Chapter 22 The Shark And The Swimmer #2
The phone is a shade of teal that sits somewhere between seafoam and the actual color of the ocean on a clear day—not blue, not green, genuinely its own point on the spectrum.
Compact, with the physical keyboard below the screen that I haven't seen on a consumer device in years, the kind of design that disappeared when touchscreens took over and left behind a specific population of people who genuinely mourned tactile keys and never said so.
The brand is unfamiliar to me: iUniHertz, the display card reads, with a subheading that says something about BlackBerry DNA meeting modern architecture.
From a flip phone with no camera to this in one night.
She deserves the upgrade.
"What is this model?" I ask the assistant.
"The Titan Pocket Pro. It's their latest—physical QWERTY keyboard, touchscreen above it, full smartphone operating system.
Battery life is exceptional. It's particularly popular with people who do a lot of correspondence, business applications, that kind of use.
" He picks up the display unit and turns it over in his hands.
"We have it paired with a matching laptop—same teal colorway, same ecosystem, share files and contacts seamlessly.
The combination is two hundred more than the phone alone, but given what laptops run now, it's one of the better deals we've seen come through. "
I look at Mila.
She's holding the display model now, turning it the way people turn things when they're trying to talk themselves out of wanting them—cataloguing flaws, running reasons, building the case against. Her thumb finds the keyboard and presses a few keys with the instinctive, exploratory press of someone testing whether the tactile feedback is what they're hoping for. Her face when it is.
"Do you like it?"
She looks up at me.
The worried expression arrives on cue—the specific, practiced look of a woman calculating whether want constitutes need and whether need is something she's permitted to act on.
"I—yes. I do. But the laptop might be—I don't necessarily—" She pauses.
Tries again. "I don't know if Oakridge has an internet café.
I used one in the city when I needed access for—" She stops.
"For what?"
A beat.
"Research. When I was going to—when I had plans.
For the bar. There's a lot of licensing information and supplier background and market data that I was—" She trails off, and the specific expression that replaces the sentence is the one I've seen once before: the way she said the words Lucky Clover Lounge at the hotel, with that careful, slightly too-gentle quality of something she's been handling for a long time.
"Have those plans changed?" I ask.
She considers it. Genuinely considers it rather than dismissing immediately, which tells me the question reached somewhere past the deflection layer.
"No," she says. Quietly. "No, I still want it. I just haven't had the—" She looks at the phone again. "I definitely need a phone. The laptop might be—"
The assistant is watching this exchange with an expression I recognize because I've seen it in Danny's bar and the dress shop and every service context where someone who works with the public long enough starts reading the actual situation rather than just the transaction.
His face has the specific softness of a person who has seen versions of this circumstance with some regularity and has feelings about it.
I pull out the black Amex.
It's on Rowan's pack account, which means it is technically Rowan's card in the sense that all pack finances are technically Rowan's province and also technically belong to all of us because that's how the arrangement has worked for eight years.
Rowan will have opinions about its use that he will deliver in the form of two sentences and then move on, because Rowan's actual relationship to money is that it exists to solve problems and she is currently a problem that requires solving.
"Ring it up," I say. "Both."
The assistant's face does the thing.
Mila's face does the other thing.
"Wait—it's too much—I can—" She's already reaching for a calculation that I can see forming behind her eyes, the ledger-and-repayment structure she defaults to.
I lean over.
Press my lips to her forehead—light, brief, the same easy contact from the dress shop that turned her cheeks pink and turned mine a shade I'd prefer Declan didn't witness—and say, very close to her ear: "As your temporary lucky leprechaun, on behalf of this pack, this is a gift from the generous pot of Rowan's bank account.
Accept it. He gets actual joy from spending money. It's his emotional support activity."
She pulls back far enough to look at me.
"Rowan would genuinely hate you for that description."
"I love that you already know that."
"What the fuck does that mean."
We both turn.
Rowan is in the doorway.
Declan is behind him with his phone now pocketed, which means the security situation has been resolved to his satisfaction and he is now available for this one.
"He was explaining your Uber Black pastry service," Mila says.
"I was explaining the pot of gold theory," I say.
"They're the same thing," Rowan says, in the tone of a man who has decided not to be insulted because the person saying it is finding it genuine rather than malicious, and moves past us toward the display wall with the particular efficiency of someone who has arrived somewhere and is now assessing what needs to happen.
He reads the display card on the Titan Pocket Pro. Reads the combo package pricing.
"She found something she likes?" Declan asks me.
"Phone and laptop. Same ecosystem. Good deal on the combination."
He looks at Mila, who has the expression of someone preparing to make the case for why this isn't necessary.
"Before you—" she starts.
"She wants to open her own bar," I say.
The room goes slightly still.
Mila looks at me with the specific expression of someone who has been both betrayed and encouraged simultaneously and hasn't decided which is the dominant feeling.
"Her own bar," Declan says.
"For Omegas specifically," I continue, because I'm already here and she's already blushing and the information should be in the room.
"A proper bar with good drinks—which she can absolutely make, as demonstrated—and an Omega-safe design.
Protected sections, dedicated nights, the kind of environment where an Omega can come in alone and not be managing anyone's perception of her being there.
