“ToMis-Matched!”
“Hear, hear!”
We clinked our glasses together and Carolina tapped hers against her camera, then we all drank it down. All in all, I felt likeI was flying. Man, if lonely, teenage Naomi could just know what was going to be in store for her, I wouldn’t have spent so many years feeling utterly hopeless.
“You really are amazing,” Rowan said in my ear, his large, cool palms resting on either side of my waist. “I’m so proud of you. I hope you know that.”
“I do. I really do. And I couldn’t have done it without you.”
“I’m not quite sure about that. You’re unstoppable. But I certainly didn’t mind helping along the way. Whatever you need, I want to be there for you.”
“And I want you there,” I said, pushing up onto my tiptoes. Rowan read my body language almost before I moved, leaning down so our lips could meet.
Once we parted, it was tempting to excuse ourselves back to our place, but there were snacks and conversation to be had, so we behaved ourselves and socialized with our friends.
“We’re starting to get numbers!” Xiánlü said suddenly, jumping to her feet and holding her tablet up into the air. “Broadcasting to the main mirror now since it hasn’t updated yet.”
“Probably a localization issue,” Chuck muttered, opening his own laptop. “I’ll check into it.”
“Later, later,” the siren insisted. “Look!”
There was a moment’s delay, but then the stagnant image on the screen did indeed change to one with all sorts of graphs and information that I couldn’t quite decode. Did I need glasses? I hoped not. I knew it was a possibility as a latent shifter, but considering that I couldn’t even keep track of my sunglasses, I wasn’t too keen on the idea.
“What does it mean?” I asked, crossing all my fingers that it was good news.
“We’ve got fifty original downloads already in the first half hour! And the CPM is the clickthrough on our targeted adcampaign.” She scrolled a bit on her tablet and her voicecoder let out a squeal. “We’ve got ten new profiles up!Ten!”
Oh.
My.
God.
Sure, fifty wasn’t that much and ten was even fewer, but we were only just starting and people were already joining the effort. And the more that did, the more connections were going to be made, the more community we were going to build from the ground up.
I could really just—wait, no, I was actually crying. The tears had spilled over and were now running down my face, uninhibited by anything because I wasn’t ashamed.
“Oh,darling,” Rowan sighed happily from beside me before using his thumb to wipe my tears. “You really are making a difference.”
“Weare,” I corrected, because that was the truth. Sure, it wasn’t like we were shifting the trajectory of the entire world, but that also wasn’t the scale we were working on. What mattered was that weweremaking a difference for more than we ever could with the mixers alone.
Of course, we would keep having those mixers, because this latent shifter needed todance, but now we could take solace in knowing that a supernatural misfit finding a community wouldn’t have to beByChanceafter all.
What else could a girl want?
TWENTY-THREE
NAOMI
Bigger, Badder, Better -Forever
“You really look lovely tonight,” Carolina said as I stepped out of my room and twirled.
“You think so?”
“Well, I always think so, because my best friend is a bad bitch, but now it’sespeciallyso.”
“You don’t look half bad yourself,” I said, eyeing the sharp suit she was wearing. Normally, Carolina was into more feminine clothing, but she’d paired the tailored jacket and pants with a sheer, iridescent top that clung to her slim frame and highlighted the bejeweled lingerie she was wearing underneath. She looked like she’d strutted out of a fashion magazine with her polished chignonatop her head.
