Chapter 70: Ordinary Day
Garrett walked home slower than usual, Saturday sitting at the edge of his thoughts the whole way.
The Vane mansion. He didn’t know really what that meant yet, not in any concrete way, but the name alone carried weight enough to make the invitation feel bigger than a simple dinner with Emiliana. His mind drifted, almost against his will, toward her father.
Alexander Vane.
Enough of the Vane name had reached him by now, through Emiliana, through Brian, through the sheer weight it seemed to carry every time it came up, that he understood meeting Alexander in person probably wasn’t going to be comfortable.
He wondered what he would be like in person, whether the man would recognize his surname. Whether that recognition would come with anything attached to it, good or bad. He turned it over for a block or two, then let it go.
He wasn’t going to ask Emiliana to smooth the path for him. Wasn’t going to walk into her father’s house already looking for reassurance, already needing someone else to prepare the ground before he got there. If Alexander Vane had a problem with him, Garrett would deal with that when it actually became a problem, not before.
Nervous, maybe, somewhere underneath. Not that anyone looking at him would be able to tell.
By the time he reached his building, the thought had settled into the background, and he let himself back into the apartment, dropping his bag by the door out of habit.
The place looked nothing like it had a few months ago. Clean counters, actual furniture instead of whatever he’d managed to scrounge together, the quiet order of somewhere that had someone actually looking after it now. He stood there for a second, taking that in the way he still occasionally did, before heading toward the bedroom to change.
Pulling a shirt from the drawer, he noticed the collar had gone soft and slightly grey at the edges, the kind of wear that came from too many washes without enough care between them. He checked a couple of others. Same story. A pair of jeans he liked had a small stain near the knee he’d never properly dealt with. None of it looked terrible, exactly, but none of it looked particularly good either, and it lined up with the same thought that had crossed his mind that morning standing in front of his wardrobe.
He wasn’t going to make a production out of it. Just gathered up what actually needed washing, more than he expected once he started sorting through it, and decided to take it down to the laundromat a few streets over rather than let it keep piling up.
The place was quiet when he got there, a couple of machines running, someone folding towels near the back. Garrett loaded his in, paid, and waited through the cycle without much to do beyond scrolling through his phone and half-watching the muted television bolted to the wall in the corner.
It wasn’t a big moment. Just a Tuesday errand, the kind of small maintenance most people handled without thinking twice. But there was something underneath it Garrett noticed anyway, some quiet, unspoken sense that keeping himself put together properly mattered more now than it used to, that the version of him walking into Emiliana’s world on Saturday needed to actually look like someone who belonged there.
He gathered the clean clothes once they were done, folded roughly on the walk back, and let himself back into the apartment.
He’d barely put the laundry away when a knock came at the door.
Freya, unsurprisingly, leaning against the frame when he opened it, arms crossed, an easy curiosity written across her face.
“Freya”
“Hiii”
“How’re you”
“Im living.So,” she said, without much preamble. “Sunday evening. You left looking like you were headed somewhere important, came back way later than expected, and you’ve been weird ever since. What happened?”
Garrett kept his expression even. “Nothing serious. Had something to take care of.”
Freya studied him, clearly not buying the vagueness of it, though she didn’t push past the surface of it either. “Uh huh.”
“It’s handled,” he added, which wasn’t strictly a lie, though it wasn’t the whole truth either.
She let it sit there a beat longer, then shrugged, apparently deciding this wasn’t the hill to fight on tonight. “Fine. Keep your secrets.”
Garrett moved the conversation along before she could circle back to it. “How’ve you been? Anyone bothering you lately?”
“Nope. Boring week, actually. Which, considering everything else going on lately, I’ll take.” She tilted her head, studying him properly now. “You, though. New haircut, suddenly doing laundry like a functioning adult. Should I be worried you’re turning into someone responsible?”
“Bit late for that concern.”
“Fair point.” She grinned, stepping further into the flat, the earlier tension from her first question already dissolving into something lighter. “I liked the haircut, by the way. In case that wasn’t obvious last night.”
“I know.”
“You could sound a little more pleased about the compliment.”
“I’m thrilled. Internally.”
She laughed at that, easy and warm, closing what little distance remained between them until she was close enough that the conversation stopped needing words for a moment. She leaned up and kissed him, brief, soft, comfortable in a way that had nothing rushed or uncertain left in it anymore.
Garrett caught her hands afterward, holding them loosely between them as they kept talking, the conversation drifting into nothing in particular, comfortable silences threaded between whatever small things either of them brought up.
Eventually, Garrett noticed the time, later than either of them had probably meant to let it get.
“We’ve got school tomorrow,” he said. “Should probably sleep at some point.”
“Look at you, being responsible again.” Freya squeezed his hands once before letting go, already heading toward the door. “Fine. I’ll let you rest, old man.”
“I’m not that much older than you.”
“Feels like it sometimes.” She grinned back at him from the doorway. “Night, Garrett.”
“Night.”
She slipped out, and Garrett shut the door behind her, the flat settling back into its usual quiet.
He moved through the last of his evening routine without much thought, the laundry put away properly now, the flat tidy, everything about tonight ordinary in a way that felt almost deliberate against everything else circling his life lately.
Saturday sat somewhere in the back of his mind as he finally climbed into bed, the Vane mansion, Her Father, whatever waited for him inside that world once he actually stepped into it.
But tonight, at least, he was still standing in his own.
Garrett slept deeply that night, the kind of sleep that came easily after a long day with too many things occupying his head.
Next morning he was up, no ceremony just the boring feeling of the usual routine before school.
He showered, brushed his teeth, fixed his hair, and pulled on a clean outfit before checking himself briefly in the mirror. The haircut still looked good. That was becoming a pleasant discovery.
He grabbed his bag, checked that he had everything he needed, and left the apartment. The morning air was cool enough to wake him properly as he made his way toward university, falling into the familiar rhythm of the walk he’d made countless times before. Nothing about the morning suggested it would be any different from the others, and Garrett had no reason to expect otherwise as he crossed through the university gates and headed toward his first class.