Chapter 373: Elsa’s Day

He was driving when his phone started going.

Not a call. Texts.

Coming in one after another with the specific rhythm of multiple people sending things at roughly the same time, his phone buzzing on the passenger seat beside his bag like it had developed an opinion about being ignored.

He glanced at the screen at a red light.

Kelly. Sofia. Tasha. Clara.

He looked at the road ahead when the light changed and thought about the last two weeks and how Elena had structured them, training in the morning and training in the evening and in between those two things there was not a significant amount of room for anything that was not training.

She had not said this explicitly.

She had simply been present at both ends of every day with things for him to do and questions about whether he had eaten properly and observations about his form that required correction, and the net result of all of it was that the last fourteen days had been Elena and Wrath and Ashford Ground and not very much else.

He was not complaining about it.

He was also thinking about four texts sitting on his passenger seat.

He drove.

---

His workplace looked the way it looked on a regular afternoon, the front of it quiet from the outside, the sign doing its job above the entrance.

He parked and came in through the door and found James at his desk doing something on his computer with the focused expression of someone actually working rather than performing working, which Liam had learned to tell the difference between.

Elsa’s chair was empty.

Then from the back office, "Finally."

Her voice, carrying through the space with the specific energy of someone who had been waiting longer than they planned to wait and had feelings about it.

She appeared in the doorway of the back office and she was already moving, reaching back for a coat on the chair behind her, and Liam looked at her and his brain did the thing it did when it received information it had not prepared for.

She was wearing a short floral dress, fitted at the top and loose from the waist down, the fabric sitting close across her chest in a way that the flowers printed on it did absolutely nothing to distract from, her boobs were huge as usual against the neckline, the whole look landed somewhere between going out and looking like she had always looked that good and had simply decided to stop hiding it.

She came toward him pulling the coat on over the dress and stopped directly in front of him and looked up at him with the expectant expression of someone who wanted an explanation.

"What took you so long," she said.

He looked at her.

He looked at the dress.

He looked at her face and then at the dress again briefly and then at her face.

"You look," he started. "You look amazing."

Something happened to her face immediately.

The expectant expression dissolved and was replaced by something she was clearly trying to manage, her eyes dropping from his, a flush arriving at her cheeks that she had not invited and could not apparently uninvite.

She looked at the floor.

He looked at James.

James was sitting at his desk with a thumbs up directed at Liam, his expression carrying the specific satisfaction of someone watching something go well.

Something connected Liam’s chest with force.

"Ow," he said. "What was that for."

Elsa was looking at him now, her chin up, the flush still present on her cheeks. "For being stupid," she said. "And making me wait."

"I’m sorry, I was—"

"Shut up," she said. "Let’s just go."

She turned toward the door.

He looked at James.

James still had the thumbs up going. He added a nod.

Liam nodded back and followed Elsa out the door.

He moved around her to open the car door and she looked at him briefly when he did it and then got in without saying anything about it, which was its own kind of response. He came around to the driver’s side and got in and started the engine.

She settled into the seat and looked at the city through the windshield.

"Why did you want to do this tonight specifically," she said. "Why not the weekend."

"Wanted to have some fun before dinner," he said.

She looked at him. "Before dinner. So there’s dinner too."

"There is."

"What did you have in mind for before dinner."

"You’ll see," he said.

She looked at him with the expression of someone who had learned from experience that you’ll see from Liam was either going to be good or interesting and was typically both.

He drove.

He took them through the city properly, not the direct route, the route that went across the long bridge over the water where the city spread out on either side of it in the evening light, and then through the fast lanes on the other side where you could actually use the car the way the car preferred to be used, the engine doing what it did when the road opened up.

Elsa watched the city go past and the water and then the faster road and she was quiet in the way she was quiet when she was comfortable rather than when she had nothing to say.

Then he turned off the main road.

She looked at where they were going.

Then at the sign above the entrance coming up ahead.

"An amusement park," she said.

"Yeah," he said.

She looked at it as he pulled into the parking area and found a spot and cut the engine.

She looked at the floral dress she was wearing and the coat over it and the specific shoes she had chosen for what she had imagined the evening was going to involve.

"I would have worn something more appropriate for this if you’d told me," she said.

"We can go somewhere else if you want," he said.

"No, no." She looked at him and something shifted in her expression, the self-consciousness giving way to something warmer. "I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that. Don’t change it."

He smiled.

"Don’t worry about what you’re wearing," he said. "I’ve already got everything planned for us."

She looked at him. "Everything planned."

"Everything planned," he said.

She looked at the park through the windshield with the expression of someone who had just upgraded their expectations and was finding the upgrade reasonable.

They got out of the car and he took her hand and she let him and they joined the line at the entrance which was not long, five minutes of standing behind a family with two children who were having very different experiences of the waiting, one patient and one not, and then they were through and inside.

The park was doing its evening thing, the lights coming on as the sky shifted from afternoon to something earlier than night, the rides running, the sounds of all of it mixing into the specific auditory texture of an amusement park that had been running all day and still had hours left in it.

Liam looked around and found what he was looking for and pointed.

