Page 79 of Knottingley Ever After
“Money right here,” he says. “Choice of Amex gold, platinum, or black, depending on how brave you are feeling.”
“B — b — but —”
The cards. Are right there. In a fan. Like a magic trick. Rémi Bellerose is doing a fan-of-credit-cards magic trick at me in his pyjamas.
“That is not my money,” I say, very weakly.
“Why,” Matteo asks at the underside of my chin, “would you spend your money in a pack, Pinky?”
“… But we are temporary.”
“Temporary, sure.” Matteo’s voice drops a fraction, deliberately, against the top of my hair. “Does not mean we are not responsible for you. So put a pin in the temporary, sweetheart, and go change.”
He lets me go. He lets me go and — because he is Matteo, and because he is Matteo — he gives the curve of my backside a light, departing slap on the way out, a small affectionate pat about the weight and intention of a dog being told it is a good dog, and I yelp out of pure surprise and snap my head around to glare at him.
He smirks, perfectly unrepentant.
“Go change, Pinky. We will pick up breakfast on the way. I am betting cash money that you have eaten exactly nothing this morning and have drunk approximately one swallow of water, which means you are running on the fumes of your own self-esteem and that is not a sustainable energy source.”
“That is not —”
My stomach growls.
It growlsloudly.The kind of growl that has business at the back of an empty fridge. Three pairs of eyes land on my abdomen in unison, and three different expressions assemble themselves into the same general flavor of vindication.
“I can never fucking win,” I mutter to the marble.
Matteo chuckles. Rémi’s millimeter smile makes its appearance, the standing-ovation tilt I am starting to live for. Jude lifts the water bottle in a small acknowledging toast, sets it down, and pads over to the cork-lidded canister to start the coffee ritual with the meditative slowness of a man who refuses to be hurried before caffeine.
“Let me drink some coffee,” he says, in the same level tone he uses to call line changes, “before we go.”
CHAPTER 15
35%
~MATTEO~
“You cannot buy me a two-thousand-dollar phone.”
“Mmh.”
“Are y’all mad? Lost? Concussed?”
Cute.
“Drunk on coffee. Drunk on coffee is the only available diagnosis. There is something genuinely, neurologically wrong with the three of you, and I want it noted for the record.”
Adorable.
I do not say any of this out loud.
I am, instead, leaning a hip against the glass display case at the highest-end mobile boutique in the highest-end shopping district of the highest-end commuter city within forty-five minutes of campus, watching Iris O’Shea visibly come apart inside the borrowed sweater she has been hiding inside all morning, and I am, with frankly no shame whatsoever, enjoying the show.
It turns out our pink-haired goalie does not handle being spoiled. Not in any of the seventeen ways I have, over the past two hours, attempted to inflict it on her.
The city we are in is a forty-five-minute drive north from campus, set back into a small lake on three sides, and built entirely for the kind of Alphas and Omegas who think nothing of dropping a paycheck on a single belt. Boutiques with no signage, only logos. Restaurants where the waiter brings you a tasting menu before you have ordered. A pavement so well-maintained your shoes do not actually wear down. It is also, frankly, the only place within reasonable distance of North Star where Iris is going to be able to buy decent women’s clothing that has not been pre-screened for shapelessness by an Alpha-coach committee, and Jude knows it, which is the only reason he agreed to drive.
The shops we have hit so far have lined up like a small private heist. A boutique called Vellichor for the basics, where she vetoed a hundred-dollar sheer cropped top with admirable speed and was allowed, after a small skirmish, three black tank tops, two jumpers, and a pair of dark wash jeans that Jude paid for at the register without breaking eye contact with her the entire time. A second store called Pithy for the loungewear, where Rémi quietly pulled six items off racks she would not have looked at and dropped them in the dressing room for her, which is the most active Alpha-shopping behavior Rémi Bellerose has exhibited in the entire time I have known him. A small bra shop, the door of which I was politely but firmly barred from by Jude, where she emerged twenty minutes later carrying a discreet bag and refusing to make eye contact with any of us for a full block.
