Four Of A Kind

Chapter 100: [3.2] “This Is The Most You Thing That Has Ever Happened”

“The coffee one is irrelevant. The shirt one is also irrelevant. I want you to know that.”

“Oh my GOD.” Her voice had gone up three registers. “I knew it. Sarah owes me five dollars. I KNEW the billionaire heiresses would be a problem, I said this on Friday, I said it to your face, Isaiah, I told you.”

“Iris.”

“I’m just saying. I said it.”

“Are you done.”

“Not even close.” I could hear her sitting up fully now, the creak of the couch. “Which one. Wait. Is it the nice one? Is it the scary one? Is it the scary one who pretends she’s not nice? There are too many options and they all have the same face.”

“Nothing happened,” I said. “I’m asking because of your rules. As a preemptive reminder of appropriate professional boundaries.”

The Lexus hit a bump and I held the wheel steady. “Dinner. Gyudon. Yes or no.”

“Yes but we’re not done talking about this.” A pause. “Wait. You said the coffee thing was irrelevant and the shirt thing was irrelevant. What wasn’t irrelevant. Isaiah. What rule did you need to invoke. Was it. Was it.”

Another pause, shorter and more dangerous. “Was it rule four.”

Rule four had been: Do not make meaningful eye contact for extended periods. It opens doors you cannot close.

“I need to focus on the road.”

“IT WAS RULE FOUR. ISAIAH MARCUS ANGELO.”

“I’m hanging up.”

“Don’t you dare, you have to tell me which one, I will be awake all night, this is genuinely cruel, I’m fourteen and I need proper sleep for brain development—”

“Gyudon. Forty minutes. Set the table.” I reached for the screen.

“If you hang up on me I’m telling Mrs. Delgado you dented the mailbox last spring—”

I ended the call.

The car was quiet again.

She was going to be unbearable when I got home.

She was also going to be right, which was the more aggravating part.

I had the highway mostly to myself at this hour, just the occasional truck and a handful of other late Sunday drivers. The kind of quiet that gives you too much time inside your own head, which is exactly where I did not want to be right now, given that my own head was currently running a four-way comparative analysis on the behavioral patterns of teenage billionaire heiresses and coming back with insufficient data.

The strawberry scent. The floral underneath.

The way she had held my lapel. Like she needed something to hold onto. The way her cheeks had gone that specific shade. The three seconds of deliberate, warm contact and then the step back, the smooth of her fingers over the fabric, the voice that cracked a little on the last syllable.

See you at school.

Professional. Final. Retreat.

I exited the turnpike and took the surface streets toward Lehigh, the familiar Kensington blocks replacing the highway’s emptiness. Corner stores, row houses, Mrs. Delgado’s building visible three streets over. The gyudon place had its lights on, the neon in the window orange against the dark.

I parallel parked, killed the engine, and sat.

I had walked into this job with one goal. Iris. Her future. The scholarship application, the college fund, the ability to stop waking up at four-thirty in the morning and counting the days until I could give her something better than instant ramen and a couch that served as a bed.

Simple. Clean. One goal.

Now I had a kiss I couldn’t identify, three favors I couldn’t predict, a bet I couldn’t afford to lose, and a contract that was either going to be extended or terminated in seven days based on whether Camille Valentine considered me worth keeping.

The neon sign in the gyudon window buzzed softly.

Troublesome, I thought. This is extremely troublesome.

I got out of the car.

The girl at the counter knew my order by now, which said something about my eating habits that I was going to choose not to examine. Two gyudons, one with extra pickled ginger for Iris, one without because she always stole half of mine anyway. I stood by the door while I waited and checked my phone.

A message from Harlow, sent at 6:17, seven minutes after I had driven away from the gate. Just a single strawberry emoji. No text.

A message from Vivienne, sent at 6:23. Check the calendar for Wednesday’s schedule. Also the collar adjustment tutorial is saved under “Angelo Protocol” in the household shared drive. You’re welcome.

A message from Sabrina, sent at 6:31. Extra pearls. Don’t forget.

Nothing from Cassidy.

The counter girl handed over the bag. I paid, left a tip that was slightly too large for the transaction but these were the hours she was working on a Sunday and I understood the math of it, and walked back to the Lexus.

The drive back to the apartment took eleven minutes. I could see the light on in the kitchen window from the street, which meant Iris was already awake and waiting and had probably prepared several follow-up questions.

I gathered the gyudon bag and my duffel and took the stairs to the fourth floor.

Before I could get my key out, the door opened.

Iris stood in the doorway in her cat pajamas. She looked at my face for exactly two seconds.

Then she stepped aside to let me in and said nothing.

She got bowls out of the cabinet. She set chopsticks on the table. She poured two glasses of water and sat down and waited for me to unpack the food, and she did all of this in complete silence, which was deeply uncharacteristic and therefore more alarming than any amount of shouting would have been.

I sat down across from her.

She picked up her chopsticks.

“It was on the mouth,” I said.

Iris put her chopsticks down.

She folded her hands on the table. She looked at me with the expression of someone who had prepared for this conversation and was now receiving confirmation that the preparation had been correct.

“Start from the beginning,” she said.

Outside, a car passed on the street. Mrs. Delgado’s television murmured through the floor.

The apartment smelled like home, like the specific combination of Iris’s shampoo and the old couch and the faint trace of the candle she burned when she was stressed, a small lavender thing she had found at the dollar store and burned down to the wick over the course of the semester.

I picked up my chopsticks.

“I don’t know which one it was,” I said.

Iris stared at me.

“They were wearing the same outfit from the game Friday night,” I said. “The matching set. And I couldn’t.”

A very long pause.

“Isaiah,” she said.

“Yeah.”

“You got kissed by one of the most famous girls on the east coast, in front of her own house, and you don’t know which one.”

“Correct.”

She picked her chopsticks back up, took one bite, chewed thoughtfully, and then pointed at me across the table.

“This,” she said, “is the most you thing that has ever happened.”