Christmas in New York City had a strange softness to it—steel buildings dressed in wreaths, streets glowing with a faint hush beneath pale lights, the usual rush of the city slowed just enough to feel like something was about to happen.
Nicole accepted Amory's invitation because it seemed natural now. She and her older sister lived just uptown, and her parents were spending the holiday in Vermont, which left the city quiet and open in a way she rarely experienced. Amory's family lived in a brownstone off Gramercy Park—charmingly old, immaculately preserved, with velvet furniture and heavy rugs that felt like walking into a novel about old money and curated dysfunction.
They ended up in his room after dinner, a space that was somehow both opulent and adolescent—French posters peeling in corners, a record player next to a $3,000 lamp. Books lined the shelves: The Republic, seven volumes of In Search of Lost Time, a biography of Oscar Wilde with margins full of inked arguments.
And there, beside the weight of all that literature, was a small silver photo frame.
Nicole noticed it in passing. A photo of Amory at thirteen or fourteen, his features younger but unmistakable: the same faint smirk, the same too-knowing eyes. Next to him, a girl with honey-hued skin, auburn ringlets, skinny limbs, and startling green eyes had her arm thrown around his shoulders, smiling broadly, almost protectively.
"Who's that?" Nicole asked.
Amory glanced up from his bed where he was now half-reclining, a glass of ginger ale in one hand.
"Oh," he said, indifferent, "that's Stella. Stella Kings."
Nicole tilted her head, examining the photo more closely. "She looks nice."
"Mm," Amory replied, taking a sip. "She was. Summer camp."
Nicole didn't ask more. She didn't know Stella, had never heard of her before. It didn't seem remarkable—just an old friend, maybe a cousin. The photo felt like a remnant from a forgotten drawer, something sentimental but harmless. She didn't know about the letters. Or the poems. Or the way Amory still sometimes paused before mailing each one, as if remembering something that had once been real.
So she simply smiled, turned away from the photo, and sat beside him on the bed, her hand finding his without ceremony.
Outside, the city lights blinked in quiet celebration, and Stella Kings watched from the photo frame, eternally thirteen, eternally draped across Amory's shoulder.
Later that night, dusk had settled over the city like a silk curtain—quiet, heavy, faintly glowing at the edges. Through the frost-laced windows of Amory's bedroom, the blurred lights of New York shimmered like distant stars caught in glass. The room was dim now, lit only by the small lamp on his desk and the soft, flickering shadows cast by the bare branches outside.
Amory and Nicole lay side by side on his bed, their shoulders brushing, legs tangled slightly in the careless way of people who had stopped pretending they weren't comfortable. The sheets smelled faintly of cedar and whatever cologne Amory wore only on days he cared how he was perceived.
It was quiet.
Nicole was staring at the ceiling, eyes half-lidded, tracing the cracks in the plaster with her thoughts. Amory was watching her—his head propped up on one arm, his other hand resting just beside hers, fingers twitching like he wanted to say something but hadn't yet decided on the tone.
Then, softly, like a truth he'd been waiting to speak:
"I like you," he said.
Nicole turned her head toward him slowly. His face hovered just above hers, all shadow and softness, the lamplight catching in the gold of his hair. His hands came up to her face, gently, deliberately, cupping her cheeks like he was afraid she might vanish if he didn't hold her just so.
He didn't ask. He didn't explain.
He kissed her.
It wasn't theatrical, wasn't drenched in irony or cleverness. It was still. It was real. The kind of kiss that felt like a line crossed not suddenly, but inevitably.
Nicole didn't pull away.
She kissed him back.
It was the first day back after Christmas break, and the air at Andover had the brittle clarity of deep winter—crisp, dry, and edged with that particular sharpness that came when students returned with new secrets and old ambitions. The dining hall was buzzing again, everyone wrapped in wool and stories from Aspen, Paris, Cape Cod, or their parents' quiet Upper East Side apartments.
Nicole sat at their usual table with Heather, Amanda, and two other girls from their dorm. She looked different—not dramatically, but in that subtle way girls do when something new and private has happened. Her hair was slightly shinier, her posture a little more self-assured. Amanda noticed it first and smirked.
"So?" Amanda prompted, tearing open a tea bag. "You and Amory…?"
Nicole nodded, trying to look unaffected. "Yeah. We kissed. A few times. Over break."
There were squeals and mock-gasps and dramatic clutchings of imaginary pearls. It was the Andover equivalent of a tabloid revelation.
"And I went to his house in the city," Nicole added, almost as an afterthought. "We were in his room for a while, and there was this photo on his bookshelf—he and some girl, maybe thirteen? She had curly auburn hair, kind of striking green eyes. Her arm was around him."
Amanda raised an eyebrow. "Ex-girlfriend?"
Nicole shrugged. "He said her name was Stella. Stella Kings?"
That was when Heather stilled.
She blinked once—slowly—and then raised her perfectly shaped eyebrows, her voice deceptively casual: "Stella Kings… as in Stella Henrietta Kings?"
