Day 6 Evening 1/2

Cassie had been dressed for dinner before Fiona made it out of the shower. She stood by the door impatiently as her roommate made herself decent, then led the way to the dining hall with hurried steps and flushed cheeks.

Naomi arrived with Mara, still wearing the dark green blouse and shorts she had selected in Nixie’s shop. Her fingers brushed one bare shoulder before she sat. Mara’s hand hovered near her back, then dropped when Naomi settled on her own.

Claire came in beside Evelyn with three books under one arm and her red hair spread behind her in a bright, restless fan. She tried to flatten it while balancing the books. A curl looped around her wrist instead.

“That thing is showing off,” Cassie said.

Claire checked over her shoulder. “It has been difficult today.” The hair wrapped around her wrist, then slid across her skin as she pulled away. Claire stiffened her shoulders and gave the others a quick, embarrassed glance before smoothing it down.

“Like you don't show off all the time yourself.” Fiona sat across from Cassie.

Dinner clothes helped. Fiona’s shirt covered her shoulders, and her hair had dried instead of clinging to her neck. Without naked skin, heat, and steam feeding the memory of the sauna, Cassie could push the intrusive awareness into the background. She picked up the water and drank.

The table filled itself in stages. A broad dish of roasted vegetables appeared first, followed by bread, herb-crusted fish, rice, and golden-brown potatoes.

Claire placed one of her books beside her plate.

Cassie’s hand stopped halfway to the bread basket. “You brought homework to dinner.”

“I wanted to finish the chapter.” Claire looked almost offended by the accusation. “I can now.”

Naomi glanced at the book. “How fast?”

Claire’s expression brightened with enough force to animate every strand behind her. “It depends on the material. Straight narrative is much faster than technical writing, but comprehension is so much easier.”

She spoke faster as she continued.

“I can finish assigned readings in a fraction of the time. Research will be completely different.”

“You really bought it,” Cassie said.

Claire’s hand settled over the closed book. “Yes.”

“Nixie probably framed the receipt.” Cassie gestured with both thumbs and forefingers, boxing a frame around Claire while closing one eye. “First official sucker.”

Claire drew a breath. “I get your complaint, but it works. Something like this could really help us.”

Cassie leaned forward, ignoring the way her altered shirt tightened across her chest. “I’m not mad that you tried a transformation. I’m mad that you gave her the satisfaction. She puts speed reading on the same shelf as tit upgrades. She really thinks they’re the same.”

“She can feel vindicated if she wants.” Claire tapped the book beneath her fingers. “This changes what I can do. I’m not giving that up to spoil Nixie’s evening.”

Cassie tore her own piece of bread in half. “Fine. It’s good that it helps. Nixie is still insufferable.”

“On that,” Claire said, “we agree completely.” Her hair curled around the back of the chair.

—--------------------

Lizzy kept checking her sleeves while waiting for Van to arrive. The blouse had never betrayed her. It fit perfectly, held its shape, and seemed determined to remain comfortable no matter how many times she smoothed the pale-violet fabric over her ribs.

Her own body was the unreliable part. Excitement had already made the tips of her fingers shimmer once while she waited beside the eastern terminal. Anxiety pressed beneath it in uneven waves. She kept both feet firmly planted and concentrated on the dark skirt at her waist, the blouse at her shoulders, and every smaller article between them.

She repeated the inventory silently: stay solid—stay present.

Footsteps approached from the corridor. Van slowed when he saw her. He had changed clothes. Lizzy had seen him clean and presentable before, but tonight he wore dark new trousers and a muted blue-gray shirt tailored across his shoulders. The collar was open, his sleeves buttoned at the wrist, and he kept checking the cuffs like a man who rarely wore anything with buttons. She hated how much his uncertainty eased some of hers.

Van stopped an arm’s length away. His gaze moved over her, direct but not invasive. “You look nice.” He added, “The violet looks good on you.”

Lizzy’s heart struck hard against her ribs. “Thank you,” she managed to say.

