The city outside still shimmered with a thousand unresolved stories, but inside the room, everything felt muted, slow, as if the universe had decided to buffer for a few precious hours before pressing play on the next disaster. Theo woke to the sound of Kristy’s breath, steady and shallow, the barest suggestion of a snore. It was 4:17 a.m. He watched the digital clock tick over to 4:18. He didn’t move.

  She shifted beside him, turning so that her arm flopped across his chest. It was not an intentional gesture, but he felt the weight of it all the same. The sheet was tangled at their hips, the evidence of sleep fought for and won.

  For a long moment, Theo didn’t know if she was awake or dreaming. He let his hand rest on her shoulder, feeling the soft warmth of her through the hoodie, the pulse under her skin. He could have stayed like that forever, or at least until the spell broke and someone remembered how the world actually worked.

  But it was Kristy who broke the silence, her voice rough and unguarded. “Are you watching me sleep?”

  He didn’t flinch. “No,” he lied. “Maybe. A little.”

  She lifted her head, eyes half-lidded but bright. “You’re so weird,” she said, but the words landed like a benediction.

  They lay there, side by side, saying nothing. Every so often, one of them would reach for the other, a pinkie grazing a knuckle, a foot finding its opposite under the sheet. The city’s noise was a distant ocean.

  After a while, Kristy sat up, gathering her knees to her chest. She stared out the window, at the sliver of dawn beginning to creep behind the Luxor beam. “You ever get the sense that you’ve skipped a step?” she asked.

  Theo propped himself on an elbow. “What do you mean?”

  She shrugged, the motion barely perceptible. “Like, you’re supposed to have a slow build, a hundred awkward dates, meet each other’s friends and parents, all that. But we just—” She gestured at the bed, the city, the empty vodka bottles on the floor. “We just started at the middle and now we’re here. It’s like we found a cheat code.”

  Theo thought about this. He wanted to say something profound, but all he could manage was, “I’m not complaining.”

  She snorted. “You wouldn’t.”

  He rolled onto his back, staring at the ceiling. “Does it bother you?”

  “No,” she said. “I just…don’t want to mess it up.”

  Her voice, usually so sure, sounded like it was balancing on a wire. Theo recognized the feeling—the terror of finally getting something you’d never thought possible. He tried to reach for her hand, but missed by a few inches and ended up poking her knee. She smiled, and this time he knew it was real.

  “I have to tell you something,” he said, surprising even himself.

  She looked at him, one eyebrow cocked in mock suspicion. “This is where you reveal you’re secretly a billionaire, right?”

  “No,” he said, and felt his face go hot. “I just…I’m in love with you.”

  The words hung there, awkward and absolute.

  He waited for her to laugh, or to turn away, or to ask if he was serious. Instead, she crawled across the mattress until she was sitting astride him, knees bracketing his hips, face just inches from his own. She cupped his cheeks in both hands, thumbs tracing the line of his jaw.

  “I love you, too,” she whispered. “And that is the worst and best thing that has ever happened to me.”

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  He let out a breath he hadn’t known he was holding. She bent down and kissed him, slow and deliberate, the kind of kiss that made it clear there would be nothing tentative about the future. Her lips tasted like cheap vodka and something else he couldn’t name. Hope, maybe.

  They stayed like that, not quite clothed, not quite naked, kissing in the grainy half-light. When Kristy finally flopped onto her side, she let her head rest on his chest and closed her eyes.

  “I want this forever,” she said.

  He stroked her hair. “We could do that.”

  She twisted to look at him. “What, like, move in together? Skip the awkward roommate phase?”

  He shrugged. “Why not?”

  She sat up, hair a wild corona around her head, and fixed him with the kind of stare that dared him to back down. “You know we’re in Vegas, right?”

  “Yeah.”

  “And you know what people do in Vegas?”

  Theo’s heart thudded. “Gamble?”

  She grinned, sharp and reckless. “Sometimes. But mostly they make terrible decisions.”