Nicole looked blank. "I don't know. He didn't say her middle name."
Heather smiled. It was the kind of smile Nicole had come to recognize—a smile that looked like friendship from a distance, but if you looked too closely, you'd see it was full of pins.
"Ah," Heather said, her tone airy and almost bored, though her eyes gleamed with something sharper. "Interesting."
Amanda glanced between them. "Wait, who's Stella Kings?"
But Heather just sipped her tea and didn't answer. She leaned back in her chair, smug and silent, the corner of her lip twitching like someone who'd just pulled a pin from a grenade and quietly set it on the table.
Nicole felt something shift in her chest—just slightly. A thread of unease, fraying.
Heather said nothing more. She didn't need to.
She had planted the name like a seed and knew it would grow.
Spring break arrived like a soft exhale from the school itself—Andover loosening its collar after months of academic rigor and social choreography. The trees were budding tentatively, the quad just beginning to blush with green. Students drifted through the final days before break with beach plans in their eyes and college decisions in their pockets.
One afternoon, Amanda and Nicole sat on the sun-warmed steps of Sam Phil, their iced drinks sweating in hand, talking about summer plans—Martha's Vineyard, maybe the South of France if Amanda's mother came through with her usual impulsive generosity. They were already imagining long, lazy afternoons in linen, art galleries, and Polaroids posted with effortless captions.
"Heather should come with us," Amanda said suddenly, glancing over at Nicole. "We could make it a proper summer. One last one before everyone gets scattered."
Nicole nodded. "I was going to ask her."
They found Heather in the library, of course, tucked between volumes of postwar literature and marginalia-laced SAT prep guides, wearing her usual expression of composed disinterest.
"We're planning summer," Amanda announced, dropping her bag onto the nearest chair. "And you're coming."
Heather looked up from her notes. "No, I'm not."
Nicole blinked. "Why not?"
"I need to study," Heather said, her tone flat and final. "For college. For everything."
Amanda made a noise of protest. "You're in college. You got into Columbia. You already won, Heather."
Heather capped her pen slowly. "Winning is temporary. Maintenance is eternal."
Nicole tilted her head. "Is this about something else?"
Heather didn't answer.
She just gathered her things with precision, each gesture tight, composed. Her spine was too straight. Her eyes were too calm.
"I'll see you guys after break," she said, and walked out before they could argue.
Amanda looked after her. "What was that?"
Nicole didn't answer. But she was already thinking about Stella Kings. About the photo. About the way Heather had said "Ah," and nothing else, like she knew something she was waiting to enjoy alone.
And suddenly, Nicole wasn't so sure it was about studying.
Spring break in New York was a strange, luxurious kind of freedom—the kind that felt stolen, even when it was rightfully earned. Nicole's apartment on the Upper West Side was unusually quiet, her parents away on a trip to Santa Fe, leaving just her and her older sister, Dominique, who was twenty-two, intimidatingly stylish, and usually out until midnight working events for a fashion PR firm or disappearing into glossy social circles Nicole only half-understood.
That left the apartment—and Dominique's expansive, curated wardrobe—undefended.
Amanda arrived on the second day of break, her suitcase a token gesture more than necessity. They had plans, loosely defined: watch old movies, walk Central Park, possibly flirt with NYU boys in cafes, and most importantly, raid Dominique's closet.
It started innocently. One dress, a silk slip the color of champagne. Then another—vintage Dior with a neckline that Amanda claimed would "kill a man at twenty paces." Then the shoes, too tall, too sharp. Then makeup—lipsticks with names like Cruel Desire and Rose Ritual, brushed on with reverent laughter.
Nicole stood before the mirror in Dominique's room wearing a structured black blazer with nothing underneath, her hair swept back, her lips a dark, wicked red.
Amanda was beside her in a floor-length gown that shimmered like oil in the light, holding a glass of sparkling water as if it were expensive champagne.
"We look dangerous," Amanda said, admiring their reflection like they were casting a spell.
"We look twenty-seven and unbothered," Nicole agreed.
They played music—Sade, Blondie, Portishead—and walked around the apartment like it was an editorial shoot. They took pictures they wouldn't post, danced on the hardwood floors in borrowed heels, and talked about the future like it was a party they'd already been invited to.
"You know," Amanda said, touching up Nicole's eyeliner with terrifying precision, "if Amory saw you like this, he'd lose his mind."
Nicole laughed, soft and indulgent. "He already has."
They stayed like that until Dominique came home and found them on the couch, wrapped in faux fur, watching Eyes Wide Shut with the volume just a little too loud. She rolled her eyes, muttered something about teenagers, and tossed Nicole her own lipstick before disappearing into her bedroom.
Nicole looked down at the color: After Dark.
"I'm keeping this," she said.
Amanda grinned. "Obviously."
And just like that, spring break unfolded not as a pause between things, but as a quiet rehearsal for everything they were about to become.