Van smiled. It was small and uncertain, as though he had prepared exactly one compliment and was relieved to have managed it.

“Ready?” he asked.

Lizzy nodded and they started down the corridor together. For the first minute, Lizzy contributed nothing except footsteps.

Van did not make her explain. Instead, he commented on the false evening light. The sky beyond the resort windows had become a deepening orange, with clouds gathering over distant hills in layers too perfect to be accidental.

“I keep wondering who decides the weather,” he said. “Verena, the Hotel, or somebody whose entire job is making fake sunsets.”

Lizzy glanced toward the window. “Maybe it changes based on audience votes.”

“No,” he mused. “If that were true it would have rained sideways by now.”

She smiled before she could stop herself.

Van continued at once, his shoulders easing. “I asked Alpha whether the dinosaurs have assigned areas. She said they have preferred territories, which is not the same answer.”

Lizzy stared at him.

“I want to know whether I’ll ever see one.” He realized the way that sounded. “From far away,” he clarified. “A very safe distance. Preferably through something stronger than glass.”

“They tried to eat some of us.”

“I know.” He rubbed the back of his neck, then stopped when his shoulder tightened. “But they’re still dinosaurs.”

Lizzy considered that. “Claire did say it was beautiful.”

“See?”

The corridor opened into a wider resort street. False evening settled over stone walkways and bright shopfronts. Some businesses were still only polished façades. Others showed signs of use: lit interiors, chalkboards, open doors, the faint movement of people within.

Van pointed ahead. “That’s it.”

A red-and-green sign hung above a corner building. GINO’S PIZZA PARADISE. The word PARADISE flickered once, leaving PARAD SE, then corrected itself.

Lizzy laughed.

Van looked pleased, though he glanced at the sign as if the broken letter had personally confirmed a good decision. “It seemed less intimidating than somewhere with four stars.”

Warm air met them at the door.

The restaurant showed all the wear and tear the Hotel’s perfect dining rooms lacked. Shallow scratches ringed the busiest tables. Framed photographs covered one wall in mismatched sizes, and a faded pennant hung above a counter where an older man in a flour-marked apron argued cheerfully with someone through the kitchen window.

A waitress with a pencil tucked through her hair waved them toward an open booth.

“Sit wherever you like. I’ll be there before Gino back there burns something.”

“I heard that,” the man behind the counter called.

“You were supposed to.”

Lizzy slid into the booth and looked around. A glass shaker of red pepper flakes sat beside grated cheese. The menu edges had softened from years of hands. A child at another table was pulling melted cheese away from a slice in a strand nearly as long as his arm while his mother negotiated for a bite of the stringy mess.

The tightness in Lizzy’s chest loosened.

Van sat across from her, careful with the movement. “Better than four stars?”

“This looks like a place near my parents’ house.”

He rested his forearms against the table. “Is that a good thing?”

“Yeah.” Lizzy touched the menu without opening it. “My father took us there when he didn’t want to cook. They had an old jukebox that I loved. That place felt a lot like this.”

She realized she had spoken more than six words at once and looked up to see Van smiling with easy charm.

Van tilted his head to acknowledge her. “Cassie was right, this is better than my original plan.”

Lizzy’s stomach fluttered. “You asked Cassie for advice about our date?”

“Our date?” He repeated the phrase quietly, paused, and did not object. “Well, I was talking to myself and she interjected, so it wasn’t like I asked. I am happy she corrected me, though.”

“What was your bad idea?”

“A private dining room and a movie.”

Lizzy made a face.

Van’s face tightened. “That bad?”

“Yes.” She looked down too quickly. “I mean, no. I know you’re trying your best, but I don't think I would be comfortable with wine lists and rules about forks.”

“Well, she said I was planning the night like you were a bomb I had to defuse.”

Lizzy’s face became hot. “She wasn’t entirely wrong.”

Van grimaced for only an instant before laughing at himself and smiling again. “I argued with her for a while, then realized she was right later.”

Lizzy’s fingers tightened around the menu. He was being so careful with her. He was big-hearted and emotionally clumsy, and the thought of him working so hard to make her happy made her heart race. Then the feeling settled somewhere deeper.

