Day 8 — Afternoon 1/2

Cassie’s grin faded a little. “Wait. You’re serious?”

Fiona was still sitting near the edge of the swim platform, breathing harder than she wanted anyone to notice. Water ran from the ends of her hair and down her shoulders. Beyond the buoy line, the lake had returned to an offensively peaceful blue. She looked at Cassie. “Just get on with it. And no minion for the day. It was one race.”

Cassie stared at her. “You spent the last hour explaining why winning volleyball didn’t count. Now swimming does?”

“That was a team game. You didn’t beat me.” Fiona waved one hand toward Van and Claire. “We beat them. Different thing.”

Claire, still hovering a few feet above the platform, lowered herself until her feet touched the boards. “I’m fascinated by the legal system developing here.”

“Stay out of it.” Fiona barely looked at her.

Cassie hugged her knees and studied Fiona with open suspicion. “Okay, but now I beat you in a race we never agreed had a forfeit, and suddenly you’re volunteering one?”

Fiona opened her mouth and found the question irritating in a way the answer was not. Cassie had beaten her cleanly. No teams, no interference, no argument over who had carried whom. Cassie had reached the platform first. That meant something. Being asked to explain why felt like being asked why the lake was wet.

“Because you won,” Fiona said. “You want me to draw you a diagram?”

Cassie’s eyes narrowed. “That’s not an explanation.”

“It’s the only one you’re getting.” Fiona shoved wet hair back from her face. “Pick something small and stop making it weird.”

Van glanced toward the buoy line again. “Given that the race started because something tried to eat you, maybe nobody needs to collect anything.”

Fiona turned on him immediately. “You wouldn’t understand. Also butt out.”

Van lifted both hands. “Definitely understood.”

Cassie’s suspicion gave way to interest. “How small are we talking?”

“Unimportant.” Fiona pointed at her before Cassie could object. “Nothing humiliating. Nothing that screws me over. Nothing insane. Just something that doesn’t matter.”

Cassie’s expression changed. Fiona watched the grin begin and regretted every word she had just said.

“Oh,” Cassie said. “I know exactly what I want.”

“No.” Fiona crossed her arms. “I can already tell it’s going to be weird. You’re making a face.”

“I haven’t even said it yet.” Cassie leaned forward anyway. “I get to pick what you wear tonight.”

Fiona laughed once. “Fuck off. Pick something else.”

Cassie’s grin widened. “Why not? You have spent eight days explaining that you are not interested in Van. You keep saying tonight is not a date. You keep saying you don’t care whether he likes you. So what you wear should be completely unimportant.”

Claire covered her mouth with one hand, trying heroically to keep herself from laughing.

Fiona looked at her. “Don’t.”

Cassie pointed between them. “See? Even Starling understands the argument.”

“Starling is enjoying watching you annoy me.”

Claire considered that. “Both can be true,” she said with a broad smile.

Fiona turned back to Cassie. Rejecting the whole thing should have been easy, but the limits sorted themselves before she could dismiss them. Ordinary clothes for one evening were harmless. A ridiculous costume was not. Deliberate humiliation was not. But an outfit, for a night Fiona had already insisted meant nothing?

Damn it.

“You don’t get to make me look like an idiot,” she said.

Cassie’s eyebrows rose. “Is that a yes?”

“You get one outfit. Normal clothes. If I think you’re taking the piss, I walk.”

Cassie thrust one fist into the air. “Victory.”

“Do that again and I change my mind.”

“You can’t. Honor has spoken.” Cassie dropped the fist when Fiona’s glare sharpened, then became considerably more cautious when Fiona smiled instead.

“You wasted it anyway,” Fiona said. “I don’t have wardrobe access. One VP, remember? I get what the system gives me. So congratulations. You can pick from whatever clothes Verena decided I’m allowed to own today.”

Cassie blinked. Her expression brightened again. “That’s not how the store works.”

