Chapter 28: Is a planned hangout called a Date?

Chapter 28: Chapter 28: Is a planned hangout called a Date?

Garrett opened the message.

JACEY: hey,can we talk? need to see you x.

He didn’t reply.

It sat there on the screen, a few words dressed up as urgency, and he read it a second time like rereading it might change what it actually meant.

She’d been the one to end it. Blunt text, no warning, just long enough as the only explanation he’d ever gotten. That wasn’t the kind of thing you forgot just because a few weeks had passed and his life had started looking less like an asshole.

So why now?

He ran through a few options without much enthusiasm for any of them. Guilt, maybe. The kind that showed up late, once someone heard you were doing better. Something practical, an item left at his old flat, a mutual friend’s birthday neither of them wanted to be the one to avoid. Or nothing at all. People reached out for no real reason sometimes, just because a name crossed their mind on a random Saturday.

He didn’t spiral over which one it was. A few weeks ago he might have. Turned it over for an hour, read old texts, built a version of events that made sense of the silence. Now it was just a message. Slightly annoying.

He put the phone face-down on the coffee tableand went back to what he’d been doing, which was mostly nothing. The frame still sat slightly crooked on the wall, a mug of tea going lukewarm beside his phone.

He’d got about as far as deciding the frame probably needed moving half an inch to the left when the screen lit up gold beside him.

[SYSTEM UPDATE]

[EROS CASHBACK: ACCOUNT SUMMARY]

Garrett sat up a little straighter.

[Current Balance: £3,875.79]

[Lifetime Earnings: £10,000]

[Status: Active]

He stared at the number for a second, then let out a short breath that was almost a laugh.

Ten grand gotten from providing genuine value for his neighbor who he hadn’t seen since then.

"Not bad"

[NOT BAD. CONSIDERING YOU STARTED WITH VERY LITTLE AND A PERSONALITY YOUR NEIGHBOURS DESCRIBED AS "FINE, I GUESS"]

"That wasn’t a real quote," Garrett muttered.

[IT’S CLOSE ENOUGH. WOULD TOU LIKE THE FLATTERING VERSION INSTEAD?]

"Go on."

[NO. YOU’LL GET COMPLACENT]

He shook his head, but he was smiling. It still didn’t feel entirely real, the number sitting there like it belonged to someone else’s life.

[PROGRESSION: EMILIANA VANE]

[PROGRESSION REQUIREMENTS Completed: 4/5]

Garrett blinked at that.

He read it again, waiting for the numbers to rearrange themselves into something that made more sense.

"One left? That can’t be right."

[IT’S RIGHT. YOU JUST WEREN’T PAYING ATTENTION]

He sat with that for a second, running back over everything. The changes in his life. The time he’d spent with Emiliana. The things that had happened without him realizing they were moving him closer to the objective.

It didn’t feel like he’d been two-thirds of the way through anything.

It felt like he’d just been living his life and occasionally getting a notification for it.

[YOU MIGHT BE CLOSER THAN YOU THINK.]

Garrett frowned at the screen.

"Closer to what?"

The screen dimmed before he could ask abything else, the gold fading back to the ordinary lock screen.

Jacey’s unanswered message was still sitting there underneath it.

Garrett set the phone down again, slower this time.

One requirement left.

Closer than he thought.

He had no idea what that meant, and the System clearly had no intention of explaining itself.

For now, he had other things to think about.

Like what exactly he was supposed to do about Jacey.

He sat down admiring the new look of his apartment, the new curtains revealing a different shade of light and the frame hung proudly on the wall at the side of the bed.

"Not bad to be fair, I’ve definitely..."

Ring! Ring!

Emiliana.

He hadn’t expected that. Not after this morning’s texts, not after the easy little exchange that had already felt like enough for one day. He picked up before it could go to a third ring.

"Hey."

"Hey." A pause on her end, small, like she was deciding how to start. "Am I interrupting anything?"

"Just here doing what normal people do, You’re saving me from myself."

That got a short laugh out of her, and something in Garrett’s chest loosened slightly at the sound of it.

"I’ve been thinking about yesterday," she said. "I know we already talked about doing something again sometime. I was wondering if sometime could be tomorrow."

Garrett didn’t answer right away, and the silence stretched just long enough that he heard her fill it herself.

"You don’t have to, obviously, if you’ve already got..."

"Tomorrow works." He said immediately.

Another pause, this one different. Lighter.

"Yeah?"

"Yeah."

"Good." She sounded like she meant it. "I was thinking somewhere a bit more... planned. Not just wherever we happen to end up."

Garrett understood exactly what she meant, and the word landed a beat later than it should have.

A planned hangout. Was that the definition of a date?

It wasnt two people happening to enjoy each other’s company in a park on a Friday afternoon. An actual, planned, both-people-know-what-this-is hangout.

The next day.

Something the system had said few hours ago floated back up out of nowhere.

You might be closer than you think.

He didn’t let himself run too far with that. The system hadn’t said her name. Hadn’t mentioned Sunday, or a call, or anything specific enough to hang a theory on. It had been vague on purpose, and Garrett had learned by now that filling in those blanks himself usually just meant being wrong with more confidence.

Still. The timing was doing a lot of talking on its own.

"Garrett?"

"Yeah, sorry. Tomorrow’s good. Where’d you want to go?"

They worked out rough details, a time, an idea of where, nothing fully locked down yet. Emiliana sounded pleased by the end of it, in the quiet way she did things, not loud about it but clearly satisfied. They said goodnight a few minutes later, and Garrett stood there holding the phone after the call ended, grinning at absolutely nothing.

Then the grin started slipping sideways into something closer to panic.

Friday had been easy precisely because neither of them had called it anything. No expectations, no pressure, just time that happened to go well. Tomorrow wasn’t going to have that excuse. She’d said it herself, planned, not wherever they happened to end up. She knew what she wanted this to be.

Which meant Garrett needed to know too, and he currently had no idea.

He looked around the flat. New duvet. New curtains. Coffee table that didn’t wobble. That part, at least, he’d already handled earlier today, before he’d even known exactly why he’d need it handled.

But the flat wasn’t the problem anymore.

What was he supposed to wear? Where did people even go on a first proper date that wasn’t just wherever the day dragged them? What was he supposed to say, how much of the version of himself she’d apparently fallen for on Friday was he supposed to bring back, and how much of it had just happened without him trying?

Jacey’s message sat forgotten somewhere at the bottom of his notifications, exactly where he’d left it.

Emiliana’s call had rearranged the rest of his evening entirely.

He sat down on the sofa, phone still in his hand, and let it sink in properly.

He had one day.

And he had absolutely no idea how to prepare for a proper hangout.