Chapter 26 From Zero To Six #4
"What is going on?" Etienne asks, shrugging his bag off and setting it neatly beside the door, because Etienne Laurent respects organizational systems even when his packmates treat the entrance like a luggage carousel.
I huff, holding up the rose gold phone with the exasperation of a woman at war with modernity.
"He is helping me with my phone. I do not know how to use this thing.
It is like the triple advanced version of old Beatrice.
Every time I tap the screen, it does something I did not ask for.
I have accidentally called emergency services twice, subscribed to three newsletters, and somehow enabled a fitness tracker that is now judging me for sitting on this couch for forty-five consecutive minutes. "
Etienne laughs, the sound genuine and warm, and crosses the room to settle onto my right side, the couch dipping beneath his weight.
His cedar scent envelops me instantly, familiar and grounding, and his thigh presses against mine with the effortless proximity of someone who has stopped second-guessing whether he is allowed to sit close.
Cal pushes up from the floor, rounding the couch to drop into the space on my left, his arm stretching across the cushions behind my shoulders.
His ocean salt scent mingles with Etienne's cedar, and for a moment I am bracketed between two Alphas whose combined fragrances create a sensory landscape that my Omega instincts respond to with an embarrassing surge of contentment.
"Come on," Etienne says, leaning in to peer at the screen. "We can teach you before we have dinner."
"Oh!" I nearly drop the phone. "We are having dinner together today?"
He gives me a look. The patient, slightly amused look of a man who has memorized every rule I established during the first week and intends to hold me accountable to my own standards.
"You said we have to try to have dinner together once a week. It is part of the rules."
I grin, the expression spreading across my face with the satisfaction of a woman whose organizational frameworks are being respected.
"Oh, the rules still apply, hm?"
He chuckles. "For now."
Raphael pushes off the doorframe and strolls into the living room, dropping into the armchair across from us with the relaxed authority of a man who has claimed that seat as his personal territory and will not be entertaining disputes.
"What are the rules?" he asks, his gray eyes glinting with curiosity beneath the dark auburn hair falling across his forehead.
Cal groans.
"It is an encyclopedia-length list. Do not bother asking. You will be here until graduation trying to memorize all of them."
"It is NOT an encyclopedia!" I protest, swatting Cal's arm. "There are like five! Maybe six if you count the subsection about bathroom schedules, which I maintain is a necessary addition that prevents conflict!"
"The subsection has bullet points, Mae. It is a regulatory document."
"Organization is not a crime, Callahan!"
Raphael raises a hand.
"Do not tell me," he says, his smirk widening. "That way they do not apply to me."
"That is NOT how rules work!" I sputter, turning to him with the indignation of a woman whose constitutional framework is being undermined by a Frenchman with a phoenix tattoo.
"You cannot just opt out of communal living guidelines by claiming ignorance!
That is the legal equivalent of sticking your fingers in your ears and humming! That would not hold up in any court!"
He chuckles, unbothered, the sound rich with amusement.
"I do need all of your numbers, though," he says, steering the conversation with the practiced redirect of a man who has been captaining teams long enough to know when to let a debate die. "If we are going to function as a pack, we should have each other's contacts. Communication is not optional."
Etienne nods from my right side.
"He is totally changing the subject," he observes. "But he is right."
We laugh. The sound overlaps and mingles and fills the apartment with a layered warmth that makes the walls feel less like boundaries and more like arms, the noise of four people who are learning, slowly and imperfectly, how to share a life.
Numbers are exchanged. Cal reads his out while I fumble with the new phone's contact interface, accidentally adding his number to my calendar before correcting the mistake.
Etienne's number goes in second, entered with a precision that I am proud of until I realize I saved it under the name Etiene and have to go back and fix the spelling.
Raphael dictates his with the casual authority of a man accustomed to giving instructions, and I type it in carefully, letter by letter, refusing to make another error.
When it is done, I stare at the screen.
My contacts list glows back at me. Six entries.
Cal. Etienne. Raphael. Sage. Coach Lizzy.
And the campus emergency line that I accidentally called twice this afternoon and which now occupies a permanent spot in my recent calls with the judgment of a service that knows I cannot operate my own device.
From zero to six.
Three weeks ago, my phone held a single contact.
My scholarship advisor, whose number I kept not out of personal connection but contractual obligation.
Before that, during the communal housing years, I did not have a phone at all.
Before that, in the period between my parents' door closing and the shelter system opening, I had numbers memorized but no device to store them, carrying names and digits in my head like a prayer I repeated to keep the loneliness from consuming me whole.
Zero contacts. Zero calls. Zero texts lighting up a screen with the proof that someone, somewhere, remembered I existed.
And now six.
The number is small. It would look unremarkable on anyone else's device, buried beneath dozens or hundreds of names accumulated through years of friendships and acquaintances and professional networks that stretch like webs across the digital landscape of a normal life.
But on my screen, those six entries glow like stars in a sky that has been dark for as long as I can remember.
I run my thumb across the names. Cal. Etienne.
Raphael. Sage. Each one representing a person who chose to give me their number, who handed me a thread of connection and trusted me to hold it.
Each one a small, fragile bridge between my solitude and a world I am still learning to believe will let me stay.
I oddly feel as though it will only grow from here.