Fiona’s smile disappeared. Claire looked between them. “It isn’t?”

“No. The milestone gives you access to your personal wardrobe from home.” Cassie jabbed a thumb toward shore. “Lyra’s place sells clothes for BP. Anybody can buy them.”

Fiona stared at her. Cassie stared back, waiting.

“You have got to be fucking kidding me.”

“I am very specifically not kidding.” Cassie turned toward Claire and caught her by the wrist. “We’re taking her shopping.”

Claire lit up. “Yes.”

Fiona pointed at her. “Why are you involved now?”

“Quality control.”

Cassie nodded gravely. “You need quality control.”

Fiona got to her feet. “I hate both of you.”

Claire smiled. “We’ll survive.”

Van slid off the edge of the platform into the water. “I know when I’m not needed.”

“Coward,” Cassie called after him.

He pushed away from the platform. “Correct.”

Claire followed him into the lake a moment later while Cassie resumed explaining to Fiona that this was going to be good for her. Fiona’s answer carried across the water behind them and included enough profanity that Van decided swimming faster would be the polite choice.

* * *

By the time Van reached the shallows, Lizzy and Naomi had abandoned their earlier places near the waterline and were sitting on the edge of a pair of beach beds, both watching the buoy line.

The monster looked like it was gone. They both watched the surface of the lake anyway.

“I know it was trying to eat them,” Lizzy said as Van came close enough to hear. “I understand that part. I am not saying the attempted eating was good.”

Naomi had a towel around her shoulders and her dark hair pushed back from her face. “I appreciate the clarification.”

“But it was a dinosaur.” Lizzy turned toward her with both hands spread. “An actual dinosaur.”

“A lake dinosaur.”

“I know.” Lizzy pressed both palms over her face for a second. “I can’t decide whether that was the most terrifying thing I have ever seen or the most amazing.”

Naomi considered the water. “I think those are allowed to be the same thing.”

Lizzy lowered her hands. “That feels unfair.”

“I’ve been in disaster zones where buildings were still coming down while we were setting up relief stations. You’ve gone into rescues where everyone else had to stay behind because you could pass through the debris.” Naomi glanced back toward the buoy line. “Neither of those prepared me for ‘prehistoric aquatic predator’ as a hazard category.”

Lizzy laughed. “Exactly.” She spotted Van and straightened. “Van! You saw it up close.”

“Close-ish. I never left the platform.”

She was on her feet before he finished answering. The leftover adrenaline took care of the rest. Lizzy closed the distance and caught him in a quick, impulsive hug, both arms around his middle and her shoulder against his chest.

“How scared were you?” she asked.

Van looked down at the arms around his middle, then at her face. “Not at all. I routinely face giant monsters while wearing swim trunks.”

Lizzy stuck her tongue out at him. “Liar. I was scared, so you’re allowed to be scared too.”

“Fine.” He surrendered immediately. “I was terrified.”

“There.” Lizzy nodded with satisfaction.

“Mostly because I had just told Claire I’m not a good swimmer. If I’d gone another fifty yards out, I probably would have panicked and drowned while everyone else was fighting the dinosaur.”

Lizzy smacked his shoulder with one hand. “Don’t say that.”

“Ow.”

“Claire would have saved you anyway.”

Claire, approaching through the shallows behind him, called, “Correct.”

Van glanced back. “I’m glad we’ve established the emergency plan.”

Lizzy was about to answer when she finally registered what she was doing. Both arms were still around Van. She had hugged him without thinking about it once.

She released him so quickly she nearly stepped on her own foot. Her eyes went up. Van followed her gaze toward the empty air above them.

Naomi’s mouth curved. “You already earned that one.”

Lizzy’s face reddened. “I know.”

“I forgot,” Lizzy admitted.

Van rubbed the shoulder she had smacked. “I’m choosing not to be offended that hugging me has ceased to have financial value.”

Lizzy laughed despite herself. “That isn’t what I meant.”