The waitress arrived with two glasses of water and a small pad. “First visit to Paradise?”

Van choked on a sip of water, then nodded.

“Then I’m required by family law to tell you that other pizza will be forever ruined after you eat here.”

From behind the counter, Gino called, “It’s true! You gonna come back. Everyone always does.”

Lizzy laughed openly at the bombastic older man. He gave her a broad grin in return, then returned to measuring dough.

Van opened his menu and looked over the page.

Lizzy tried to do the same, but the columns blurred beneath the pressure of having to choose something in front of him.

Van lowered his menu first. “Do you want to split something?” He gestured vaguely at the page. “There are so many options, and I don't know what you like.”

Lizzy relaxed by a degree and read the specials. “I like Hawaiian.”

“I gave up too early,” he said. “We are now lifelong enemies.” He finished his declaration by pointing at the menu she was holding. “I'll alert the others you are not to be trusted.”

Lizzy was sure his rejection of her choice would cause her to freeze up. In fact, she braced herself to retreat from the conversation. His face was open, with bright eyes and such a genuine smile that she found herself laughing at him instead.

Van had already turned back toward the waitress, missing the sudden change in her expression. “Can we split the pizza, please? Hawaiian and just a lot of different meats?”

“Meat lovers?” the waitress asked.

“That sounds right.”

She wrote it down. “Anything else?”

“No, ma'am,” Van said.

“No,” Lizzy said at the same time.

The waitress looked between them. “I’ll let Gino know,” she called over her shoulder as she left.

Lizzy folded her hands on the table. “Pineapple does go on pizza, you know.”

Van turned his water glass back and forth between his palms. “It’s a fruit. It’s like dessert.”

“So are tomatoes.”

He held a solemn expression until the corner of his mouth betrayed him. “Tomatoes know their place.”

Her laugh drew a glance from the next table. Van leaned back, and the tension he had carried since the terminal eased from his shoulders. Lizzy settled against the booth, finally relaxing.

—-----------------------------------

By the time dessert appeared at the main dining table, Mara had reached the subject of sleeping arrangements.

“I suppose I get the room to myself tonight,” Mara said, breaking the crisp shell of a small custard with the back of her spoon. “I'll enjoy the extra space. I'm used to sleeping alone.”

Cassie glanced toward the empty chairs. “You say that like the rest of us slept in piles before getting kidnapped.”

“I may become lost,” she mused. “I might sleep sideways or diagonally just to make a point.”

Katherine took a sip of tea. “It’s a reckless escalation.”

Mara nodded gravely. “I may never recover.”

Cassie rested her chin on one hand. “Honestly, we should start rotating two or three girls through the suite every night. Van’s bed is the size of a small country, and the Hotel gave the rest of us one mattress per room like it expects us to stack.”

Claire inhaled at the wrong moment and coughed. Her hair flared around her head.

Fiona stared at Cassie. “No.”

“It was just a joke.” Cassie glanced at Claire, whose face had become almost as red as her hair. “And anyway, you can relax. Our ‘Master’ remains clinically devoid of lust.” The word “Master” came with air quotes and a scowl.

Evelyn set down her spoon. “As much as I appreciate the humor, that isn’t true.”

Cassie turned toward her.

“Van has ordinary desires,” Evelyn said. Claire’s hair lifted, and Fiona’s spoon paused above her dish. “I’m not sharing anything private. He simply isn’t indifferent.” She took a measured sip of her drink.

“I never thought about that. Being surrounded by a system that constantly pours sex into every concept must be exhausting for a young man at its center,” Mara said.

“It probably is,” Katherine replied.

Fiona leaned closer. “If he does have the hots for us, then why does he act like being assigned eight beautiful women is an accounting error he has to correct?”

“You could ask him,” Mara said.

“Because he knows where we are.” Katherine folded her hands beside her plate. “He is shy and inexperienced, but the larger problem is that the Hotel kidnapped us and forced us to date him.”

