Chapter 567 | You Bring Boy This Time?

Sunday arrived with a sky so blue it made the ocean look fake, and Naomi met me at the ferry terminal wearing a sundress I had never seen before.

It was pale yellow with thin straps and a skirt that stopped high on her thighs, and the cotton did a terrible job of pretending her body was a secret. The wind off the water kept pressing the fabric flat against her hips and then lifting the hem.

Her pink and black hair hung loose down her back to her waist, and her mother’s shell necklace sat in the dip of her collarbone. She had painted her toenails the same pink as her eyes, which I clocked from twenty feet away because I am a trained hunter with excellent situational awareness and zero shame.

“You’re staring at my legs, Jace Monroe.”

“I’m assessing the threat level of that dress.”

“It’s a sundress from a thrift store in Ventura.” She grabbed my hand and towed me toward the gangway with the strength of someone who used to haul fishing nets for fun. “Belle picked it out, and she told me it would make you stupid.”

“Belle should consult for the government.”

“Belle should mind her own business, but she won’t.” Naomi pulled me onto the upper deck and planted us at the rail near the bow, where the spray could reach us. Then she turned around and held up three fingers right in front of my nose. “I have rules for today, and you’re going to follow them.”

I waited while the ferry horn blew loud enough to rattle my teeth.

“Rule one says no gates,” Naomi announced. “Rule two says no death timer, and that includes you looking at the corner of your eye and doing math. Rule three says no rings, no resonance, and no talking about the thing in your chest.”

“You’ve been planning this speech.”

“I wrote it on a sticky note at two in the morning.” She lowered her hand and tucked it into the crook of my arm instead, her cheek against my shoulder. “Today you’re just a boy I like, and I’m just a girl who likes boba.”

The ferry pulled away from San Nicolas with a long groan of engines, and the island shrank behind us into a green lump with a fancy school stapled on top. I let myself enjoy the salt wind and the warm weight of Naomi against my side. For a little while my brain stopped trying to run seventeen tabs at once.

Naomi lasted almost four minutes.

“How deep did the kelp go?” She asked it to the horizon, her voice light and casual, which told me she had been holding the question since Friday. “When I dove under the alpha, I couldn’t see the bottom. The stalks just kept going down into the dark, and I kept thinking something bigger would come up underneath me.”

“That’s rule one, Love.”

Her mouth snapped shut so fast I heard her teeth click.

“That doesn’t count.” Her ears were turning red, and the color spread down her neck like a sunburn. “That was a question about plants.”

“It was a question about a gate full of plants that tried to eat you.”

“I hate you so much.” She buried her face in my shoulder and groaned into my shirt, and I felt her laugh shake through my arm. “Fine, I broke rule one, and you’re not allowed to tell Belle, because she’ll make a column.”

“She already has a column for you breaking your own rules.”

“Of course she does.” Naomi pulled back and glared up at me, and the glare collapsed into a grin halfway through. “Don’t answer the kelp question, though, because I don’t want to know anymore.”

I kissed her temple instead of answering, and she let me.

Auntie’s sat two blocks from the mainland terminal in a strip of shops that had given up on paint around the time I was born.

The sign over the door had a cartoon tapioca pearl wearing sunglasses, and the paint on the pearl had faded to the shade of an old bruise. Inside, the place was one long counter with six stools and a refrigerator full of fruit. A tiny woman with permed grey hair and an apron printed with cats stood behind the register, and she spotted Naomi before the door finished closing.

“Naomi!” The woman threw both arms up like a referee calling a touchdown. “You bring boy this time?”

“Hi, Auntie.” Naomi’s voice went soft and sweet in a register I had only heard her use with her mom on the phone. “This is Jace, and he’s very rude, but I’m keeping him.”

Auntie looked me up and down with eyes that had seen thirty years of college students try to pay with crumpled singles. Her gaze stopped on the bite mark peeking over my collar, and her eyebrows climbed toward her perm. Then she turned around and yelled something in Mandarin toward the back room so loud the cups on the shelf rattled.

A wiry old man in a fishing hat shuffled out holding a ladle, said one word back to her, and shuffled away again without looking at us.

“What did she say?” I whispered to Naomi.

“She told Uncle that I brought a boy who looks like trouble.” Naomi was fighting a smile so hard her lips were trembling. “Uncle said all boys look like trouble and to make the drinks.”

“Uncle seems wise.”

“Uncle is going to give you extra pearls because he feels bad for you,” Naomi predicted. “He does that for every boy Auntie yells about.”

“How many boys has Auntie yelled about?”

“You’re the first one I’ve brought in, Jace.” She bumped me with her hip and walked to the counter. “Don’t make it weird.”

Naomi ordered two brown sugar milk teas with extra pearls without consulting me, which was correct, because I have never in my life made a better beverage decision than Naomi Love. Auntie made the drinks herself with fast, angry little movements, and she shook the cup so hard I worried for its structural integrity. When she handed mine over, she grabbed my wrist with fingers like a bird’s foot.

“You are nice to her,” Auntie told me. It was not a question, and I recognized the tone because Misato used it for orders.

“I’m trying, ma’am.”

“Try harder.” She released me and turned to Naomi, and her whole face went soft. “You eat today? You look skinny.”

“I ate, Auntie, I promise.”

“You lie.” Auntie slid a plastic tub of fried chicken bites across the counter with a scowl. “Free, so take it and eat it, and bring him again only if he behaves.”