Chapter 471 | The World’s Most Sexually Confused Birthday Party

Chapter 471: 471 | The World’s Most Sexually Confused Birthday Party

We took the long way around Building C because Naomi wanted to show me a garden she’d found behind the maintenance shed, which was either a real garden she genuinely liked or the scenic route toward wherever the party was happening. Given that Naomi Love could not lie about the weather without her ears turning pink, I was betting on option two.

"It’s right here," she said, pulling me around the corner of the shed. "See?"

It was a garden. An actual garden. Three raised beds with herbs and some tomatoes going leggy in the California sun, a hand-painted sign that read OBSIDIAN COMMUNITY PLOT in crooked letters, and a single bench occupied by a cat that clearly owned the place.

"Naomi."

"What?"

"This is a real garden."

"I told you it was a real garden."

"I thought the garden was a metaphor."

She stared at me with those pink eyes, processing whether I’d just insulted her cover story or her taste in recreational horticulture. The cat regarded us both with the weary resignation of someone who has seen too many first-year students fumble through romantic subplots on his bench.

Naomi checked her phone. Her screen was angled away from me, but I caught the reflection in her eyes, that particular brightness that happened when she was reading something she found exciting. She typed back with her thumbs moving at a speed that suggested Belle was on the other end being bossy about timelines.

"We should go," Naomi said, pocketing her phone with the casual nonchalance of someone disposing of a murder weapon. "I want to show you something at Aurora’s apartment."

There it was.

"At Aurora’s apartment," I repeated.

"Aurora said she got something for you. A present. For surviving."

"Naomi."

"It’s just a present."

"Is the present a party?"

"What? No. That’s insane. Why would there be a party?"

She said this while her left hand rose to touch her mother’s shell necklace, the tell she deployed every single time she lied, which was approximately four times a week, all of them bad. Naomi Love could stare down C-rank monsters and fire Wave Motion blasts that cratered stone walls and carry my unconscious body out of a collapsing dimension on national television, but she could not tell a convincing fib about a social gathering to save her actual life.

"Okay," I said. "Let’s go get my present."

She beamed. Full wattage. The kind of smile that made her entire face transform from careful and worried into something that could power a small city. She grabbed my hand and pulled me toward the path that wound up the hill toward Summit residential, her braid swinging against her back and the shell necklace bouncing against her collarbone with each step.

I let her pull me. Her hand was warm and calloused from staff training and years of hauling fishing nets, stronger than people expected from a girl who apologized for existing. The Gold buff had faded days ago, but her grip hadn’t lost any of its conviction. Naomi Love held onto things she cared about with the kind of force that made letting go a structural impossibility.

We climbed the hill past the Zone Two training complex where Garrett’s obstacle course rusted in the late-afternoon light, past the sculpture garden where I’d first crashed into Aurora six weeks ago, past the spot on the retaining wall where I’d watched Blair Davenport burn a garden stone with her fingertips while pretending she wasn’t thinking about me. The campus spread below us in its usual postcard arrangement of glass buildings, manicured lawns, and ocean views that existed primarily to convince parents their children weren’t being trained for lethal encounters with interdimensional predators.

Summit residential sat at the top of the hill in a row of townhouse apartments reserved for ranked students. Aurora’s unit, 7B, had the string lights on the front steps and the same pair of oversized black combat boots sitting by the door. Addison’s boots. The buckles caught the sunset, and something about that image, those ridiculous boots waiting for their owner outside a door where people had organized happiness on my behalf, made the graft in my chest do something I refused to acknowledge.

"Ready?" Naomi asked, bouncing on her toes.

"For my present?"

"For your present."

She knocked three times in a pattern that was clearly a signal, because Naomi had never knocked on Aurora’s door with rhythmic consistency in her life.

Four seconds of silence.

Then the door swung open and I walked into a wall of noise.

"SURPRISE!"

The volume came primarily from Addison, who screamed the word with the intensity of someone manifesting a battle cry rather than celebrating a social occasion. Aurora stood behind her with champagne in one hand and a fox-eared party hat perched on her orange hair. Belle leaned against the kitchen island with her arms crossed and a look on her face that said she’d organized everything and would deny emotional investment under oath.

The apartment was decorated.

That was the generous description. The more accurate description was that Aurora’s living room had been transformed into something that looked like a farm supply store had exploded during a fever dream. Hay bales, actual hay bales, sat in the corners. A banner strung across the ceiling read HAPPY YOU DIDN’T DIE in block letters, with little cow-print hearts between each word. Cow-print balloons clustered against the ceiling in groups, their strings trailing down like the world’s most sexually confused birthday party. A fold-out table by the window held plates of food, a chocolate cake, and what appeared to be three coffee jellies arranged in a pyramid with a small flag stuck in the top that read FOR ADDISON DO NOT TOUCH.

The punchbowl had a ladle shaped like a cow’s head.

"Why," I said, "is it farm themed."

Aurora grinned so wide her beauty mark shifted position. "Belle’s idea."

"It was NOT my idea." Belle’s cheeks went pink. Her jaw set. She pointed at Addison with the conviction of someone filing a police report.

"She started it."