sure what it meant or if it was even the truth. Maybe it was just the alcohol buzzing through me. I leaned my forehead against his shoulder and felt the warmth in my chest explode once again, threatening to take over my entire body.

"I talk so much shit about Hawai'i and how much I want to leave but I love it here," I slurred, my voice muffled by his shirt. "And all those best friends on the mainland can suck it cause my best friend is the best."

His body vibrated beneath me. "The truth comes out."

"It is the truth!" I shot up, folding my leg so I could turn to face him. "My friends are the actual best people on the planet and I stand by that. I mean look at you! You let me live with you for way too long. You must really like me."

He remained silent for a beat. "I miss having you around."

I slapped his arm. "I'm over all the time. I'm surprised you're not tired of me yet."

"I don't think that's even possible." His eyes flickered down toward my chin for a second. "Thanks for inviting me tonight. I'm having a lot of fun."

"Who else would I invite? You're my best friend."

His eyes sparkled like he never wanted me to stop talking. With him around, I almost didn't want to. Some people made it so easy that, even when the rest of the world left me itching to escape, they pulled me in until all I wanted to do was fill them in on every facet of my soul.

"I have better friends to drink with." I pouted as I remembered when we walked through Waikiki. "Bet Cherie still hates me."

"Did I ever tell you that Makana asked me for your number while you went to the bathroom before we caught the Uber back to my place?"

"Homeboy doesn't take a hint," I scoffed.

"He pissed me off," Zachariah said, his tone harsh. "Tried asking me when the last time you got laid was 'cause he thought you were too uptight the entire night."

"Let's go egg his house right now. Or slash his tires. Or both."

He ran his thumb along my chin, right below my bottom lip. "You're cute when you want to commit crimes."

"I'm serious." I stood up, ready to hunt down Makana's address so I could give him a piece of my mind, but Zachariah pulled me back. Maybe I was too drunk to go anywhere right now. Or maybe I'd do whatever Zachariah asked me to. "That guy is such a weirdo. I don't know why you hang out with them. And that Cherie girl? Don't even get me started. Like please, read the room. He's not interested."

Zachariah let me stumble all over myself. "She's harmless. Misguided but harmless."

"Well sure, I don't blame her but come on. It's not my fault the hot newly single guy doesn't want you. Stop shooting daggers at me with your eyes just because he likes hanging out with me more."

My brain only registered what I'd said after it happened. Out of shame, I looked everywhere but at him, which was foolish considering my eyes always traveled back to him whether I made a conscious choice or not.

"She was kind of right though. Wasn't she?"

"No, she wasn't." I shook my head, refusing to acknowledge that the jealous girl from Waikiki could be right. If she was, that meant I'd somehow missed all the signs, and that the guilt I'd felt around Emmie was justified in ways I'd fought against.

"Maybe not for everyone," he continued. "It's possible."

He paused and the heat rose once again, expanding to every inch of my body.

"Stop."

Zachariah looked down again. I licked my lips out of habit whenever I felt like I was losing my cool, and he closed his eyes.

"We're drunk."

"I know."

"Then why are you going there?"

Zachariah looked up at me; I felt his eyes on me even as I buried myself into his side.

"Hearing you call me your best friend....it feels good."

"She can't be right," I argued, fought, and begged. "Cherie of all people can't be fucking right."

Stumbling over my own feet, I somehow managed to crawl my way back into the house, past the party people asking Zachariah to pick up one of their spots in beer pong, and into the bathroom at the back of the house. After a few seconds of trying to gather myself, I looked into the mirror. The raven strands had gone frizzy in the Hawaiian humidity, my cheeks flushed a cotton candy shade of pink, and my eyes were wide from the volatile combination of excitement and booze.

I turned on the water and splashed a handful on my face.

For a moment, I'd convinced myself it had worked, but then I heard a knock at the door and I knew before I opened it that it had not done its job. Realistically, I'm not sure anything would have, short of literally running away from the house.

Zachariah leaned against the doorframe with heavy eyelids dragging leisurely around my face.

"I'm not that drunk," I mumbled unconvincingly. "You can't abandon them. You're the best pong player."

"They'll survive."

The tides began to shift in a way that felt so inevitable, yet a part of me wanted to believe I had any willpower to stop it. When Zachariah slipped into the bathroom and shut the door behind him, I did nothing to stop it. When he sat down on the edge of the bathtub and rested his face in his hands like he was struggling to say something, I knew in my heart of hearts there was nowhere else I wanted to be.

"Do you ever feel guilty for something you haven't done yet?"

There it was. Yet. The inevitable outcome of a myriad of events that led us to where we were tonight, with a long red string tied between us, all tangled into a complicated web.