Katherine glanced toward the empty chairs. “Anyone who wants him to understand their own emotions may have to make the issue very clear on her own.”

Cassie remembered Van describing his first plan for Lizzy. He had worried about frightening her, then treated Cassie’s correction like a safety instruction. Romance had not entered the problem at all.

Fiona let her spoon fall into the empty dish with a small clink. “Wonderful.”

Cassie turned toward her.

Fiona leaned back. “So this place wants to manipulate us until we stand under his window shouting, ‘Notice me, senpai.’”

Cassie studied her with wide eyes. “You know what senpai means.”

“It is not obscure. Tessa used it constantly.”

“Tessa?”

“My roommate at the training center.” Fiona scraped the edge of her spoon through the custard. “She was incapable of doing anything alone. Meals, movies, shopping, recovery days—if she went somewhere, she tried to drag another person with her.”

“She sounds healthy.”

“She was relentless.”

Cassie leaned across the table. “What did she make you watch?”

“Everything loud, sentimental, or both.”

“Anything good?”

“No.” Fiona reached for her water. “Mask of Twilight wasn’t the worst of the bunch.”

Cassie’s palm struck the table hard enough to make Claire’s hair jump. “The cursed prince writing letters to the shrine maiden who thinks he’s dead?”

Mara covered her smile as the debate escalated. Fiona sat forward, defending an unexpectedly sentimental show with embarrassed zeal. Cassie opened her mouth for another joke and found nothing ready.

Fiona seized the pause. “This conversation is finished.”

“Nope!” Cassie recovered her grin. “I’m finding the media library. We’re having an anime night.”

—-------------------------------

Gino delivered the pizza personally, and presented it with a flourish before setting it between them. Lizzy gave her thanks while Van reached for the serving spatula.

“Don’t thank me yet,” the big man said cheerfully. “You wait until you finish. You gonna want to kiss me instead of your handsome date.” He gestured broadly at the table before turning away. “Now eat up. Kids your age are always hungry.”

Lizzy stiffened in her seat and immediately felt the fluttering hum of her power slipping from her will. She felt the blood flush her cheeks and looked to Van, certain she would find him scrambling to distance himself from the idea. Instead of him rushing to explain to Gino that they weren’t on a “real” date, the only thing on his face was a simple cheerfulness that robbed her anxiety of its fuel.

What she had wanted for the night was simpler than the right restaurant or the word date: a table, a joke, and someone who treated her presence as an improvement rather than a complication.

She had imagined versions of this since she was old enough to like boys. It was always taken for granted. She would get the usual milestones of young romance. First dates. Awkward conversations. The gradual discovery that someone liked the things she liked and found her silences comfortable instead of burdensome.

Reality had provided roadblocks, though: first her Empowerment and all the training and preparation that came with it, and then a cosmic prison, an audience, seven other women, and a man who had been told she belonged in his harem.

Lizzy took a bite before the thought could dismantle the moment.

Van ate more slowly than hunger suggested. Each time he shifted in the booth, he guarded his back without appearing to know he was doing it. Lizzy considered asking again whether he was in pain.

Instead, she remembered advice gathered from books, conversations with older girls who understood these things, and several years of privately rehearsing a version of herself who could talk to boys without hyperventilating.

Eye contact mattered, so she looked at him over the top of her slice and lowered her lashes slowly.

Van paused. “Are you all right? Something in your eye?”

Lizzy’s lashes froze halfway through the movement. “No,” she said quietly. “I’m fine.”

He returned to the pizza. Lizzy stared at her plate, wishing she could evaporate.

Hair was safer. Women played with their hair while flirting. Claire’s hair now acted like a vibrant puppet sometimes, but ordinary women could accomplish the effect with one hand.

Lizzy tucked a strand behind her ear, then let it fall loose again. She drew it between two fingers, trying to make the movement look absent-minded rather than intentional.

Van’s gaze lifted. Encouraged, Lizzy tipped her head.

He leaned forward. “You have sauce in your hair,” he muttered from behind a hand, trying to talk and swallow at the same time.

