Chapter 508 | Golden Parachute, Phase One

Chapter 508: 508 | Golden Parachute, Phase One

Morning Person yanked him awake at 6:41 like a landlord banging on the door. The sky over the harbor was the color of dishwater. The bed beside him was empty, the duvet kicked into a heap on the floor.

Downstairs, Chloe sat cross-legged on the kitchen island in his henley, laptop open, glasses halfway down her nose. Beside it sat Brooke’s laptop, which meant Brooke had either left it here or Chloe had stolen it. Jordan wasn’t awake enough to ask.

"You’re up early," he said.

"I’ve been up since five. My stomach filed a complaint." Eyes on the screen. "Sit. I made you a document."

"You made me a document before sunrise."

"I made you a document at five-forty, which is sunrise in Seoul." She spun the laptop toward him.

GOLDEN PARACHUTE: PHASE ONE, in a font size Jordan considered a personal attack. Under it, a table of Alexis’s monthly costs, every line full of numbers he didn’t want to believe.

"Fourteen hundred on hair," he read. "Fourteen hundred dollars a month on hair."

"Conservative. A gloss every two weeks, a cut every six." Chloe sipped something that smelled like ginger and regret. "I excluded the Pilates studio. She can do Pilates on a towel like the rest of us peasants."

"My haircut is twenty-two dollars."

"I know. I can tell."

"How do you know what she spends on hair?"

"Kumiko asked her on Monday. Alexis answered, because Kumiko asks things like a golden retriever, and nobody can lie to a golden retriever." She tapped the bottom row with her pen. "After I cut everything a reasonable human can live without: forty-two hundred a month."

Jordan’s brain, rebuilt by a magic phone and still useless at long division before coffee, tried to fund a Van Der Berg on a business that made four hundred dollars a week.

"I’m going to need a minute."

"Take two. Then read row twelve."

Row twelve said ALEXIS: NOVA NETWORK, BRAND DIRECTOR, and beside it a salary that made Jordan cough on nothing.

"You want to hire her."

"I want to pay her for something she’s already the best at." Chloe pushed her glasses up with one knuckle. "She reads a room faster than I read a spreadsheet. She can spot a fake Birkin across a parking garage. Every sponsor we pitch is a marketing VP in a Patagonia vest, and Alexis was raised by those people. She speaks it natively."

"She’s going to think it’s charity."

"Then we make it hurt." Chloe’s mouth curved into what the pink notebook labeled Business Smile. "Probation period. Performance reviews. A quota. Brooke is drafting a contract with clauses that would make a hedge fund cry. Alexis will hate it so much she’ll know it’s real."

"You realize you’d be her boss."

"I realize I’d be reading every caption she writes for ninety days while growing a person." Chloe didn’t look up. "I did the math on that too."

"And?"

"And it’s a bad deal for me and a good deal for her, which is what a first offer is supposed to look like."

The blue streak loose against her cheek. The shadows under her eyes from a stomach that wouldn’t let her sleep. His chest did a dumb little flip he refused to name in front of her.

"You built a job for her before six in the morning."

"At five-forty. Keep up." She turned back to the laptop. "Also, eat something. You look like a ghost who does cardio."

He ate a banana standing up. She counted the bites without turning her head.

Kumiko arrived at 7:12 holding the cat slippers in both hands, in his grey henley and pink sleep shorts, twin tails in ribbons that didn’t match. Puffy eyes. A voice scraped raw from a night of recording forest spirit songs in a bathroom. She yawned so wide her jaw clicked.

"I finished verse two at two-forty in the morning," she announced. "I sent it to Alexis-chan at two forty-one. She left me on read for nine minutes, then she sent a single heart, then she sent another message saying the heart was a typo. I’m framing it."

"You’re framing a typo."

"I’m framing a lie, Jordan-kun, which is so much more romantic." She set the slippers on the counter like holy relics and hopped onto a stool. "Are we going to get her? Please say we’re going to get her, because I made her a bag."

A pink tote with a cartoon cat on the side. Inside: a toothbrush, leggings, a hair tie, two strawberry Pocky packs, and a laminated card that read YOU ARE ALLOWED TO EAT BREAKFAST.

"You laminated it," Jordan said.

"I own a laminator. Dr. Nakamura says tangible affirmations work better than abstract ones." She hugged the tote. "I was going to laminate my feelings too, but they wouldn’t fit through the slot."

Chloe snorted into her tea, which was as close as she got to laughing before eight.

"Did she eat?" Jordan asked.

"She sent cake photos!" Kumiko pulled out her phone and held it up. "Before, and after the first bites, and later after more bites. Chloe-chan zoomed in and counted."

"Seven bites of cake," Chloe said. "Plus the lobster, which she didn’t photograph. Which means she ate all of it."

Jordan came around the island and put his hand on Kumiko’s head, between the mismatched ribbons. Warmth rolled out of his palm. She went soft all at once, shoulders sinking two inches, eyelids at half-mast.

"Mmmh, that’s cheating," she mumbled into his wrist. "I had seven more talking points about the laminator."

"Save them for the car."

"You’re bringing me in the car?" Her eyes snapped open so fast her ribbons bounced. "Chloe-chan, he’s bringing me in the car!"

"He’s bringing you because Alexis likes you more than she likes him," Chloe said without looking up. "And because if he goes alone, she’ll ask him to stay again, he’ll say no again, and she’ll throw the lobster shell at his face."

Kumiko considered this and nodded gravely. "That’s fair, honestly. She has a good arm."