Light. Brief. The way Elowen touches things when she's making a point rather than seeking a reaction.
I look up.
She's watching me in the mirror with the expression she gets when she's been watching me and waiting to say something and has finally decided the moment is right. Slightly pouty—not sad,just soft. The face of someone who cares about you more than you've asked them to.
"Listen," she says quietly. "Let's try this. One last shot—this masquerade, tonight, everything we've prepared. And if it doesn't work." She pauses. "Will you please just let me give you the money? So you can stop carrying this?"
"Elowen—"
"I know what you're going to say."
"Then you know the answer."
"Mila."
I shake my head, slow and certain, the way I do when I've made up my mind before the conversation started. "I can't ask you for that kind of money. I can't."
"You're not asking. I'm offering. There's a difference."
"It doesn't feel different from where I'm sitting."
Elowen is quiet for a moment. The diffuser hums. Outside her bathroom window the morning has committed to being bright, which feels slightly aggressive given the week I've had, and the light falls across the counter and the products and her hands resting at the edge of the sink and all of it looks very ordinary and very real.
"You're not sleeping," she says, and it comes out gentle rather than accusatory—a list of facts delivered with care rather than judgment. "You're barely eating. I've watched you get smaller this month and pretend I haven't noticed because I know how you get when people notice. You're working doubles on three hours and running on whatever you can grab between shifts, and every morning those calls come, and you just—keep going."
Stop.
Don't let her finish that sentence or something in your face will do something.
"You're my best friend," Elowen says. Simple. Like the sentence doesn't need anything attached to it. "The only onewho's stuck around because she actually likes my company and has never once made me feel like a trust fund with a face. Do you understand how rare that is? Do you have any idea?"
I open my mouth.
Close it.
"Our friendship was never built on the fact that you're well off," I say. "And I need it to stay that way. I need it to never become about that. Because the moment I take money from you—even if you mean it completely, even if there are no strings—something changes. In my head, if not yours."
Elowen holds my gaze.
"I know," she says.
"I'm not saying no because I don't trust you."
"I know that too."
Her hand finds my shoulder again. Stays this time, a real weight, the kind that says I'm not going anywhere and I'm not asking you to be different than you are. She squeezes once, the way Elowen does everything when it matters—with purpose and without fanfare.
"This is your best shot," she says. "The masquerade, tonight. I genuinely believe that. But after—" her grip tightens slightly "—you're relying on your best friend. Whether you like it or not. Whether it's money or logistics or just someone to sit with you while the collectors call, you're not doing the next part alone. Do you hear me?"
I look at her in the mirror.
She means every syllable. She's looking back at me with the particular steadiness of a person who has decided something and is not interested in being argued out of it.
We both know the debt collectors aren't just callers. We both know what that world looks like when it escalates—the quiet mentions of visits, the language that shifts from administrative to something with edges. She's been watching the news thesame as me. She knows what happens to Omegas who fall far enough behind with the wrong people.
She's scared.
For me.
