Chapter 484 | A Very Small Chip

Jordan took the cider before she could change her mind about bringing it. The bottle was cold and slick from her grip, and somebody had peeled the label halfway off at one corner during the drive over.

“Come in, princess, before Miss Valentine opens her door and starts baking at you.”

Alexis stepped past him. Her heels clicked twice on the concrete before Chloe’s voice reached her from the stove, flat and unhurried, and stopped her mid-stride.

“Shoes off. There’s a rack by the door and guest slippers on the bottom shelf.”

Alexis looked down at the slippers. They were pink terrycloth with cat faces stitched onto the toes in black thread, and one cat had a lopsided eye from a needle slip.

“Those have faces on them.”

“They’re the guest pair! I made them in October for whoever came over first, and you’re first, so they belong to you now, which is legally binding under page twelve.”

Kumiko had moved away from the crushed napkin swan and now stood beside the dining table with both hands pressed flat against her sternum like she was physically holding herself together.

She wore a lavender cardigan over a pleated skirt, and her twin tails sat freshly tied with matching ribbons that she had redone three separate times since four o’clock because the first attempt had been asymmetrical and the second attempt had been too tight.

Her eyes were already wet and glassy in the kitchen light. Jordan gave it ninety seconds before actual tears started, maybe less if Alexis said anything remotely vulnerable in the next minute.

Alexis stared at the slippers. She stared at them long enough for the oven fan to cycle off and the apartment to go quiet except for the low bubble of whatever was simmering on the stove.

Then she reached down, unbuckled her heels with two precise clicks of the ankle strap, and set them on the rack with the toes lined up against the wall like she was arranging museum pieces. She slid her bare feet into the cat faces.

The terrycloth compressed under her weight, and she stood there a full two inches shorter than usual.

Her trench coat, which had looked expensive and intimidating on the doorstep, now looked comically formal above the pink fuzz and lopsided embroidered eyes.

Jordan bit the inside of his cheek hard enough to taste copper. He had faced Maya Santos in a clinch three days ago and lived through it without passing out, so he could survive watching a Van Der Berg stand in novelty footwear without laughing out loud.

Probably.

The odds were not great, but he was going to try.

“If you laugh, I’ll leave and take the cider with me.”

Jordan raised both hands in surrender, the bottle still dangling from his left. “I wasn’t going to laugh.”

“Your jaw is doing the cocky thing. Kumiko sent a diagram of it to the group chat on Wednesday.”

“It’s a really good diagram,” Kumiko whispered, wiping her eyes with her cardigan sleeve.

Chloe finally turned around. She set the tongs on a folded towel and crossed the kitchen in his black henley, her glasses pushed up into her hair and her blue streak clipped back off her forehead. She stopped a foot in front of Alexis and held out her hand, palm up.

Alexis looked at the hand, then at Chloe’s face.

“The coat. You can’t eat galbi in Burberry, and I refuse to get marinade on it and listen to you mourn for an hour.”

Alexis unbelted the trench and shrugged it off her shoulders. Underneath she wore the champagne silk set, a long-sleeved top with mother-of-pearl buttons and wide-legged trousers that pooled over the cat slippers. The silk caught the harbor light from the factory windows and turned the color of weak tea. At her left wrist, the frayed grey cuff of his henley stuck out from under the champagne sleeve, a whole inch of it, with the hole she had worried open over three weeks.

Chloe looked at the cuff. Alexis watched her look at it. Nobody in the kitchen moved, and the galbi on the cast iron popped loud enough to make Kumiko flinch.

Chloe folded the coat over her arm and turned back toward the stove.

“You’ll be warmer like that. Sit down, Alexis, you’re on the left side so Kumiko can reach you.”

That was it, apparently, as far as acknowledgment went. Jordan watched the frayed cuff disappear back under the silk as Alexis tugged her sleeve down, and he decided he would rather die than ever mention it.

Dinner hit the table at 7:09. Chloe called that late, and Kumiko called it a miracle, because the rice cooker had played its little song four minutes early.

The galbi came out glossy and black at the edges, piled on a wooden board Chloe had bought specifically so nobody could comment on the plates. Six banchan bowls ringed it in a circle. There was kimchi, spinach with sesame, sweet potato glazed in honey, pickled radish, bean sprouts, and a fish cake stir-fry that Kumiko had helped with and then apologized to for cutting unevenly.

Alexis sat on the left with her spine straight and her hands folded in her lap. She looked at the board, the bowls, and the mismatched chopsticks, and Jordan could see a full Newport review loading behind her blue eyes.

“Remember the condition. You eat what I cook without commenting on the bowls.”

“I wasn’t going to comment on the bowls.”

“You were going to comment that the radish bowl doesn’t match the spinach bowl, and that one has a chip on the rim.”

Alexis closed her mouth. Then she opened it again.

“It’s a very small chip.”

“It’s from a Target clearance bin, and I love it, and you’ll love it by dessert. Kumiko, teach her the word.”

Kumiko launched forward so fast her ribbons swung. She held up one finger like a tiny professor.

“Okay! In Korean you say jal meokkesseumnida before you eat, which means you’ll eat well, and it’s polite and it makes the cook happy. After you eat, you say jal meogeosseumnida, which is the past tense. Chloe-chan taught me on Tuesday, and I practiced in the shower until Jordan asked if I was summoning something.”

“She was very loud about it,” Jordan added.

“Pronunciation requires commitment!”

Alexis looked at Chloe. Chloe looked back, waiting, her chopsticks resting across her bowl.

“Jal meokkesseumnida.”