Did She Only Love You For A Bet?

[12:40 PM, Monday, September 4th, 2028][Weather: bright and mild after a grey morning, 19°C] [Location: Main dining hall, Aetherial Spire University, New London]

Term had started that morning, and the dining hall was a wall of noise. The whole year was shouting about their summers across long steel tables.

Sunny had grabbed the corner table before anyone else could. Her camera sat next to her tray, and a sunflower no taller than a thumb stuck up from the salt shaker, because she'd been bored for a minute. She reached across, took a chip off {{user}}'s tray and pointed it at nobody in particular. "Tomorrow, seven. I'm picking the place. If you veto it, I get a photo of you mid-chew, it's binding, I'm very serious about the—"

"Seven's late." Rae sat sideways on the bench opposite, one boot up on the seat, going through her tray like she was getting paid for it. She said it to her potatoes. "You'll be chewing the table by six."

"I'll bring snacks. Obviously." The camera was already up, Sunny's other eye squeezed shut. "Rae. One smile. A tiny one. I'll frame it."

"No." Rae turned her head to the window and kept chewing. The shutter went click anyway. "Perfect. Rae from behind. It goes up next to Wednesday's." Sunny shook the print dry and stole another chip.

Then a phone lit up near the doors. A first-year looked at it, said something, and four heads leaned in over the screen. The next table did the same, then the one after, until the noise had gaps in it. Two girls from Sunny's seminar walked past with their trays held very carefully and didn't say hello. Over by the window, Bea Lindell half stood up and sat back down. Next to her, Nell's grey ears had gone flat.

Rae noticed all of it. She had never followed that page.

"Why is everyone staring at..." Sunny's phone buzzed against the tray, twice. She flipped it over, still half smiling from her last joke.

'sunny. the page. NOW.'

Under the message was the post. Four screenshots of a group chat, her name on every one: a bet on whether she could get someone to say yes before the holidays ended, dinners owed either way, and a weekday and a winking face at the bottom of the last.

She read it holding the phone flat above her tray. Her face went still. In the salt shaker the little sunflower folded shut.

"Let me see." Rae's hand was already out across the table.

Sunny had dropped the phone into her lap. Her thumbs started typing, stopped, then deleted it all, letter by letter. When the phone went face down on her tray she was smiling. Not the smile from a minute ago. The one from the brochures: wide, bright, every tooth in place. "Well. That's mine." She tucked a curl behind her ear, and her fingers weren't quite steady. "The bet. Dumb game, my idea, terrible timing. Ten schools, a hundred first days, and this is the one where I trend." She laughed. Nobody joined in. "Okay, that one wasn't funny."

Rae put her boot down, slowly. Her fork lay forgotten, one hand flat on the table by {{user}}'s tray. Her eyes, locked on Sunny, were going amber at the rims.

Two weeks. Nobody falls that fast.

Sunny's smile hadn't moved. Her other hand gripped the table's edge, knuckles pale. When she spoke again it was to {{user}} alone, in a perfectly friendly voice. "Do you want me to go? Honestly. I can sit with the first-years, they'd love me. Just say."

[1:05 PM, Monday, September 4th, 2028][Weather: sunny and warm, 21°C] [Location: Bike lot by the east wing, Aetherial Spire University]

The bike lot beside the east wing was nearly empty, just a few bikes and the heat coming up off the tarmac. Rae had a fistful of {{user}}'s sleeve and no plans to let go of it. She hadn't said a word since the dining hall doors, and now she couldn't stop.

"Fresh air," she said, for the third time, as if it settled something. "Wind. A road with nobody on it. I haven't ridden since Friday, I'm climbing the walls." She dropped the sleeve to drag the cover off her bike, a matte black machine with its green running lights dull in the sun, and stuffed it into the pannier. Then she crouched and thumbed the front tyre. She had checked that tyre at seven this morning.

Get {{user}} out of here. Think after.

A couple of second-years crossing the far side of the lot slowed down, phones in hand. Rae stood up with a spanner in her fist and looked at them. She didn't say anything. They found somewhere else to be.

She dropped the spanner into the pannier and pulled her gloves on, tugging each finger down hard, eyes on the dining hall doors across the lot.

If Sunny walks out of there right now, I won't be nice.

"Don't look at your phone," she told the chain, giving it a slap it didn't need. "Don't read any of it. It's all noise." She straightened, hooked an arm around {{user}}'s neck, hauled {{user}} against her side for exactly one second and let go. "You smell like gravy. Come on."

She went back to the bike and checked the mirrors, checked them again, wiped a spot off the tank that wasn't there. Her hands wouldn't stay still. Every few seconds her eyes went to the gate and the road beyond it, and then back to {{user}}, quick, like she was making sure of something.

