The living room felt way too hot, and it smelled like sour beer. Margaret had just turned thirty, but her little brother had brought half of his fraternity with him, and by ten o’clock the party was completely out of her control. Two guys in backward caps were playing a drinking game on the coffee table, with a circle of cheering seniors around them, while the speakers on the mantelpiece played a heavy, distorted beat that made the framed pictures on the wall vibrate against the drywall.

Charlotte was standing by the sliding glass door, holding an empty glass. Her feet were hurting.

Nathan walked up behind her and pressed a cold bottle of cider to her wrist. “Drink this, or just hold it. It’s up to you.”

She turned around and took it. “Did you find Margaret?”

Nathan said, “She’s in the kitchen, trying to keep someone from microwaving an egg.” He rested his shoulder on the doorframe and stared through the glass out into the backyard. “We could go for a walk. We’ve been here three hours already.”

“We left our coats up in the bedroom.”

“We can pick them up tomorrow. Or she’ll bring them over to brunch.” Nathan unlocked the door and opened it just a crack. A small stream of cold, sweet air pushed through the warm room. “Just give me ten minutes. My head is really hurting.

Charlotte glanced back over her shoulder. The boy at the coffee table banged his cup down, hit the edge wrong, and knocked three cans rolling across the wood floor. No one looked up.

“Okay,” she said.

They walked out onto the back deck and closed the screen behind them.

The cold hit right away. The backyard was long and sloped down to a post-and-rail fence, and past that the state forest took over like a solid black wall of oak and scrub pine. Over by the driveway, two halogen floodlights were set on the garage, covering the gravel in harsh white light. A bunch of boys stood around the tailgate of a pickup that was idling, yelling over the noise of the exhaust.

“Not that way,” Charlotte said, pointing her head toward the cars. “We’ll get pulled into a conversation with someone’s roommate.”

Nathan looked toward the back fence. A thin gap in the rails showed where the neighborhood kids slipped into the woods. The trail was pretty much just packed dirt and exposed roots, fading into the dark.

“Down there,” he said.

“Nathan, it’s pitch black.”

“We’ve got our phones. We’ll walk fifty yards, just around the bend, so the floodlights won’t shine in our eyes.” He grabbed her hand and stepped off the low deck stairs onto the grass. The lawn was covered in frost, and within three steps it had soaked through the canvas of her sneakers.

They climbed over the lower rail of the fence. As soon as they were under the trees, the light from the house faded fast, blocked by the low hemlocks and the thick undergrowth. The path climbed a little over a small rise, then dropped into a shallow hollow filled with dead ferns and fallen pine needles.

Out here, the silence came all at once. The bass from the party was still going, but now it felt like a dull thumping in the ground instead of a sound in the air.

Nathan came to a halt beside an old birch tree that had toppled over the dry drainage ditch. He spun Charlotte to face him, lifting her hands and pressing them to the chest of his wool sweater. His hands felt warm.

“Better?” he asked.

“My feet are soaked.”

“You sure do complain a lot for someone who wanted to leave.”

“I wanted to go home,” she replied, though she was smiling as she rested her forehead against his chin. He smelled of tobacco smoke from the porch and the mints he’d been chewing all night. He kissed her slowly, his hands gliding around her lower back to draw her close against him.

They stayed like that for a minute, silent together in the darkness.

Then Charlotte felt a faint vibration in the dirt beneath her boots.

She eased back an inch. “Nathan.”

“Yeah?”

“Listen.”

He stayed still, only tipping his ear toward the trail behind them.

The sound came again. It wasn’t the wind. It was the dry, steady scrape of rubber soles dragging through dead oak leaves, then the wet crack of a branch.

“Someone’s out here,” Charlotte whispered.

“Probably just someone looking for a place to pee,” Nathan said softly. He released her waist and stepped back toward the edge of the hollow, where the trail passed through the laurel bushes. “Let’s just go back before we bump into them.”