  He felt a jolt of pure, terrified excitement. “Are you saying—”

  She cut him off, holding up a finger. “Don’t answer yet.”

  She rolled out of bed, pulled his hoodie over her head, and started rummaging in her backpack. She turned back, eyes shining. “Do you trust me?”

  Theo nodded, knowing there was no other answer.

  She tossed him a shirt and jeans. “Get dressed.”

  They left the room at 5:03 a.m. The hallway was empty except for a cleaning cart and the faint sound of someone puking in the stairwell. Kristy led the way, marching with the confidence of a person who’d decided that reality could be bent to her will. Theo followed, every nerve ending alight.

  They caught a cab at the front of the hotel. The driver, a woman with a day-glo manicure, didn’t even blink when Kristy said, “Take us to the nearest 24-hour wedding chapel. Fast.” She flicked on the meter, and they shot off into the pre-dawn city.

  In the backseat, Kristy gripped his hand so hard he thought his fingers might snap. “You can bail at any time,” she said, only half-joking.

  He squeezed back. “I’m not going anywhere.”

  She snapped a selfie of them in the back seat, then another, and another. In every picture, she was either grinning so wide her face blurred, or hiding behind her hand, or covering Theo’s face with her palm. She sent them all to his phone.

  They arrived at the chapel, a squat white building festooned with plastic flowers and neon hearts. Inside, the receptionist blinked at them, then slid a clipboard across the counter. “Bride and groom names?”

  “Kristina De Los Santos,” she said, and the sound of it hit Theo like a chord he didn’t know he’d been waiting for. Then the officiant turned to him. “And?”

  He swallowed. “Kristina, I like it. I’m Theodore Wilson.”

  She wrote it in, bold and messy. “Let’s do this.”

  They were ushered into a waiting room lined with bad portraits of celebrities who’d done the same thing: an Elvis, a Celine Dion, a dozen B-list actors frozen in the moment of their own greatest mistake or miracle. Kristy leaned against the wall and laughed. “We’re in good company.”

  The officiant, a man in a white polyester suit, asked if they had any special requests. “Just make it fast,” said Theo. “And maybe a little weird?”

  He winked. “You got it.”

  They stood in front of a makeshift altar, plastic roses and electric candles at their feet. The ceremony was a blur—vows read from a laminated card, the word “forever” repeated at just the right moment, Kristina’s eyes never leaving his. They didn’t have rings, so Kristina borrowed two twist-ties from the receptionist and knotted them around their fingers.

  Theo remembered almost none of the words. What he remembered was Kristina’s hands trembling as she held his, the way she blinked away tears she refused to shed, the sound of her laughter when the officiant pronounced them married.

  They signed the license. Kristina took another selfie, this one with both their faces half-hidden behind the paper. Theo felt dizzy, elated, and completely out of his mind.

  She leaned in, her forehead pressed to his. “We did it,” she said.

  He kissed her again, and this time it was so easy he wondered why they’d ever waited at all.

  On the cab ride back, they texted the photos to Marcus, Elena, and Darren. The responses came in a barrage:

  MARCUS: Bro you did NOT

  ELENA: I’m crying. This is insane. I love you both.

  DARREN: [three consecutive vomiting emojis, followed by a heart]

  Theo scrolled through the photos. In every one, Kristina’s face was just slightly obscured; by a hand, a shadow, a blur of motion. He didn’t care. He knew who she was, and she knew him, and nothing else mattered.

  They got back to the hotel just as the sun started to rise. Kristina pulled him down the hall of another floor, and into a room that appeared to be a suite but they retired to the bedroom before he could take it all in.

  She dropped onto the bed, pulling him down with her.

  “You’re my husband now,” she said, rolling the word around like a rare candy.

  He laughed, unable to stop. “And you’re my wife.”

  They lay there, tangled and happy, until the city outside woke up and remembered to be cruel again. But inside that room, for as long as they could hold it, nothing else got in.