Chapter 155: Dinner Was Better When She Set the Price

The restaurant owner wanted both bins for the evening rush. Dove wanted enough dinner for herself and two men who regarded a sandwich as a useful opening statement. They agreed on large portions, breakfast supplies, and the bins coming back clean before closing.

She checked the lids with him instead of letting excitement about roast meat settle the details. They were ordinary carrying bins, not refrigerators, and he intended to move wrapped meals across the street, not leave chicken in them overnight.

"You can have them after I wipe them down," she said. "And if anybody writes their name on one, I’m charging extra for the confidence."

The man laughed and promised to bring them back. Dove watched him leave with the clean bins, then set her towel display beside her own front window. The restaurant line ran along the curb. She kept her table out of the walkway so customers could see her stock without tripping over dinner.

Sprout offered the optional drinks target, five cups or two bottles from her own supplies. Dove looked at the cooling chest through the curtain and asked whether those bottles were now expected to become stock.

"The drinks task is optional. It does not create additional bottles or require the household allocation."

"Good, because I just spent half the day acquiring the ability to drink something cold. I’m not immediately selling the joy out of it."

She could meet the towel goal without emptying their chest. If a customer wanted a drink later, she would first check the separate stock set aside for trade. Her own comfort did not have to survive on whatever nobody else wanted.

A fox man stopped at the table, looked at her, and forgot the question he had apparently prepared. His gaze moved from her face to her waist before Edrik stepped into view carrying a box. The man’s eyes returned to the towels with impressive speed.

Dove demonstrated one using the clean water already measured in her basin. She explained how to wet it, squeeze it, and shake it out. It would help a sweaty worker feel cooler. It would not chill an entire room, which she was forced to explain twice before someone stopped asking.

The vending hatch released a paid-for pack while Thorne checked a different customer’s offer of owned goods. He did not repeat her explanation as though it became true only in his voice. He just asked where she wanted the payment, then brushed his fingers against hers when she pointed.

She liked working beside him. The thought arrived without Sprout pricing it, and she kept it to herself for a moment.

A broad wolf offered her a bracelet while the food line moved behind him. He had seen her carrying stock, he said, and could provide a room where she would never need to stand behind a counter again.

Dove glanced at the shelves she had chosen, the table she had placed, and the two husbands who had asked what she needed before moving either one.

"I like my counter," she said. "I also like deciding when I leave it."

"A woman like you shouldn’t need to work."

"Then it’s lucky I also want to."

He tried to press the bracelet onto the table. Edrik set his box down beside it, slow enough that the man watched every movement.

"She answered," he said. "Take your gift with you."

The stranger reached for the bracelet. Edrik watched his hand until it was off Dove’s table, then watched him find the far end of the food line. Dove continued serving the next customer, grateful that refusal had not stolen the rest of her afternoon.

By the sixth towel sale, the daily goal was complete. She sold the rest of the day’s stock before closing, so she owed no retention fee. Sprout settled the day’s exercise, sales, and genuine reactions without turning every passing man into a confession of love. Her normal balance reached 1,388 and Favor thirty-four.

She was tired enough that the figures mattered less than the smell coming from the restaurant. When the owner returned the clean bins with their food, Thorne carried the plates into the rear room while Edrik turned the sign.

Dove took the cold drink she had saved for Edrik and held it out. "This one’s yours. You don’t have to share it unless I’m very convincing."

"You usually are."

He accepted it, then drew her chair between his knees when she sat. His hands settled on her shoulders, warm and careful over the muscles she had spent the day pretending were not sore.

Thorne put her plate on the little table in front of her. Roast meat, potatoes, vegetables, and bread, with more waiting for the men. He cut one awkward piece while she tried to keep hold of her fork under Edrik’s attention.

"I can feed myself," she said.

"I know," Thorne replied, offering the piece anyway.

She ate it and decided being capable did not require rejecting everything enjoyable. Edrik worked a tight spot near her shoulder blade, and she let her eyes close for a second.

"If you make that face," he murmured, "I’m going to become impossible about being asked again."

"You were already impossible. At least now you’re useful."

He laughed softly and kissed the side of her head. Thorne stole a potato from her plate, received a complaint, and replaced it with two from his own. Their dinner went on without a customer needing her, a stranger offering to improve her life, or Sprout announcing what any of it was worth.

For once, she did not have to rush through the good part because something else needed doing. She finished eating, drank from Thorne’s cup after her own ran out, and let Edrik keep his arms around her.

The knock came after they had cleared the plates. Her landlord waited at the front with a printed notice, looking apologetic in the way people often did before making a problem somebody else’s evening.

The pump had cleared the trench, but the damaged pipe still needed repair. Water use would be restricted while the crew finished. Their current rental period was nearly over too.

Dove read the notice once, then looked through the curtain at their room. She had only just admitted how much she liked staying there, and now she needed to know what keeping it would cost.