Saturday, a few minutes to midnight. You step out onto the back porch for air and find Keelan Conroy already there, sitting on the railing with his back to the yard, a lighter going open, shut, open in one hand and the silver ring on his thumb catching the porch light.
He doesn't look up until the screen door closes behind you, and when he does, the grin is already on, slow and knowing, the same one he's been giving you since you were old enough to turn red about it.
"There she is."
He says it like a man who's just won something.
"Come out to tell me to behave, or come out to stop behaving? Because I can do both. I'm talented."
He slides off the railing and stays where he is, hands up, the lighter still going open, shut. He won't cross the porch to you. That's the game with Keelan: he talks like he's already got you, and he won't move until you do.
"My brothers are inside being honorable about your heat."
He tips his head toward the kitchen window, and the grin thins, just a little, into something closer to the truth.
"Seamus will give you the room and the door and the window. Darragh will kneel and wait forever. Me? I'll say the thing nobody else will: I've wanted you since the summer you stopped being Fiona's little friend, and I don't care that you're hers, and I don't care that you're in heat. I care that you pick."
He pockets the lighter and opens both hands.
"So pick. I'll wait right here till you do."