“I know.”

Naomi stood and settled the towel more securely around her shoulders. “Our lives have become very complicated when we can get attacked by a dinosaur at a robot barbecue and the next question is whether everyone is ready to go home.”

Van looked toward the resort buildings. “There’s nowhere to go.”

That got all three of them laughing.

They crossed the sand toward Evelyn, Mara, and Katherine. The three women had reclaimed their loungers after the alarm, although none looked particularly settled. Evelyn had her nonalcoholic drink untouched on the table beside her. Mara kept glancing toward the lake. Katherine, by contrast, appeared to have redirected most of her concern toward avoiding further accidental honesty.

Naomi stopped beside them. “Are we calling it?”

Mara gave the lake a long look. “I believe I have had enough exposure to sea monsters for one afternoon.”

Katherine’s gaze shifted past her toward the pavilion.

The Grill Master was bent over the barbecue station cleaning the lower shelves, still wearing the blue swim brief that had already caused enough trouble for several lifetimes.

Katherine tilted her head. “Two monsters, actually.”

Mara made the mistake of following her line of sight. Her sudden realization of what Katherine was looking at made her giggle.

Evelyn did not. “That will be quite enough.”

Katherine pressed her lips together, visibly pleased with herself and annoyed by that fact at the same time.

Evelyn rose and collected her beach bag. “I am going to speak to Pixie about the Loose Lips effect before one of you decides to say something truly damning.”

Mara looked innocent. “Why are you only worried about us?”

“I include myself in that sentence.”

Katherine stood as well. “Sensibly paranoid.”

“You are both coming with me.”

Mara laughed. “Are we being supervised or chaperoned?”

“Yes.” Evelyn slung the bag over one shoulder. “You may object if you wish, but do so while walking.”

Katherine glanced at Mara. “I find the sudden maternal turn strangely reassuring.”

Evelyn closed her eyes briefly.

Mara was already laughing again. “We’re coming.”

Around them, the rest of the group had reached much the same conclusion about the beach. Claire went to collect her bag. Cassie and Fiona were swimming back from the platform, their argument carrying ahead of them in fragments. Van headed toward the path to the residence wing with every intention of showering off lake water, sunscreen, and the memory of a reptile large enough to swallow him whole.

Lizzy fell into step beside Naomi.

Neither of them looked back toward the buoy line until they reached the boardwalk.

Both looked back at exactly the same time.

* * *

Lizzy followed Naomi back to her room instead of turning toward her own. Neither had made a plan for it. They had simply kept talking while the corridors replaced the boardwalk beneath their feet, and by the time Naomi opened her door Lizzy was still describing the monster as though Naomi hadn’t seen it herself.

“The head was the problem,” Lizzy decided as they went inside. “It came out of the water and just kept coming.”

Naomi set her beach bag down. “I thought the teeth were the problem.”

Lizzy threw her towel at her.

Naomi caught it against her chest, laughing, and tossed it over the back of a chair. “All right. Head, then teeth. We will update the training manuals.”

The last of the adrenaline was finally wearing off. Without the lake in front of them, the entire beach outing had begun to feel faintly unreal: volleyball, the Grill Master, sunscreen, the race, the barrier flashing blue-white while something prehistoric tried to force its way through.

Lizzy looked down at the swimsuit she had spent so long debating whether to wear. “I’m glad I changed into this.”

Naomi paused while gathering clean clothes from the room. “That sounded almost confident.”

“I said I’m glad I wore it.” Lizzy tugged lightly at one side of the suit. “I didn’t say I looked as good as—”

“BZZZT.”

Lizzy jumped. “What was that?”

Naomi pointed at her. “New rule.”

“What rule?”

“Every time you start comparing your body to one of the other women, I make that noise.”

Lizzy stared at her. “You can’t make a rule about what I’m allowed to say.”

“I just did.”

“What if I have a legitimate observation?”

“BZZZT.”

