Chapter 50: A New Laptop and a Hug

Chapter 50: Chapter 50: A New Laptop and a Hug

Garrett woke up sore.

His ribs reminded him of the evening before the second he shifted his weight to sit up, a dull ache that settled in deeper once he actually stood. He rolled his shoulder, testing it, and decided it was manageable enough to work with.

He went through the rest of it the same way he always did. Brush his teeth, shower, careful around the bruising along his side while he did. Get dressed, favoring the side that didn’t protest as much. Something quick to eat standing at the counter, same as most mornings.

Nothing about the pain was bad enough to keep him home. Just present, a low background note under everything else he had to do today.

He grabbed his bag and headed out, the walk to campus a little slower than usual, though nobody passing him would have noticed the difference.

Classes went the way classes usually did. Notes, half-listened-to lectures, the same faces in the same seats. Underneath all of it, though, his mind kept circling back to last night. Raymond’s warning, still sitting there unresolved. The Value Multiplier, unlocked and untested, waiting for him to actually figure out what to do with it.

He still didn’t have a plan for either.

He spotted her near the courtyard between his second and third class, and unlike Sunday, there was nothing hesitant in the way she approached him.

"Hey, stranger." Emiliana fell into step beside him, easy, like there hadn’t been any distance between them at all. "Feels like it’s been a while."

"It has been a few days."

"Mm." She studied him for a second, nothing suspicious in it, just genuine attention. "You look tired."

"Long week."

Garrett kept it at that. He wasn’t about to bring up Raymond or the three men on his street, not here, not without understanding first whether she already knew something about it. Better to wait until he had more to go on than a warning and a name.

"I want to see you tomorrow evening," Emiliana said, shifting the subject without much warning.

"What’s it about?"

"You’ll find out tomorrow." She said it lightly, a small smile pulling at the corner of her mouth, giving nothing else away.

Garrett considered pushing for more, decided it wasn’t worth the effort right now. "Alright. Tomorrow, then."

"Good." She squeezed his arm briefly before peeling off toward her own class. "I’ll text you the details."

He watched her go for a second, then kept walking, filing the conversation away with everything else he hadn’t figured out yet.

After his last class, Garrett headed to the department store a few blocks from his building, the kind big enough to cover groceries, basic supplies, and electronics all under one roof.

He needed the usual things, food that wasn’t takeout, a few items he’d been putting off buying for weeks now.

He moved through the aisles at an easy pace, grabbing what he needed, ribs still tender enough that he avoided reaching for anything on the higher shelves without thinking about it first.

Cutting through toward the registers, his path took him past the electronics section, rows of headphones and half-open display laptops lining the aisle.

That was when he noticed someone familiar standing near one of the display counters.

He slowed, looking again to make sure he wasn’t mistaken.

It was Freya, standing in front of a row of open laptops, phone in one hand, expression somewhere between frustrated and overwhelmed.

Garrett walked over. "You look like you’re about to throw one of those across the store."

She glanced up, some of the tension in her shoulders easing slightly at the sight of him, though not by much. "Don’t tempt me."

"What happened?"

"My laptop happened." She gestured vaguely at nothing in particular, like the story was too irritating to summarize cleanly. "I caught my foot on the charging cable last night, pulled the whole thing off my desk. Landed wrong. Screen’s cracked, and something inside it’s not working right either. I took it in this morning, and they said fixing it would cost almost as much as just replacing it."

"That’s rough."

"It’s terrible timing is what it is." She rubbed her temple, looking back at the screen in front of her, comparing two models that both looked, to Garrett’s eye, fairly unremarkable. "I’ve got a project due soon, and I need something that actually works before then."

Garrett looked at what she’d been comparing. Budget models, the kind that got the job done and not much more, clearly chosen because of the price tag rather than because they were what she actually wanted.