Lizzy released the strand like a hot wire. A bright red smear marked the last inch.

“Oh.” Mortified, she stared at the offending strands.

Van reached over the table with a napkin without thinking. “Here.”

As he did, he dragged the elbow of his new shirt across the surface of the pizza, creating a dark stain of his own.

“Thank you,” she mumbled while pointing at his arm. “But I think you have a bigger problem.”

He looked down at the stain and laughed at himself. “I guess this is why I don’t own nice clothes.”

Lizzy folded the stained napkin into a tight square. She was trying to be subtle with him and that wasn’t working. Maybe no one had ever told him about how girls flirted. Van had spent most of his life surviving things she could barely imagine; she had spent hers assuming romance would eventually become part of life, even if it always belonged to a braver future version of herself.

The possibility that he had never practiced the same assumptions ought to have comforted her. Instead, it made the distance between them harder to measure.

Van cleared his throat. “So, the assessment was strange.”

Lizzy looked up at the sudden change in topic.

Van settled into the assessment story with an easier rhythm. He told her about Dr. Dane’s tests, leaving out enough detail that the story didn’t become medical. He described the treadmill, the strength measurements, Cassie attempting to interrogate the doctor, and Fiona refusing to let the result disappear without some weird kind of bargain.

His version made the five-hundred-pound lift sound almost accidental.

“It didn’t feel like five hundred pounds,” he said. “It felt like something I shouldn’t have been able to move, and then I moved it anyway.”

Lizzy listened. The story gave her something to hold on to that didn’t require performance.

“Fiona said my technique was terrible,” Van continued.

He took another bite, swallowed, then added, “Then she made me choose a forfeit.”

Lizzy’s attention sharpened. “A forfeit?”

“She said that because I won her challenge, I had to ask her for something.” He shrugged in confusion.

“What did you ask for?” The question came out a bit tightly, but Van didn’t seem to notice.

“To teach me how to run properly. She knows a lot and I feel like I’m going to need to do a lot of running in the near future.”

Lizzy set down her slice. “Will anyone else be there?”

“I don’t think so.” His tone was casual. He never looked up from his plate. “Cassie refused to come.”

“So you and Fiona are going to Riverstone after breakfast.”

“That’s the plan.” Van finally caught the change in her face. “What?”

She shrank in her seat. “It’s just, that sounds like a date.” She hugged her arms and finished quietly. “I thought you didn’t like each other.”

He blinked. “It isn’t. She just knows how to run better than me. It’s coaching.”

He searched her face, plainly lost. “Would it become less like a date in the afternoon?”

Lizzy almost laughed, but the tightness in her chest held the sound. “No. I suppose not.”

She couldn’t find defensiveness or embarrassment in him. Every answer treated the morning as instruction and nothing more. His certainty should have helped. Instead, Lizzy’s mind moved Fiona into a place it had never occupied before.

Until tonight, Fiona had been the easiest woman to leave out of Lizzy’s private calculations. She was strong, disciplined, confident, and beautiful, but she had rejected the Master structure from the beginning and treated every suggestion of intimacy like an insult. Now Van was going somewhere alone with her because he admired something she could do. The admiration made sense.

The comparisons followed anyway. Fiona could teach him things. Claire was bright and pretty and so smart it made her ache quietly. Cassie could challenge him without disappearing, and the others each possessed strengths Lizzy could name more easily than her own. She knew she had positive qualities, just not the ones a young man like Van would choose over so many others.

Lizzy had spent years believing she would someday find a lover and perhaps a husband. Van might like her, and he had been kind to her, but one dinner could not make her the natural choice among eight extraordinary women. In her mind, this had always been the likeliest outcome.

“I didn’t know you and Fiona were doing things together,” Lizzy said. The sentence sounded smaller aloud than it had in her head.

Van shook his head. “We aren’t. Not like that.” He laughed under his breath. “In fact, I wouldn’t let her hear you say that.”

