My fingers stop on the keyboard. The urge to bare my teeth prickles at the base of my skull, an Alpha instinct that I've spent my whole life suppressing in moments like this. Instead, I close my laptop, pick up my coffee, and take a slow sip, purposefully slurping as loud as I can to annoy the guy.
"The auction was a fundraiser, Chad. People go home after fundraisers. That's how events work."
"Right." He nods, but his eyes move between me and the field where the twins are stretching. "Just seems like you've been in a better mood lately. Happier. More... distracted."
"My mood isn't your business."
"Everything about you is my business, Iris. It's been my business for over a year."
The sentence hangs between us. He says it like it's romantic. Like persistence is the same thing as devotion. Like wantingsomeone who has told you no a billion times makes you dedicated rather than delusional. Sometimes, I wish my father would put a stop to shit like this. I know he sees it but I’ve also told him more times than I can count that I can handle myself.
If I speak up now, it’ll mean any connection with the Vark twins will be scrutinized.
"Your water break is almost over," I tell him, turning my attention back to my laptop.
He lingers for a beat, before pushing off the bleacher and jogging back to the field. I wait until he's out of range to let out a sigh. Fuck. I had hoped the lack of Chad comments meant that he took a defeat after the auction. It seems he’s just been biding his time. Which is worse because while Chad is annoying, he’s also unpredictable.
After practice, my father catches me in the hallway outside his office. He's got his playbook under one arm and a look on his face that means he's noticed something and he's deciding how directly to address it.
"You seem good," he says, falling into step beside me.
"I am good."
"Happier than usual. Lighter." He glances at me sideways. "Any particular reason?"
"Can't a person just be in a good mood?"
"A person can. My daughter, specifically, is usually in a good mood for a reason." He holds the door open for me as we step outside. "You'd tell me if something was going on?"
"Of course."
I hate myself a little for how easy the lie is. My father has been the only constant in my life since I was twelve years old, since the morning he sat me down at the kitchen table and told me that my mother wasn't going to get better. He deserves honesty. He deserves to know that his daughter has been sneaking twofootball players into her apartment for the past week and that she's happier than she's been in years because of it.
But telling him means making it real in a way I'm not ready for. It means watching his face change, watching him do the math between his daughter and two of his players, watching the coach and the father collide.
"I'd tell you," I repeat, and he nods once and lets it go. But his eyes hold mine for a beat longer before he turns toward the parking lot.
That night, the nest feels different with just me in it. I settle against the pillows with my phone balanced on my stomach, the group chat already buzzing. Milo named it "Three's Company (Derogatory)" against both Quentin's and my objections, and nobody has been able to agree on a replacement since.
Milo sends a voice memo of himself attempting to pronounce "sternocleidomastoid." He gets about halfway through before it devolves into syllables that don't belong to any language. Quentin responds with a voice memo of just silence, ten full seconds of nothing, which Milo immediately interprets as "a powerful artistic statement."
My stomach hurts from laughing, my body curled around a pillow, and somewhere between Milo's fourth attempt and Quentin's second silent response, the thought catches up to me.
This is the part I wasn't prepared for. Not the sneaking around or the risk. The part where I'm lying in my nest at the end of the day, laughing until my ribs ache, and I realize I'm not performing. Just texting two people who know about the nest and the math and the sandals, who saw all of it and stayed anyway.
I twist around to put the phone down, ready to settle in when there’s a knock on the door. “No one should be coming through,” I mumble, checking my phone. There’s no new messages but when a second knock hits my ears, I pad to the front door.
The peephole shows both Vark twins standing in my hallway. Milo is holding a bag of takeout, his hair still damp from a shower. Quentin is holding a large travel mug, a tea tag dangling over the side, steam curling from the lid. They look at each other when I open the door, then back at me.
"We didn't coordinate this," Milo says, gesturing between the takeout and the tea. "I swear."
"We absolutely coordinated this," Quentin says.
A grin pulls across my face as I step aside to let them in.
quentin
Lastnightwastakeoutin the nest, Milo arguing with Iris about whether pineapple belongs on pizza while I ate my food in peace and let them wear each other out. We fell asleep watching something on her laptop that none of us made it to the end of, and I woke up at six with Iris's head on my shoulder and Milo's foot in my face, which is a sentence I never thought I'd think and one I'm choosing not to unpack.