He understood the shape of the problem immediately. Not manufactured, not convenient timing dressed up as coincidence. Just an ordinary, frustrating thing that had happened to her, the kind of problem anyone could run into.

"Which one do you actually want?" Garrett asked.

Freya gave a short laugh, more tired than amused, and pointed toward a display a few feet down, a sleeker model with noticeably better specs listed beside it. "That one. Obviously. But it’s twice what I’m trying to spend, so it’s not really on the table."

Garrett glanced at the price tag.

It wasn’t nothing, but it also wasn’t close to a problem for him. Not anymore.

His mind went back to last night without much effort, the four lines he’d read over twice before finally falling asleep.

Genuine value.

Genuine interest.

He didn’t spend long weighing it. If the feature meant what it said, this was exactly the kind of thing it should respond to. She needed it, actually needed it, not wanted it as a nice extra. And whatever the multiplier turned out to be, that wasn’t really the reason he was about to do this.

"I’ll get you that one," Garrett said.

Freya blinked at him. "What?"

"The one you actually want. I’ll buy it."

She let out another laugh, this one shorter, clearly assuming he was joking. "Very funny."

"I’m serious."

Her smile faded slightly, replaced by something closer to alarm. "Garrett, no. That’s way too expensive, I wasn’t asking you to..."

"I know you weren’t asking."

"Then don’t. Seriously, I can make the cheaper one work, it’s fine, I just needed to vent about it for a second."

"You need something that actually works for your project," Garrett said, keeping his tone level, no weight added to it beyond the plain fact of it. "I can afford it. That’s really the whole equation."

Freya opened her mouth to argue again, but Garrett had already turned toward the sales counter, gesturing for an employee before she could talk him out of it.

Garrett paid before Freya could put up any more of a fight, and by the time he turned back around with the box in hand, she looked like she genuinely didn’t know what to do with herself.

"I can’t believe you actually..." She cut herself off, shaking her head, eyes still on the box like it might disappear if she looked away. "My project’s due in three days. I was genuinely panicking about this."

"Figured."

"No, like, actually panicking. I had a whole spiral planned for tonight." She reached for the box, hands slightly unsteady, and before Garrett fully registered what was happening, she’d stepped in and wrapped her arms around him instead.

Garrett went still, caught off guard by the sudden contact, his ribs protesting faintly at the pressure before he adjusted.

It only lasted a second. Freya pulled back almost as fast as she’d leaned in, cheeks flushed slightly, clearly registering what she’d just done a beat too late to stop herself.

"Sorry." She stepped back, flustered, hands coming up briefly like she wasn’t sure what to do with them now. "I just... I’m really happy. That was a lot."

"It’s fine," Garrett said, keeping his voice easy.

For a second neither of them said anything, something quiet sitting between them that didn’t need explaining.

Then Freya’s attention snapped back to the box in her hands, practical concerns already crowding back in. "Okay. I need to get this set up tonight. I’ve got so much to catch up on."

"Go," Garrett said. "I’ve got the rest of this handled."

"Thank you. Seriously." She was already stepping backward toward the exit, laptop held carefully against her chest like she didn’t trust herself to set it down anywhere. "I owe you one. A big one."

She didn’t mention Friday. Didn’t linger for more conversation. She just gave him one last grateful look before turning and heading out, moving with the kind of urgency that came from actually having somewhere important to be.

Garrett watched her go until she disappeared past the entrance, then turned back toward the aisle, picking his own list back up where he’d left it.

He didn’t dwell on the hug. Didn’t spend the next ten minutes turning it over in his head, running through what it meant or didn’t mean. He just kept moving through the store, grabbing what he’d actually come for.

Groceries. A few things for the flat. Nothing that took longer than it should have.

By the time he reached the register, most of what had just happened had settled somewhere in the back of his mind, sitting there without demanding attention.

He was halfway through bagging his items when his phone chimed.

Garrett glanced down at the screen.

[NEW SYSTEM NOTIFICATION.]