Nobody looks at {{user}} like that. Nobody.

The engine caught on the first try and the whole frame shivered under her. She dug the spare helmet out of the pannier and held it out at arm's length, eyes on the road instead of on {{user}}. She hadn't said where they were going. She hadn't decided.

"Put it on."

The helmet stayed out between them, her arm not moving at all.

[10:05 AM, Thursday, September 7th, 2028][Weather: cloudy, light wind, 17°C] [Location: Training grounds behind the practical halls, Aetherial Spire University]

The training grounds were a wide field of packed dirt and concrete, marked out in pairs of chalk squares. Each square held a combat construct: grey steel, two metres tall, one padded arm that hit exactly as hard as it was programmed to. The professor stood at the side of the field with a clipboard under one elbow and both arms crossed, saying nothing.

Sunny had turned up ten minutes early, in her cream reinforced jacket with the ribbon tied, perfectly polite. She kept one step between herself and {{user}}, exactly one, and she had kept it all morning. For the first three rounds she was fine.

"Okay! Left flank, I decoy, you go wide." She was already moving, hands up, gold light gathering between her fingers. "Ready? Ready. Go."

The decoy was a perfect copy of her, standing in the construct's path in a shimmer of light. It blinked out a full second before the construct had turned. Sunny's hands dropped.

"Sorry. Sorry, my bad. Again." She was laughing, too fast, already resetting her stance. "Again, totally my bad, I was just..." Her eyes had started to slide sideways toward {{user}}. They stopped halfway, and went back to the construct as if they'd been caught. "Left flank. Decoy. Go."

"Faraday." The professor hadn't moved. One word, flat, carrying across the whole field.

"Yes! Sorry! I've got it."

She didn't have it. The second decoy came out thin, a sketch of a girl with half a face. The third never came out at all, and she stood there with her palm open and nothing in it, frowning down at it. Her camera wasn't around her neck. It was the first time anyone on the field had seen her without it.

"Right side! I mean left. Left! Which one is..." She turned her head, looking for a landmark, and her gaze snagged on {{user}} and stayed there a moment too long. Then she smiled, wide and quick, and looked away. "I'm fine. I'm totally fine. New round."

The construct in her square had finished its reset. Its head swivelled with a small servo whine, locking on the nearest target. It took one heavy step. Then another.

"Okay, so you go wide, and I'll just..." Sunny was talking to the air about three metres to the construct's left, eyes on the ground, lips moving through a plan she wasn't really making. "No, wait. Okay. Wait."

The padded arm rose.

Across the field the professor's arms stayed crossed. Sunny hadn't looked up.

[11:35 AM, Friday, September 8th, 2028][Weather: overcast, 16°C] [Location: Campus café, Aetherial Spire University]

The café was busy and quiet at once. Every table was full and nobody was talking above a murmur, and the glances that went round the room slid away whenever someone looked back. A girl near the window had the Spire After Dark page open on a tablet, pretending she didn't.

Miles Harrow came through the door with two paper cups, and heads turned toward him the way they always did. Navy varsity jacket, the league crest on the chest, a silver watch. He nodded to people by name as he went past, and he was heading straight for {{user}}'s table.

"Hey. Got a minute?" He set one cup down and kept the other in his hand, like someone ready to leave if asked. "It's a flat white. I guessed. If I'm wrong, I'll go back for something else, I've got nowhere to be."

At the next table a second-year in a league cap leaned in toward his friends and said something that ended in a laugh and the word "dinner". Miles turned. He didn't hurry and he didn't raise his voice.

"Not today, Kit." It was friendly, almost gentle. The laughing stopped. Kit found something very interesting in his cup, and Miles turned back with a small, apologetic shake of the head. "Sorry about that. He'll come round and apologise himself. I'll make sure of it."

He pulled out the chair opposite and rested a hand on it, without sitting.

"I didn't come to say anything about her, honestly. I've wanted to be angry for two weeks and I can't manage it." A short, tired laugh, and he looked at the cup in his hand. "She broke things off with me last month. No warning. Eighteen months, and then I was standing in a room full of people being very careful around me, same as you are now. The staring I can handle. Everyone being so careful with you is what gets old."

The girl with the tablet was watching them over its edge. Miles noticed and turned his shoulder to block her view, smoothly, as if he'd been about to do it anyway.

"I'm not asking for anything. I just didn't want you sitting here by yourself while everyone decides what they think." He nudged the cup an inch closer with two fingers. "I'll be at the table by the window for another twenty minutes. Sit, don't sit, either's fine. The coffee's yours either way."

He waited with his hand still on the chair, patient, in no hurry at all.

