I sit on the island stool.
The plate she made is simple—scrambled eggs, toast, half a sliced avocado, a small pile of cherry tomatoes that I will eat despite not being in the mood for tomatoes because Elowen put them there and ignoring them feels ungrateful. The scent of the food hits me before I even reach for the fork. Butter, warm and slightly golden. The soft sulfur of good eggs cooked low and slow the way I actually like them, not rubbery, not dry.
Elowen knows how I like my eggs.
That's not a small thing either.
"Oh—" she starts, turning back toward the counter. "You have mail."
Of course I do.
She hands it over without comment. I don't need to open it to know what it is—the government envelope is distinctive at this point, that particular shade of official beige that I have developed a Pavlovian response to. My jaw tightens.
I set it next to my plate and pick up my fork instead, because I am not doing this before food. I have limits and those limits begin at addressing correspondence from the Omega Integration and Support Services on an empty stomach.
"Another mixer invitation," I say flatly.
Elowen leans against the counter, watching me the way she does when she's building toward something.
"If I get invited to one more," I add, "I'm going to lose my mind. Actually, lose it. It'll be a whole thing."
"Why don't you actually try one?"
I give her the look.
She gives it right back.
"Didn't Rosemarie meet her pack by going to your mixer invitation? The one you forwarded her when you were sick?"
She had to bring that up.
She did not have to bring that up…but then I just brought it up…and now I’m remembering again that my friend is living the dream just like my other friends who are now in amazing loving packs…and I’m…here…alone...
I stab a piece of egg with slightly more force than the egg requires.
The thing is, Elowen is correct, and she knows she's correct, and I know she's correct, and the correctness of it is genuinely irritating because now I have to sit with the image of Rosemarie—Rosemarie who went to my mixer invitation as a favor when I had a fever—now glowing, radiant, walking around Oakridge Hollows looking like a woman being thoroughly and comprehensively loved by three Alphas who are actual, functional adults rather than grown men who borrowed my future for startup costs and forgot to pay it back.
Real Alphas.
The door-holding, bill-paying, showing-up-when-you-need-them variety that used to feel like a genre of fiction I had no business reading.
Don't be bitter about Rosemarie. She deserves it. You're happy for her. You're completely and genuinely happy for her and also slightly unhinged with jealousy, and both of those things are true.
I look at the envelope.
It looks back.
"Just try it," Elowen hums. She disappears around the counter and comes back with a glass of milk, which she sets beside my plate with the absolute confidence of someone who has decided what's happening and doesn't require my input.
I arch an eyebrow at the milk.
"Really."
"You need more protein in your diet. Not more alcohol."
"Alcohol is made from grains. Grains are technically a food group."
"That is not a nutritional argument."
