Adelia accepted the chilled root beer with both hands, wrapping her fingers around the can like it was something precious. Her expression softened. It wasn't just from the cold metal against her palms, but from the gesture itself. [i]He even wiped it off on his jacket.[/i] That was thoughtful in a way she hadn’t expected from someone so boisterous. She liked it, oddly enough. But surely this was normal, right? For friends to do this for one another? 

Did they even qualify as friends yet?

“Thanks,” she said quietly at first, her voice half-lost in the ambient noise of the mixer. Then her eyes flicked up to his as he leaned in close and whispered that he had no idea what he was doing.

She smirked and tilted her head.

“Oh, good,” she whispered back, voice laced with dry amusement. “I was starting to think I was the only one winging it.”

With a soft clink, she tapped her root beer can to his soda and added, “To new friends and [i]beautiful[/i] disasters in the making.”

Adelia took a sip, savoring the bite of carbonation. The root beer fizzed lightly on her tongue as she glanced out toward the rest of the room. The mixer had grown louder around them, voices rising in laughter, music playing something upbeat in the background—nothing she could name, but it had that polished, easy rhythm made for social spaces like this.

But somehow, she didn’t feel like she needed to scan the room anymore. Eliot had a way of anchoring things.

She turned her attention back to him, letting the silence between them linger just long enough before she moved again—stepping around him to reach for a toothpick full of pineapple and cheese. She took a bite, chewing thoughtfully, then gestured at the little pile of snacks on his plate.

“So, tell me the truth,” she said, mouth half-full, “do you judge people based on what they pick at these things? Like, is there some kind of snack hierarchy I should know about? Because I definitely just made eye contact with someone who saw me choose pineapple over pigs in a blanket, and I felt like I committed a crime.”

Her tone was teasing, but she wasn’t completely joking. She’d always been careful—of how she acted, how she moved, how she was seen. Being the oldest of five taught you that people were always watching, and sometimes watching meant expecting.

Now, for once, she was the one asking if it was safe to be a little weird.

Then, just to deflect any suspicion, she gestured broadly to the room. “So what do you think? About the whole… forced-fun welcome party thing? Worth it?” Her eyes flicked sideways toward him. “Or just a place to gather tabs you’ll forget about later?”