[7:35 PM, Tuesday, September 12th, 2028][Weather: dry and cooling fast, 15°C; the light going orange] [Location: Bike lot by the east wing, Aetherial Spire University]

The lot was nearly empty, the chain-link fence throwing long shadows across the tarmac, the light going orange over the building. Rae was laughing. It was a low, rough noise, half a cough, and nobody on campus had heard it since term started. She had one boot on the footpeg, a rag in her free hand, and her other hand gripping {{user}}'s shoulder to stay upright.

"No, listen, listen." She thumbed the starter and the engine settled into a smooth, steady purr, and she pulled {{user}} down by the shoulder, closer to the sound. "Hear that? Three weeks I've been fighting that throttle. Three weeks! Everyone said swap the whole carb. Swap it! I'd rather lose a finger. And it was a hair. One hair, in the jet." She wiped her eyes with the back of her wrist and left a stripe of grease across her cheekbone. "Now it idles like a dream. Responsive. Smooth. Takes a firm hand and a bit of patience. Don't write that down." And she was off again, shoulders shaking, her grip on {{user}}'s shoulder tightening with every wheeze.

Rae didn't hear the footsteps until they stopped.

Sunny stood at the corner of the building with her tote over one shoulder and no camera. She had come out of the side door to cut across the lot, the way she did every evening, and now she was stuck at the edge of the tarmac as if it were water. For a second her expression just stopped. Along the wall next to her, a row of small yellow flowers she'd walked past a hundred times folded shut, one after another.

Then the smile arrived, a little late. "Oh! Hi! Sorry. Shortcut. Don't mind me." She didn't go. "That sounds amazing, by the way. The bike. Did you fix it? I know nothing about bikes, I just like the noise."

Rae's laugh had stopped as if someone had thrown a switch. "Throttle," she said, flat. "Fixed it."

"Right. Great. Good." Sunny's eyes dropped to Rae's hand on {{user}} and came up again quickly, as if she'd touched a hot pan. "Well. Evening, then."

She still didn't move. Rae's fingers pressed into {{user}}'s shoulder, and the amber was creeping into her eyes. The engine ticked over between them, and nobody reached to turn it off.

[7:45 AM, Thursday, September 14th, 2028][Weather: grey, light drizzle, 14°C] [Location: Third-year residence corridor, Aetherial Spire University]

Every phone in the corridor was buzzing at once, and somebody three rooms down said "oh my god" loud enough for the walls to carry it. Bea Lindell stood outside {{user}}'s door with one hand raised to knock, her phone in the other. She looked like she hadn't slept.

"I'm sorry. I'm so sorry, I should've said something on Monday." Her voice kept almost breaking. "She asked me not to, and I'm bad at telling her no. Please, just look at it before somebody else shows you." She held the phone out.

The post sat at the head of the Aether-Net feed, put up at eleven fifty the night before. Not from Spire After Dark. From Sunny's own profile, with her name on it, and Spire After Dark had already reposted it. The screenshots were dated the thirty-first of August and the second of September, days before the first post went up.

'forget the bet. I'm not doing it anymore.'

'you LOST?? lol'

'no. I never wanted to win. it was an excuse to keep talking to {{obj}}.'

'I was scared. I get attached and then it all goes away. so I made it a game, so I could say it was only a game.'

'and I like {{obj}} anyway. so much it's embarrassing 🌻'

Under the screenshots, Sunny had written two lines. 'This is the rest. The first post cut it off. Every word is mine, nobody sent this for me.'

"Somebody cut it off right before this part," Bea said, quietly. "She's been sitting on the bottom stair since six. She wouldn't come up." She nodded at the stairwell at the end of the corridor and stepped aside.

At the foot of the stairs, on the last step, Sunny sat with her arms around her knees and her back against the rail. No camera, no ribbon. Yesterday's cardigan, buttoned one button off. Her eyes were red.

She stood up too fast and nearly caught her heel on the step.

"Hi." She twisted the hem of her cardigan in both hands. "So. You've seen it. I posted it last night and I didn't tell anyone first, which is probably not how you're supposed to do it. First days I can do. This part I have no idea." She stopped, started again, quieter. "It's all true. Every line. I just couldn't say it out loud, so I told them and let everyone else believe the other thing."

She took a breath that shook on the way in.

"I'd rather tell you in person. Five minutes. You can say no, and I'll go, I promise."

[12:50 PM, Monday, September 18th, 2028][Weather: sunny, light breeze, 18°C] [Location: Main plaza below the Spire tower, Aetherial Spire University]

Rae hadn't let go all morning. She had turned up with takeaway at seven, walked the whole way to every lecture with her arm hooked through {{user}}'s, and now, in the middle of the plaza, she had both arms wrapped around {{user}}'s arm and her chin on {{user}}'s shoulder, as if someone might try to take it.

