Ryan woke up at 7:43 AM and checked his balance before he was fully conscious.
> Current Balance: $27,456.33
He stared at it.
Put the phone down.
Picked it back up and stared at it again.
Twenty-seven thousand dollars. In two weeks. In his bank account, his actual bank account, the sa one that had shown asely change the morning after the worst night of his life.
He lay there for a mont doing the math he already knew, just because it still felt surreal enough to need confirming. Sophie’s first week salary had processed and doubled the next morning.
He’d used that return to pay Danny and Mike simultaneously, both of which doubled. He’d paid Liam and Iralis from those returns. Each paynt coming back twice what he’d put in, and with all five on weekly contracts the cycle had compounded into sothing that made his head swim slightly if he thought about it too directly.
Twelve thousand five hundred dollars in returns. Every week. Just from paying his own team.
He got up and stood at the window for a mont, the city outside doing its usual indifferent thing, and thought about the version of himself sitting on that park bench with a dead-end bank balance and nowhere to go.
That guy would not believe this. Not even close.
---
He did his morning routine without rushing — shower, coffee, the eggs he’d started making properly since he could afford the good ones.
He’d developed a habit of the mornings lately, treating them as the one quiet part of the day before everything else started moving.
The team had already been sending ssages since 8 AM. Danny had dropped three voice notes about backend architecture in the team chat before most people had eaten breakfast.
Mike had responded to all three with variations of ’relax man it’s early.’ Iralis had responded with a detailed written reply to each one, which had caused Danny to send a thumbs up and Mike to send a gif Ryan didn’t fully understand.
He turned the TV on mostly for background noise while he ate, cycling through channels without much intention.
He landed on basketball.
He wasn’t even looking at the screen fully when the cara cut to the court and he caught the logo on the uniform.
The Pistons.
He stopped chewing.
Looked at the TV properly.
Looked at his phone on the table.
Put his fork down and picked up the phone.
He scrolled to her na — Zara, saved from the gallery, sitting unused in his contacts for two weeks like a bill he kept aning to deal with. He’d thought about calling. Several tis actually. He’d talked himself out of it each ti on the basis that he was busy, which was true, but wasn’t entirely the reason.
He pressed call before he could talk himself out of it again.
It rang twice.
"Zara speaking. Who’s this?"
Her voice was unhurried, professional, the default setting of soone whose phone rang with unknown numbers regularly enough that warmth was sothing earned rather than given automatically.
"It’s Ryan," he said. "From the gallery."
A silence followed that lasted just long enough for him to feel it.
"The guy with the—" he started.
"Cheap shirt." Her voice changed slightly, sothing unlocking in it. "Yeah. I rember you Ryan." A pause. "I thought you’d never call actually."
Ryan leaned back in his chair. On the TV, the Pistons were doing sothing that appeared to be working, which felt statistically improbable. "I wanted to. I’ve had a lot going on this past week, and I guess I lost track of ti. But then I turned the TV on this morning and you won’t believe who’s playing."
He could hear the shift in her breath, almost a smile. "The Pistons?"
"The bloody Pistons."
She laughed — quiet, genuine, the sa laugh from the gallery barstool that had made his heart do sothing inconvenient.
"And it made think of you," Ryan said.
A beat.
"It did?" Softer this ti. Less performance in it.
"Yeah," he said. "It did."
The line went quiet for a mont. Not awkward — more like both of them arriving at the sa pause from different directions and neither quite sure who should break it.
Ryan stood up and went to the kitchen. He’d been aning to make a sandwich since before he called and his body apparently had decided now was the ti regardless of what his mouth was doing.
"So," he said, pulling bread from the counter. "How well do you know your shirts?"
She laughed again, a little brighter this ti. "Better than you, I’d hope."
"Good." He opened the fridge. "Because I’m actually planning to go shopping tomorrow evening. And I’d be honored to have your professional insight."
"My professional insight," she repeated.
"I figure if anyone can stop buying another cheap shirt it’s you."
There was a pause on her end. Ryan found the turkey, found the mustard, began constructing the sandwich with the phone wedged between his ear and shoulder.
"Believe it or not," Zara said, "my fashion insight is actually quite difficult to get."
"I believe it completely," Ryan said. And he did — he’d just asked a model with thirteen million followers to help him go shopping on a Tuesday and was fully prepared to be told no in a polite but final way.
"However." Another pause. "I’d be doing the fashion world a genuine disservice if I let you keep walking around in horrendous shirts."
Ryan smiled at the counter. "Is that a yes, Zara?"
She was quiet a mont. He could almost feel her deciding.
"It’s a maybe."
"I’ll take a maybe."
"If I send you an address tomorrow," she said, "then co pick up."
"Then I hope you send one."
A small silence. Comfortable, sohow. The kind that didn’t need filling.
"Bye Ryan," she said. "I’ve got a Pistons ga to watch."
"Oh, you can’t just—"
The line went dead.
Ryan stood in his kitchen holding his phone and a half-assembled sandwich, the Pistons ga still audible from the living room, a wide stupid smile on his face that he was glad nobody was there to see.
He stood there a mont longer than necessary.
Then he finished making the sandwich, went back to the couch, and watched the Pistons ga with more investnt than he’d watched any basketball in years, for reasons that had nothing to do with basketball.
They lost by eleven points.
He texted nothing. Said nothing. Just sat with the loss on behalf of a woman who hadn’t texted an address yet and might not.
His phone buzzed at 10:53 PM.
A contact. An address on the Upper East Side. No ssage attached.
Just the address.
Ryan looked at it for a long mont.
Then he set his phone face down on the couch cushion and smiled at the ceiling.
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