“I wasn’t even comparing anything!” Lizzy tried to look offended and failed almost immediately. A laugh broke through. “That is incredibly annoying.”

“Good. Then the conditioning has a chance of working.” Naomi carried her clothes toward the bathroom. “I have heard this speech before. You are not allowed to spend every time you wear something nice explaining why someone else would look better in it.”

“I can try.” Lizzy folded her arms. “I’m not promising, though.”

“I expected resistance.” Naomi stopped at the bathroom entrance and looked back at her. “You have nothing to complain about anyway. Van spent a suspicious amount of the afternoon checking you out.”

Lizzy’s posture changed instantly. “He did?”

Naomi held the serious expression for two full seconds before it broke.

Lizzy pointed at her. “Naomi.”

“He was a perfect gentleman.”

“That isn’t the same thing.”

“No, it isn’t.” Naomi leaned one shoulder against the doorway. “He didn’t stare. He was actually extremely careful not to. But every time you turned around near him, he developed an intense interest in whatever chair, towel rack, tree, or patch of sand happened to be somewhere else.”

Lizzy blinked.

Naomi smiled. “People who are not tempted usually do not have to work that hard at being polite.”

A flush crept up Lizzy’s neck. She looked down at herself, then caught Naomi’s expression and stopped before the comparison could leave her mouth.

Naomi lifted one warning finger.

Lizzy laughed and sat on the edge of the bed. “Fine. I’ll take it.”

“Take what?”

“The fact that he apparently found the furniture fascinating whenever I was around.”

Naomi disappeared into the bathroom with her clean clothes draped over one arm. The room’s missing bathroom door made the gesture less decisive than it would have been anywhere else. A moment later the shower started, and her voice carried easily over the water.

“He likes you.”

Lizzy groaned. “You can’t just say things like that.”

“Why?”

“Because then I have to think about them.”

“That seems healthy.”

“It seems dangerous.” Lizzy lay back across the bed for a moment, then pushed herself up onto her elbows. “Besides, ‘likes me’ is complicated here.”

Naomi laughed from the shower. “That may be the sanest statement anyone has made all week.”

Lizzy picked at a loose thread along the edge of the towel she had brought in. “It isn’t exactly what every little girl imagines, is it?”

“What isn’t?”

“Getting kidnapped into a relationship with a man you barely know who can’t express an emotion without an engraved invitation and who you’re supposed to share with seven other women.” She paused. “I’m fairly sure that wasn’t in any of the wedding plans I had when I was twelve.”

Naomi laughed hard enough that Lizzy could hear it over the water. “That does complicate the seating chart.”

Lizzy sat upright again. “I hugged him without thinking today.”

The water continued running.

“I know,” Naomi called.

“No, I mean I really didn’t think about it. I just grabbed him. Then I realized what I was doing and nearly choked because I thought one of those screens was going to appear over us in front of everyone.”

“Because there aren’t repeat bonuses.” Lizzy dropped backward onto the bed again and covered her eyes with one arm. “I forgot we already got the hug points.”

Naomi shut off the water. “That means the Hotel will never know if you drag him into a closet and make out with him.”

Lizzy sat up so fast the mattress bounced. “I couldn’t do that.”

“Why not?” Naomi made the question sound routine. “You just spent five minutes complaining that Van requires an engraved invitation. A closet seems fairly direct.”

“Mara told me almost the same thing.”

There was the rustle of a towel from the bathroom. Lizzy smiled despite the heat still in her face. The joking had become easier with Naomi over the last few days. Not effortless, but easier. Naomi could say something that would have sent Lizzy fleeing a conversation a week earlier and somehow make it survivable long enough for Lizzy to answer back.

Naomi’s next question arrived without the teasing tone. “Would it break your heart if another girl kissed him?”

Lizzy’s smile faded.

For a few seconds she listened to Naomi moving around in the bathroom, the faint sounds of fabric and drawers and a towel being shaken out.