Lizzy nodded. “I understand.” She didn’t press him. If neither Van nor Fiona was ready to talk about it, Lizzy wouldn’t bring it up again.

Van resumed the assessment story, explaining that Mirel Dane thought his strength was unusual but not impossible. Lizzy heard the words without keeping them. Her mind built tomorrow morning in fragments: Fiona running ahead on Riverstone Trail, Van following, the two of them laughing when he made some mistake. Fiona correcting his posture with firm hands. Van discovering that confidence felt easier beside someone who could match his strength with her own.

The pizza cooled, and Van’s voice slowed. His sentence had ended in a question. Lizzy had missed it.

“I’m sorry?” she asked, refocusing on him.

“It’s fine.” He rubbed his thumb along the edge of his glass. “I’ve been talking about the assessment too much. I’m boring you.”

“No, you haven’t.”

“I have. You stopped eating.”

Lizzy looked at the slice on her plate. “I was thinking.”

Van nodded, but his thumb kept circling the edge of the glass.

The restaurant filled the pause with plates, conversation, a burst of laughter from the kitchen, and the scrape of a chair across the worn floor.

Van looked toward the front windows, where the false evening had deepened into blue. “Do you like carnivals?” he asked.

Lizzy blinked. “Carnivals?”

“I saw the boardwalk when Claire and I went out. There was an arcade, and the path kept going past the park. I looked at the terminal earlier and thought there might be more open now.”

The worry remained, but her attention jumped to the possibility in his question. “With rides and stuff? They keep a carnival here?”

“I think so.”

Lizzy sat straighter. “I used to go to the summer carnival near my school. They had this ride that spun the seats while the whole platform turned, and my brother got sick every year but kept insisting it was because he ate too much.”

Lizzy’s hands moved as she spoke now, shaping the memory without permission. “There was a game where you threw darts at balloons, but the darts were terrible and the balloons were barely filled. My father said it was dishonest, then spent twenty dollars trying to prove he could beat it.”

“Did he?”

“He won me a stuffed frog,” she declared with old pride, then laughed again.

Van watched while she laughed. Lizzy couldn’t name his expression, but he had stopped checking the windows, the pizza, and the room. His attention stayed on her story, and the tension in his shoulders eased.

Van glanced toward the remains of the pizza. “We can go see if it’s open?”

She smoothed her skirt in place, smiling despite the heat in her face. “I’d like that.”

“Good.”

As they were leaving, Gino called out a farewell. Outside, the resort street had changed.

Night had settled completely over the false sky. Lamps glowed along the walkways. The air held a manufactured coolness that smelled faintly of lake water and flowering trees.

Van’s steps shortened automatically to accommodate Lizzy’s pace. She walked beside him, close enough that their sleeves nearly touched but didn’t.

The path curved past the little park Claire had described. Beyond it, dark water reflected the resort lights in broken lines. Wooden boards replaced stone beneath their feet.

At first Lizzy saw only the arcade sign and the closed shapes of small shops farther down.

Then the boardwalk turned. Color rose beyond the trees. A wheel of lights moved slowly against the night, red becoming gold becoming blue. Music carried over the water in a bright, distant pulse. Smaller lights spun beneath it, outlining rides, striped booths, and a high archway that had not existed when Claire came here.

Lizzy and Van stopped together to stare.

Lizzy’s hand fell away from her sleeve. Her fears—Fiona, the audience, and every other standard she couldn’t meet—stayed like a stone in her throat. But none of them could compete with the wheel turning over the lake.

Van looked at the lights, then at her. “Well,” he said. “That looks like fun. I haven’t been to one since I was a child.”

He took a full stride forward without looking back, like he was being drawn in by the colors and sounds. Then he stopped and half turned, reaching out to her in unconscious excitement. “Are you ready?”

Van’s unconscious gesture, his broad shoulders framed and backlit by the colors behind him, the open joy on his face—everything about the moment made the stone in her throat loosen and sink lower. Nothing disappeared, but the pressure no longer kept her from breathing. She nodded suddenly and reached out, taking his hand.

“Yeah, let’s go.”