She's had the concept for two years. The laptop would let her actually work on it. "
The blush is deep now.
She looks between me and Declan and then at Rowan, who has stopped reading the display card and is watching her instead with the focused, evaluating attention that I've seen him direct at business propositions he finds worth his time.
"That's a solid concept," Declan says. Not encouragingly—analytically, which is more useful. "The market gap for Omega-accessible hospitality is documented. And the security structure for dedicated evenings is manageable with the right design."
"The business plan is workable," Rowan says. Which from Rowan is the financial equivalent of a standing ovation.
Mila's face does something that takes a moment to identify: it's the expression of a person who has said a private dream aloud and had it received as a real thing rather than an indulgence. The relief of it happening at the same time as the vulnerability of it having happened.
The assistant returns from the back with a fresh boxed set—the teal phone and its matching laptop, sleek packaging that has the kind of design restraint that signals quality without announcing it.
Rowan moves.
He steps in front of me, in the direction of the counter, and says: "I'll handle it." He looks over his shoulder with the specific expression he reserves for when I've used his card without prior authorization. "You. Go outside."
"My feelings are genuinely hurt," I tell him.
"They'll recover."
"I was trying to be the impressive one for our Lucky Charm—"
"You're not. Go outside."
I look at Mila. She's pressing her lips together in the specific way of someone who is absolutely going to laugh the second I'm out of eyeline.
Declan, behind her, has the controlled expression of a man witnessing a familiar dynamic and choosing not to intervene because the outcome is already established.
"Fine," I say. "I'll wait outside. In the cold. Alone."
"You're wearing a jacket," Rowan says.
"Emotionally cold, Rowan."
He doesn't respond to this. He's already at the counter.
I go outside.
The afternoon has settled into something that almost qualifies as pleasant—the storm's legacy is the washed-clean quality of the air and the streets, the particular freshness of a place that's been thoroughly rained on and has come out the other side with better light than it went in with.
The sun is doing what it can with March, which is limited but genuine.
The cobblestones are still damp in the shadows but dry in the open stretches, and the town moves around me with the Monday afternoon rhythm of a place that knows what it is and isn't trying to be anything else.
I lean against the wall beside the shop door.
And I think about what I said inside.
Twenty days. That's the registered agreement, the legal fact, the thing that was filed last night while she was sleeping and that becomes official documentation this afternoon.
Twenty days and then an Easter annulment option and everyone returns to their actual lives.
That's the arrangement. That's what it is.
The thing I keep snagging on is: it doesn't feel like an arrangement.
I've been in enough surface-level situations to know the specific quality of a connection that has an expiration date built into it—the enjoyable, uncomplicated kind that both parties understand implicitly and exit cleanly.
This doesn't feel like that. This feels like something that started in an hour-ago space and has been accelerating toward a question I'm not certain I know the answer to yet.
She came back to Declan's bed.
Not intentionally—sleepwalking, she said, something she used to do when she was sleeping very deeply and hasn't apparently done since.
But the direction of it, the specific draw of a body finding the strongest scent in the room and moving toward it even in unconsciousness—that's not random.
That's biology doing what biology does when something registers as safe.
I want her to register all three of us that way.
The shop door opens.
Mila steps out into the afternoon sun in the white-and-yellow dress, the teal-boxed package under one arm and the small afternoon sunlight finding her hair in the way that good light finds things it likes. She looks up and sees me against the wall and the expression she makes is—
She looks caught.
The specific expression of someone who has just experienced something they weren't prepared for and is trying to decide how to carry it, the slightly dazed quality of a person who walked into a store expecting to not be allowed anything and walked out with two devices, their business plan endorsed by a financial strategist, and a pack making unhurried decisions about what she needs.
Her scent reaches me from three feet away.
The honey and vanilla are warm and full—not the muted, flattened version from last night but the actual signature, present and bright.
The lime zest is there too, sharp and intermittent, the note that surfaces when something has caught her genuinely rather than pragmatically.
She smells like someone whose body has decided it's in a situation worth responding to.
Declan and Rowan emerge behind her.
Rowan carries the second bag. Of course he does—he said go outside and I went outside and while I was experiencing my outdoor emotional journey he apparently collected the bags, paid, and is now fully in possession of the afternoon's transactions without having made any visible effort.
"Thank you," Mila says, to the three of us collectively, and the way she says it—not the service-register thank you, not the polite social convention—carries the specific weight of someone who means it more than the words and doesn't have other words available. "For all of this."
Declan moves her hair.
The two-finger tuck behind her ear, the same gesture from the hotel couch and the dress shop, and his hand stays near her face for a moment after, his expression doing the thing it does when he's made a decision and is letting it exist before acting on it.
"Let us," he says simply. "Just let us."
She nods.
Small. Real.
I look at the three of them on a cobblestone street in afternoon light—this woman who has been carrying things alone for too long in a white-and-yellow dress with a teal phone box under her arm, and the two men who are as close to family as I have, who found her by different roads and ended up in the same hotel room and have apparently, unanimously, made a collective determination about what happens next.
Twenty days.
That's what's registered. That's what's legal. That's what the paperwork says until Easter.
And surely, we can convince her that this can be forever with a bit of luck on our side.