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I can’t blush, baldhead. I’m Black.

I bite back a laugh.

You can’t turn pink, sure. But I swear you go orange.

So yes, you blush.

He fires back a string of skull emojis.

Then he looks up at me, and I look up at him, and we both burst out laughing at the same time. Not loudly, but enough for both our mothers to pause mid-sentence and turn the full weight of their maternal disapproval on us like a searchlight.

They start talking at the same time. We hear none of it because we’re still mostly laughing.

I’m still laughing when my eyes lift and crash straight into Tristan’s.

He’s already looking at me.

My heart slams against my ribs as if it’s trying to escape. This is the first time he’s looked at me all evening. The full weight of it hits me somewhere between my chest and my stomach, and I break eye contact first, which is frankly humiliating.

I don’t do that.

I don’t flinch. I don’t retreat. I hold eye contact with people twice Tristan’s size.

But something about the way he looks at me bypasses every instinct I have for composure and goes straight for the exposed thing underneath.

I hate him for that.

I look back up.

Because I refuse to let him have the last move.

And this time there’s something quiet and dangerously knowing in his expression, like he can see exactly what just happened. Like he knows what he does to me and has filed it away somewhere to use later.

Absolutely insufferable.

“Unfortunately, Kate couldn’t make it tonight,” Regina announces, and the moment fractures.

I pull my attention back to her, grateful for the interruption and already suspicious of where this particular thread leads.

“Oh no,” my mother says in her polite voice. The one that means she couldn’t care less but was raised well.

“You know how she is,” Regina murmurs with a knowing little nod. “She was supposed to come with her son, Jake. But he couldn’t make it either.”

I set my fork down very, very carefully so I don’t do anything with it that would get me banned from this house forever.

Jake.

Of course.

Because apparently the universe looked at my evening and thought, You know what would really elevate this? Suffering.

Of all the names in all the rooms on all the nights of my life, it has to be that one.

“I heard they’re considering appointing him CFO of his family’s conglomerate,” my mother remarks, lifting her glass of water with all the calm of someone who has no idea she’s just handed Regina a loaded weapon.

Regina lights up instantly.

“Oh yes,” she gushes, far too delighted for a promotion that is not, in fact, hers. “I certainly hope they give it to him. None of his brothers or cousins are remotely suited for the role. And if it happens, he’ll become the youngest CFO among the top ten companies in the country.”