"That first," he said. "But we need to get you something before the bumper cars."

She looked at where he was pointing, which was not the bumper cars but a stall in the direction of them, and she looked at the large teddy bears hanging from the back of it in various colors and then at him.

"A friend," he said. "For the journey."

She looked at the bears.

Then at him.

Then at the bears again.

She pointed at the pink one with the speed and certainty of someone who had not needed to think about it at all. "That one," she said.

He walked her over to the stall, a man behind it in a yellow striped shirt with the bored expression of someone who had watched many people fail at this today and had made peace with the pattern. Bottles stacked in a pyramid arrangement on the shelf. Three balls per attempt. Liam put money on the counter and the man swept it up and set three balls in front of him.

Liam picked up the first one and threw it with little to no force.

It connected with the pyramid. Solid contact. Center mass.

Bottles did not fall.

He looked at the bottles.

The bottles looked back at him, fully intact, having absorbed the impact and distributed it in some way that had apparently left all of them standing.

"Two more," the man said, with the tone of someone delivering information they had delivered many times today.

"He hit it," Elsa said, looking at the bottles and then at the man. "He literally hit it and they didn’t fall."

"I don’t know what to tell you," the man said. He said it in the way of someone who did know what to tell her and had decided not to.

"Don’t worry," Liam told her. "I promised you a friend. You’re getting a friend."

"You don’t have to stress yourself," she said, dropping her voice. "This man is clearly cheating."

She was right and Liam knew she was right and the man behind the counter absolutely knew she was right and had calculated that the margin between what the rigged game cost him and what he made from it was comfortable.

’She’s not wrong,’ Liam thought, picking up the second ball and feeling the weight of it in his palm. ’But I also promised her the pink bear and I am not leaving this stall without the pink bear regardless of what this man has done to his bottles.’

He activated Pulse Bound Might.

He felt it arrive in his hands.

He threw the ball at the pyramid.

It did not knock the bottles down.

It went through them.

A clean circular hole appeared in two of the bottles where the ball had passed directly through the plastic without the bottles having been consulted about whether they wanted to fall, and the ball hit the back board of the stall and dropped.

The man stared at his bottles.

Then at Liam.

Then at the hole in his bottles.

His mouth was open with the specific openness of someone who had not budgeted for this outcome when they set up their rigged game that morning.

"I didn’t knock them down," Liam said pleasantly. "I’ll take another go."

"No, no, no," the man said, already reaching behind him, his hand finding the pink bear, already pulling it off the hook, already extending it across the counter with the speed of someone who had decided that this specific customer’s continued use of their balls was not in anyone’s interest. "Here. Take it. Please."

Liam took the bear.

He handed it to Elsa.

She took it with both arms and hugged it against her chest immediately with the instinctive enthusiasm of someone who had wanted this bear and was now holding this bear and was happy about it.

"What’s his name," Liam said.

She looked at the bear.

"Sergeant Ted," she said. Immediately. Without hesitation.

He looked at her.

"He looks like a Sergeant Ted," she said.

---

Bumper cars were what bumper cars always were, which was adults giving themselves permission to drive directly into other adults at low speed and finding it unreasonably satisfying.

Elsa drove with more aggression than her regular presentation suggested she had available, targeting Liam specifically and repeatedly with the specific focus of someone who had found a context in which targeting a person was not only acceptable but encouraged.

Sergeant Ted sat in the passenger seat of her car for the duration, which she had insisted on and which the ride operator had looked at briefly and decided not to address.

They did the spinning ride after that and Elsa held on to his arm through all of it and laughed with the uninhibited laugh she had when she had stopped managing anything, and then a walking section through a mirror maze where they got separated twice and found each other both times in front of a mirror that showed them standing side by side and Liam had looked at their reflection briefly and thought something he did not put into words.

Then the Ferris wheel.

It was the old kind, the kind that moved slowly and stopped at the top and gave you the full view before bringing you back down, and they were in the same car with Sergeant Ted between them initially until Elsa moved the bear to her other side and leaned her head against Liam’s shoulder and held his hand.

He looked at the park spread out below them and the city behind it and the evening sky above all of it.

"I had fun today," she said.

"I’m glad," he said.

She was quiet for a moment.

"Liam," she said.

He looked at her.

She was already facing him, had turned toward him while he was looking at the city, and she kissed him.

Properly. Her free hand coming to the side of his face, her lips pressing against his with the warmth of someone who had decided to do something and was doing it, and he kissed her back and the Ferris wheel kept moving at its slow pace entirely unbothered.

When they separated she was close and looking at him.

He looked at Sergeant Ted sitting on her other side.

"You know your friend is right there," he said.

She laughed, the real one, and looked at the bear and then back at Liam with the warmth still fully present in her expression.

"Sergeant Ted is on watch out," she said.

He looked at the bear.

Sergeant Ted looked back at him with the fixed expression of a stuffed animal that had been assigned a duty and was taking it seriously.

"Alright," Liam said.

He kissed her again and the city sat below them and Sergeant Ted maintained his post and the evening kept doing what evenings did when they had gone well.