"I don't want this to be one of those things," he said into the palm of his hands.

"There doesn't need to be a thing," I murmured.

He glimpsed at me with a dazed look in his eyes like he was seeing me for the first time. There were a lot of firsts happening tonight, and I had no will to stop any of them; no desire to extinguish the fire that had nestled into the center of my chest and set my whole body ablaze.

"Is it even possible to ignore it at this point?"

It had to be if I was to keep an ounce of sanity left in me.

With a heavy sigh, I stepped back, aware of how he watched my every move. If I were to flick back through the snapshots of our lives, I wouldn't be able to pinpoint the exact moment when it started to change but right now, I was acutely aware of just how much I felt him on me, even from a distance.

"We don't have to," I whispered, still hanging onto the paper-thin chance we could tear ourselves away from each other because once we traveled down this road, there would be no turning back.

I listened as his footsteps traveled toward me, so slowly I couldn't count the seconds in my head. It was like time ceased to exist, and the party roaring outside blurred into nothing. We existed in our little bubble together, trying to figure out what any of this meant.

There weren't any fireworks at first, just the gentle touch of his fingers against the soft skin along my wrist. They traveled upward, and upward, and across the skin of my decolletage. Every caress branded me with his warmth. Each exploration was new, and yet it felt like ripping open a pandora's box of memories. Even if we'd never gone down this path before, we knew each other better than we knew most others, so a touch didn't feel like just a touch but like we were coming home.

It started soft as we tested the waters, using just the right amount of pressure to convince the other this wasn't a dream, but not enough to scare the other away. As my fingers slipped up his chest and wrapped around his neck, he pressed up against me until space was just a made-up word, no longer searchable in our love language.

He pulled back and looked at me, the question swirling in his eyes, which I answered by yanking his lips back onto mine like the only way I'd be able to breathe again was through his touch.

Our first kiss deserved better. If our hearts remained muddled, the least we could've done for ourselves was give our first kiss a clear mind, unclouded by a drunken haze.

It switched in an instant and I could no longer keep track of where one of us started and the other ended. My brain was an innocent bystander in the destruction of the blissful ignorance once guiding our friendship like we could ever pretend there wasn't something more, something lingering between each word we used to soothe each other when everyone else failed to appease us.

Zachariah groaned into my mouth and my knees nearly buckled out from beneath me. Thankfully, he had the foresight to hold me up, until he decided that wasn't enough either and twirled us around toward the counter.

The labored breath rushed out of my body as Zachariah reached down and lifted me onto the sink, leaving his hands hooked behind my knees so he could slide me forward, just far enough that I felt every inch of him against me.

He left me dizzy beneath his touch; every kiss, every lap of his tongue trailing a warpath behind in his wake. I familiarized myself with his body as I discovered new parts of him not shown to me before. How beneath every baggy shirt were hard contours dressed in smooth silk. Or how his cologne mixed so seductively with his natural scent no one could convince me it wasn't made specifically for him.

I was lost in a haze of whiskey and Zachariah, and I could drown in it all for the rest of eternity.

When he rolled his hips into mine, the moan released from deep in my throat and I buried my face into his neck, sweat beading up on my forehead.

"Shit," I groaned.

Threading his fingers into my hair, he lightly tugged until our faces were just a breath away from each other. I whimpered from the microscopic amount of space dancing between us, a tango teasing every nerve ending in my body.

"Alex," he murmured, louder until my eyes finally drifted up to meet his. "Alexandra."

I couldn't speak. The only thing my lips were capable of doing at the moment was trying to find a way back to his. I tugged on his shirt and elevated my chin, hoping he'd take the hint, but instead of dousing the fire, Zachariah fanned the flames until I was convinced we'd burn the entire house down.

He knew exactly what he was doing. Every kiss he trailed across my face was accompanied by more pressure elsewhere. Soft flesh met hard muscle and I forgot how to breathe, a strange feeling tickling the back of my throat.

"Do you know how long I've wanted this?"

I froze beneath his touch. His words were like a bucket of water being splashed on us, cutting off the heat and extracting all the air out of the room.

"Don't say that," I begged, the desire laced into every word battling against the onslaught of guilt I suddenly felt. "Don't say it like that."

"Like what?" At least he had the decency to sound as winded as I did, though I wasn't sure if that would help me relax or just turn me on even more.

I needed space and I needed it right now.

"I have to—" I pressed a hand to my mouth.

Before I knew it, I pushed him out of the way and kneeled over the toilet seat, watching as the entire contents of my stomach were heaved into the water. Embarrassment flooded my body and I felt red hot all over.

Zachariah kneeled next to me and gathered my hair into one hand while using the other to rub circles on my back, whispering into my ear how it was all going to be okay.