“I don’t know,” she said finally.

Lizzy drew one knee up onto the bed and wrapped both hands around it. “Back in school? Yes. Absolutely. If I liked a boy and he kissed somebody else, I would have thought that meant I lost. Or that she was prettier, or better, or that I had been stupid for thinking he might like me.” She made a face at herself. “Which sounds dramatic when I say it out loud.”

“It sounds eighteen.”

“That is not as comforting as you think.”

Naomi laughed softly from the bathroom, but Lizzy kept going.

“Here, I don’t know what the rules are supposed to be. Verena keeps telling us we’re all going to stay connected to him somehow. The Hotel keeps putting us in situations where we have to think about each other that way. I don’t like all of that. But I know you. I know Claire. I know Mara and Katherine and Evelyn and…” She hesitated before adding, “even Fiona and Cassie, when they aren’t being impossible.”

“That is generous.”

“If Van kissed one of you, I think I’d be jealous. I might hate it for ten minutes. Maybe longer.” Lizzy looked down at her hands. “But I don’t think I’d hate you. And I don’t think I’d believe he did it because the Hotel told him to. He’s too weird about making sure nobody thinks they owe him anything.”

The bathroom remained quiet.

Lizzy drew a breath. “If he kissed someone, I think he would mean it. I’m not sure whether that would make it better or worse. Maybe both.”

Naomi came out of the bathroom dressed in fresh clothes, rubbing her damp hair with a towel. She crossed the room and sat in the chair opposite the bed rather than answering immediately.

Lizzy looked at her. “That was a suspiciously serious question.”

“It was.”

“Why?”

Naomi lowered the towel into her lap. “Because I think I want to kiss him.”

Lizzy’s mouth opened. Her jaw worked, but nothing came out.

Naomi’s smile was small and uncertain. “You can say something.”

“Oh.” Lizzy sat a little straighter. “You mean on your next date?”

“Next assignment. Date. Whatever we’re calling it by then.” Naomi looked down at the towel between her hands, smoothing one corner across her knee. “I’ve been thinking about it since training. Maybe before that, if I’m being fair to myself.”

Lizzy waited.

Naomi took her time. “For years, touching someone’s bare skin was something I had to avoid at all costs. I wore gloves, avoiding getting close. Even when I was covered, people hesitated before shaking hands. I haven’t hugged someone without their fear or mine changing the event into something endured instead of enjoyed.”

Her fingers tightened once around the towel and relaxed.

“This week I’ve had people touch me without everyone treating it like an emergency. I can close the Valve for a while now.” Naomi looked up. “I keep telling myself I should wait until I’m better at it. Another lesson. Another test. More control. Some perfect point where I stop being afraid of getting it wrong. But I spent years waiting for a safer version of my life to start. I don’t want to keep doing that when there are things I actually want.”

Lizzy’s expression softened.

Naomi smiled with one corner of her mouth. “And I want to kiss Van. Not because I need to prove the transformation works. Not because the Hotel put points on it. I just want to.”

Lizzy’s fingers curled against her knee. “I think I’m jealous.”

Naomi’s face fell slightly.

“But not…” Lizzy hurried on. “Not in a way where I want you not to do it.”

Naomi waited.

“I don’t know if I’m okay with all of this yet,” Lizzy admitted. “I don’t even know what ‘okay with it’ is supposed to look like. But if you want to kiss him, I don’t want you deciding you can’t because I kissed him first.”

Naomi’s shoulders eased.

Lizzy pointed at her. “I reserve the right to be weird about it afterward.”

Naomi put a finger to her lips in thought. “That seems fair.”

“And you are not allowed to come back and give me a detailed review.”

“What if you ask?” Naomi considered. “You asked Claire about her date.”

Lizzy’s face was hot with embarrassment. “That was different.”

“How?”

Lizzy opened her mouth and stopped.

Naomi raised her eyebrows.

“BZZZT,” Lizzy said.