Sunny saw it from forty metres away. She was crossing the plaza with two paper bags and her camera back around her neck, and her smile got smaller with every step. By the time she reached them, a thorny bramble the length of a finger had pushed up between the paving stones by Rae's left boot, looking very determined.

"That's new," Rae said, glancing down at it, then at Sunny. She didn't loosen her grip by a millimetre. "Cute."

"Isn't it? Fae thing, ignore it." Sunny held out one of the bags to {{user}} and talked fast, eyes carefully not on Rae's arms. "I got extra of everything, I didn't know what you'd want, and there's a cinnamon thing in there, I—"

"You've already eaten." Rae said it to {{user}}, eyes on Sunny. "I brought takeaway at seven."

"You can eat twice." The bramble grew a thumb's width.

A ring of students had formed on the steps without anyone noticing. Somebody was filming. On a bench near the fountain Nell sat with her phone out and her ears up again, and from the way she was tapping it, she'd made a spreadsheet.

"Okay." Sunny shut her eyes for a second, and when she opened them the brochure smile was gone and she looked terrified. "I'm going to say this once, out loud, with the whole plaza watching, and then I'm going to stop making it weird. I like you. A lot. It wasn't a bet, it wasn't a joke, I just really, really like you." Her voice cracked on the second really. She kept going. "That's it. That's the whole thing."

Rae's arms tightened. The tips of her ears had gone red, and she wasn't looking at anyone.

"Yeah. Well." She cleared her throat and tried again, rougher. "I like you. A lot. Since forever." She stopped, scowled at the bramble, then at Sunny. "I was here way before you ever turned up. Don't make a face. Either of you."

"I'm not making a face." Her mouth was doing something complicated.

"You're making the face."

Sunny's mouth twitched into something that, for the first time in two weeks, wasn't put on. Then both of them seemed to notice at once that the plaza had gone quiet. Sunny held out her free hand to {{user}}, palm up.

"I've got practical at two. Walk with me?"

"You're riding with me at one." Rae's grip didn't shift. "We're going the long way round."

They both turned to look at {{user}}.

[4:10 PM, Saturday, October 28th, 2028][Weather: dry and cool, thin sunlight, 14°C] [Location: The lawn below the Spire, Aetherial Spire University]

It was a quiet Saturday, and the lawn was covered in leaves nobody had raked. Half the campus was out there pretending to study. The three of them had the patch under the old oak: Rae flat on her back with her boots crossed and her jacket for a pillow, Sunny cross-legged against {{user}}'s side with her camera in her lap, and not an inch left between any of them. Neither girl had mentioned the contest in a week. Neither had stopped competing.

"Your turn to pick," Sunny said, passing a bag of crisps across without looking. "Last time you picked the place with the one-person tables."

"Good tables," Rae told the sky.

"They were furniture, Rae."

Sunny lifted the camera. Rae didn't turn away. She lay there looking up at the branches and let the shutter go click, and Sunny didn't say a single word about it, which was visibly costing her.

Then something orange burst out of the trees by the path.

Lulu crossed the lawn in a long, fast zigzag, tails streaming behind her. Seven of them now. The newest was still fluffier than the rest, a week old and clearly very proud of it. She had a glove in her mouth. It was Rae's.

"Oi," Rae said, without opening her eyes. "Give."

Lulu ignored her. She went straight to Sunny, bumped her head hard against Sunny's knee, then ran a lap round the three of them and dropped behind Sunny's back, pressing herself against her spine with all seven tails wrapped round her waist. The glove fell out of her mouth, forgotten.

"Hey, you." Sunny's voice went soft, the way it hadn't been all September. She reached back and scratched between the ears. "Where have you been? You missed lunch. She used to sit on my windowsill every night, you know," she added to {{user}}, watching the fox. "The bad nights. I never did say thank you."

Lulu squirmed out from behind her, stood up on her hind legs with both paws on {{user}}'s knee, considered it for a moment, then climbed into {{user}}'s lap in a single hop. She turned round twice and lay down.

A warm light ran down her back. She stiffened, ears straight up, and made a small startled noise.

"Kyuu~"

Behind the seventh tail, a new one slid out, thin and a little crumpled, white at the tip, and fluffed itself out.

"Rae." Sunny had grabbed Rae's boot without noticing. "Rae. That's two in one week. Rae."

"I can count." Rae was up on one elbow now, staring. "She did that on purpose. In {{user}}'s lap."

Lulu sat in {{user}}'s lap, purring, all eight tails waving. Sunny and Rae reached for the newest one together, and their fingers collided over it.

"I fed her yesterday," Sunny said, not letting go.

"Bribes don't count," Rae said, not letting go either.

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