Chapter 25 Pampered #4
Nestled inside the packaging, cradled in custom-molded foam, is a phone.
Pink. Not the aggressive, bubblegum pink that screams for attention, but a soft, muted rose gold pink that whispers luxury with every angle of light that catches its surface.
The finish is satin, almost pearlescent, shifting between blush and champagne depending on the tilt.
It is the kind of phone I have only ever seen in the hands of K-pop idols during unboxing videos that rack up millions of views, the kind of technology that lives behind velvet ropes in flagship stores while regular people press their faces against the glass and daydream.
I have seen this phone on social media. Every single platform. Influencers posing with it against marble countertops. Idols flashing it during live streams. The internet losing its collective mind every time a restock was rumored and then immediately devastated when the rumor proved false.
I never paid much attention to technology.
My relationship with phones has always been utilitarian, a tool for communication and navigation and the occasional doom scroll through social media when the loneliness gets too loud.
But this phone broke through my indifference by sheer force of cultural saturation.
Everyone and their aunt was talking about it.
And it is sitting in front of me in a box with Etienne's name on the pickup order.
"Perfect," Etienne says to the associate, his tone carrying the same unbothered ease he used at the jewelry counter. "Can you put a screen protector on it? She will choose a case."
She.
My eyes bug out of my skull.
The English language exits my brain through a fire escape, and what comes out instead is rapid, breathless French that I do not consciously choose to speak.
"Tu viens de m'acheter ca?" I grab his arm, my voice climbing octaves.
"He did not tap a card! I did not see a card!
When did you pay for this? How did you pay for this?
This phone does not exist in stores, Etienne!
It is a myth! A legend! A unicorn of consumer electronics!
You cannot just produce it from a back room like a magic trick! "
He laughs.
Full and warm and thoroughly entertained by my spiral into multilingual hysteria.
"I had to order it," he explains, his composure infuriatingly intact. "I have some connections through the investment circles. Tech companies send early access and limited drops to certain clients as a courtesy. I told them my girl needed the phone for her sanity."
My girl.
The possessive lands in my stomach like a lit match dropped into gasoline.
But I am too busy short-circuiting to properly process it.
"SANITY!" I shriek, loud enough that the associate blinks. "Etienne Laurent, Beatrice was SURVIVING."
I yank my current phone from my jacket pocket, brandishing it at him like a lawyer presenting evidence in a murder trial.
"See? Beatrice is fine. She is a warrior. She has been with me through communal housing and three campus moves and being dropped on concrete twice. She is a survivor. A fighter. A testament to the durability of budget smartphone engineering."
Etienne arches one eyebrow.
"Uh..." He points at the screen. "Was that crack there this morning?"
I frown.
I turn Beatrice around to inspect her face and nearly drop her in horror.
The screen is split. Not the hairline fracture I have been ignoring for weeks.
A full, catastrophic split running diagonally from corner to corner, bisecting the display into two fractured halves that can barely render the app icons through the spiderweb of damaged glass.
Half the touchscreen is unresponsive. The other half flickers with the desperate energy of a patient on life support.
"No!" I gasp, pressing Beatrice to my chest like a mother cradling a wounded child. "She has died! When did this happen? I was using her an hour ago! She was fine! She was responsive!"
"She was on borrowed time and you know it," Etienne says mildly.
"I will NOT accept this slander about my phone in her final moments!"
"Mae. You cannot see half your contacts."
"I can INFER the other half! I have an excellent memory! I know who is in the A section and I can extrapolate the rest through context clues!"
He fights a smile, his lips pressing together in a valiant but failing effort to maintain his composure.
"I suppose it will at least help you see enough contacts to transfer them into your new phone," he offers diplomatically. "You can try to decipher the obscured ones from the partial letters and fill in the blanks."
I groan, the sound dragged from the depths of my dramatic soul.
"Damn," I mutter, staring at Beatrice's fractured face with the solemn grief of a woman bidding farewell to a fallen comrade. "You are good."
He chuckles.
"What is that supposed to mean?"
"It means you have to be some kind of manifester or a prophet or a time traveler, because you keep doing the exact right thing at the exact moment I need it.
The ice cream when I was craving sweets.
The bracelet when I needed to feel valued.
The phone the literal day Beatrice decides to flatline.
Your timing is either supernatural or deeply suspicious, and I have not decided which. "
He smirks, the expression knowing and warm, and before he can respond, the associate reappears with a tray of phone cases fanned out for selection.
I scan the options with the focused intensity of a general surveying a battlefield.
My hand gravitates immediately toward a case that makes my heart skip.
Pink with a raised bow design along the top edge, accented with a tiny pair of blue figure skates embossed near the bottom corner.
The skates match the charm on my new bracelet, the same crossed blades and delicate detail, and attached to the case is a dangling charm that catches the light, studded with tiny stones in alternating pink and blue that shimmer when I tilt it.
It is perfect. It is aggressively, specifically, tailor-made for my aesthetic in a way that feels like the universe conspired with this phone case manufacturer to produce a product that would appeal to my exact sensibilities.
"This one," I say, holding it up.
Etienne nods his approval, and the associate rings up the difference while I stand there clutching the boxed phone like it contains state secrets.
When the transaction is complete and the screen protector is applied and the case is snapped into place, I carry the finished product out of the store with both hands wrapped around it, my grip tight enough to turn my knuckles pale.
He chuckles beside me.
"Are you happy?"
I stop walking.
We are standing on the sidewalk outside the shop, the January evening settling around us in shades of gray and amber, and Etienne is looking down at me with that quiet, patient expression that makes me feel like I am the only thing in his field of vision.
I look up at him.
And I cannot help it. My eyes fill.
Not dramatically. Not with the cinematic tears of a woman who cries beautifully on cue.
With the messy, involuntary tears of someone who has been holding herself together with dental floss and determination for so long that a single act of genuine, no-strings-attached generosity is enough to unravel the entire construction.
I nod slowly.
He smiles. Soft. Knowing. He leans down and presses his lips to my forehead, the kiss lingering against my skin, his warmth seeping through the cold to settle in the space behind my eyes where the tears are gathering.
"You are not used to being pampered, are you?" he whispers against my hairline.
I try to smile.
But the effort only makes my eyes water faster, the tears blurring my vision until the streetlamps become smeared halos and his face dissolves into a warm, soft shape above me. I blink and one escapes, tracing a hot line down my cold cheek.
"I used to be," I whisper back, and my voice fractures on the last syllable like thin ice under too much weight. "When I was little. Before my designation presented. My parents treated me like I was precious. Like I was theirs. But it all ended just because I was an Omega."
The confession tastes like rust and old grief, dragged up from a place I keep locked and guarded and buried beneath layers of bravado and humor and the relentless forward motion of a girl who refuses to look backward because backward is where all the hurt lives.
Etienne nods.
The nod is not dismissal. It is recognition. The acknowledgment of a man who grew up invisible in his own family, who understands exactly what it means to have love become conditional, to watch the people who are supposed to protect you decide you are not worth the investment.
He wipes the escaped tear from my cheek with his thumb, the pad of his finger tracing the damp trail with a gentleness that makes fresh tears threaten to follow.
Then he leans in, pressing his lips to the spot where the tear was, kissing the salt from my skin with a reverence that turns a simple gesture into a vow.
"Well, you are not dealing with that anymore, understand?" he murmurs against my cheek, his breath warm, his cedar scent wrapping around me like armor. "From now on, you are going to have someone in your corner. And I will pamper you the way you deserve."