Only Angel 2 [h.s] AU

Smoke and mirrors

Beau's POV
New York.

It had been four days since the rooftop party — four days since the kiss.

You'd think it'd be the only thing on my mind.

But honestly?

It wasn't.

My desk was finally clean. My inbox, miraculously, didn't look like a war zone. The last of my edits had gone through without a red-pen massacre, and for once, I wasn't putting out editorial fires with a matchstick and a prayer.

I was... ahead. And that scared me more than being behind.

"Someone's unusually smug today," Mia said as she passed, coffee in one hand, dry sarcasm in the other.

I smiled. "That's because I'm not drowning for once."

She stopped, narrowed her eyes. "You finished everything?"

"Everything." I leaned back in my chair, arms stretched behind my head. "Which means it's time for the next big thing."

That part was true. I needed a new story. A new focus. Something sharp and timely — something that didn't look like a man in a charcoal suit and quiet eyes who kissed me like the world had gone still.

Yeah. That.

I wasn't obsessing, though. Not really.

I'd been texting Harry — here and there. A meme once. A morning check-in. A "saw this and thought of you" kind of thing. He replied. Short, polite. But the emoji's — those were gone.

Stupid detail. But I noticed.

Because I notice everything when I care.

Still, I wasn't going to make it mean more than it did. We kissed. It was a moment — my moment, if I was being honest. My night. And maybe he'd just gotten caught up in it, the lights, the champagne, the applause. Maybe he meant it. Maybe he didn't.

But either way, he didn't follow up. And I wasn't chasing.

Darien and I had been hanging out more. After-work dinners. Shared playlists. Last night, we went to a pop-up vintage exhibit in Brooklyn and she made me try on a pair of gold boots that looked like they belonged to Prince.

We laughed until our sides hurt.

I was living. Not waiting.

But still... when I looked at my phone at night, there was a small part of me that hoped. And maybe that was the part I needed to ignore.

___

It was warm enough to sit outside, the kind of late afternoon heat that made the sidewalks shimmer and everything feel a little slower, a little sweeter.

Darien and I had claimed a tiny iron table at a corner café in the West Village — overpriced iced lattes in hand, shoes kicked off under the table, laughing over something ridiculous she said about her date last night.

"I swear, he tried to mansplain how lip gloss works," she said, shaking her head. "Like I haven't been outsmarting men with shiny lips since I was fourteen."

I nearly snorted my drink. "Did you slap him or let him pay first?"

"Oh I paid for both of us. Money I have, time for men with no common sense? That I don't have. Then I never texted back.."

We laughed again — too loud, too unbothered. It felt good to exist like this, on the edge of summer and something new. No deadlines. No drama. Just a friend and the buzz of New York moving around us.