Naomi stared at her.

Lizzy broke first, laughing so hard she fell sideways across the bed. Naomi threw the towel at her, and the conversation collapsed into the kind of helpless laughter that left both of them quieter afterward.

When Lizzy finally sat up again, Naomi had moved to the edge of the bed beside her.

“I’m going to ask him,” Naomi said.

Lizzy glanced over.

“Not surprise him. Ask.” Naomi’s smile returned. “Apparently engraved invitations are effective.”

Lizzy bumped her shoulder lightly against Naomi’s. “He’ll probably need three copies.”

“Then I’ll prepare paperwork.”

The two of them sat there another minute, damp hair and discarded towels and beach bags around them, while the noise of the Hotel carried faintly through the corridor outside.

* * *

By the time the group began crossing paths again in the residence hall, everyone had traded swimsuits for dry clothes and the smell of lake water had mostly given way to soap.

Van disappeared toward his suite after a brief wave, having already declared that he wanted no part in any discussion involving Fiona’s clothing. Evelyn, Mara, and Katherine emerged together from the opposite corridor. Evelyn had recovered most of her usual composure, which only made Katherine’s determined silence more suspicious.

Cassie arrived next, saw the three older women, and immediately tried to expand her shopping party.

“We’re taking Fiona to buy an outfit,” she announced. “Come help.”

Evelyn did not slow. “No.”

Mara smiled apologetically. “We have another appointment.”

“Medical,” Katherine added.

Evelyn looked at her dryly.

“Adjacent to medical,” Katherine amended.

“We are speaking to Pixie,” Evelyn said, and continued toward the dining wing with Mara and Katherine beside her.

Cassie watched them go. “Your loss!”

“I’ll have to find a way to live with myself after,” Katherine called without turning.

Lizzy and Naomi came down the hall a moment later. Cassie made the same offer. The two looked at each other.

“We have plans,” Lizzy said.

Cassie brightened. “Doing what?”

Lizzy considered the question. “Nothing.”

Naomi nodded. “It’s true, but we are very committed to it.”

Cassie sighed. “Useless, both of you.”

“Good luck,” Naomi said, with the sympathy of someone addressing a rescue team headed into structural collapse.

Fiona appeared at the far end of the corridor while Cassie was still trying to think of another recruit. Her hair was still slightly damp at the ends, and she had changed back into the ordinary Hotel-issued clothes available to her.

She took one look at the mostly empty hallway. “Are you done gathering an audience for this scheme of yours?”

“They don’t know what they are missing,” Cassie said.

Claire stepped out from the adjoining hall with her own small bag over one shoulder. “I didn’t.”

Fiona groaned.

Claire’s enthusiasm had only increased since the lake. “I haven’t actually been inside Haven Fabrics yet.”

“You’re excited about this?” Fiona stopped. “Why?”

“Because shopping with friends sounds normal.” Claire adjusted the strap on her bag. “I’m taking normal where I can get it.”

Fiona’s mouth opened, then closed. She pointed at Cassie instead. “You are there to stop her from buying anything stupid.”

Claire nodded. “Quality control.”

Cassie made an offended noise. “I have excellent taste.”

Claire stepped between them before the argument could gather speed. “What counts as stupid?”

Fiona gave Cassie a long look. “She knows.”

Cassie smiled innocently.

“That face,” Fiona said. “That face means she knows.”

Claire looked from one to the other and laughed. “All right. I’ll veto anything that looks like deliberate revenge.”

“Thank you.”

Cassie hooked one arm through Claire’s and started down the corridor. “Come on. Before Fiona decides to run.”

Fiona muttered something under her breath and started after them.

Cassie’s grin returned. She wisely faced forward before Fiona could see all of it. They turned toward the corridor leading to Haven Fabrics, Claire already asking what Fiona considered comfortable and Fiona already objecting to the premise of the question.

Cassie let them argue for several seconds before joining in.