Chapter 106: The Day Alex Reyes Tried to Crash a Private Date and Was Served Bureaucracy Instead

They went for dinner not long after, as the afternoon turned into evening, and students filed into the cafeteria pretending they were here by choice rather than lack of a better option for their limited time and budget.

Jordan was at their usual spot — well, one of their usual spots, since no one could actually own public properties, after all — and she was already eating. Apparently, Jordan had simply woken up one day and decided she was part of the group now and everyone had just accepted it, as if that had always been the case.

“You’re glowing. You three just did it, didn’t you?” Jordan said, eyeing Alex the second she sat down. “Gross. I don’t want to know.”

“You say it like you didn’t do it with us just last month,” Alex teased her while stealing a carrot directly off her plate.

“I will punch you… or your boyfriend.”

“Why do you keep dragging me into this?” Magnus asked exasperatedly.

“She’s your girlfriend, Chane.”

“Yes, but she’s been your rival for longer.”

“Aren’t you two supposed to be a unit?”

“Not when it comes to you,” Magnus shot back. Then he added after a moment, pointing at Alex, “Her words, not mine.”

The rest of dinner ended up being fairly uneventful, at least for the four of them and by Magnus’s increasingly questionable standards for what counted as uneventful. They traded jokes, talked about nothing in particular, and Sofia reveled in the wake of her newly acquired power.

As they cleared their trays and headed toward the exit, Sofia fell into step beside Magnus. “I’m coming to your dorm.”

Magnus glanced at her. “You don’t need to walk me back.”

“I have a new power to test,” Sofia announced, as if that settled the matter entirely. “I need to see if Tony is actually as absurd in real-time as you two keep claiming.”

“He’s gonna try to convince you to forage for garbage within the first five minutes,” Magnus warned. “Or worse, convince you to convince me to do it.”

“Even better.”

“I’m coming too,” Jordan chimed in from the rear, unzipping her track jacket slightly in the cool evening air. “Mostly because watching Chane get emotionally manipulated by a trash bandit is objectively the highlight of my week.”

Magnus glared at her.

“What? After what you put me through, Chane—” She pointed a finger at him. “—you owe me this!”

“Are you gonna keep bringing that up to guilt trip me every time?” he muttered.

Alex laughed softly, reaching down to link her fingers with Magnus’s. “And I’m staying the night. Girlfriend’s privilege!”

They pushed through the heavy doors of the cafeteria into the crisp evening air. They had barely taken five paces along the paved walkway when Jordan’s phone vibrated against her hip. She pulled it out, glanced at the caller ID, and stopped dead in her tracks.

“Go ahead,” she muttered, stepping toward the shadow of the brick entryway. “I need to take this. I’ll catch up in a bit.”

Jordan caught up to them a few minutes later, just as they reached Magnus’s building. They made a stop by his room first before actually going out to meet Tony.

“Go ahead and put your stuff in here,” Magnus said as he pushed open his door. “Just don’t forget them in my room when you leave later.”

“What?” Jordan dropped her bag down on his desk. “You planning on dying and reviving again this Sunday, Chane?”

He gave her a tired stare. “Too soon, Jordan. Too soon!”

“Considering I was the one going through that, I’ll be the one to decide whether it’s too soon or not.” She pointed at him. “Okay, maybe it was a little too soon.”

As Magnus and Sofia stepped out into the hallway, Alex turned to follow, but Jordan caught her arm and pulled her back. The dorm door swung half-shut behind Magnus and Sofia, their voices fading down the corridor.

Alex raised an eyebrow, turning to her rival. “Okay… What’s up?”

“I’ve got something useful regarding your Student Council problem,” Jordan said flatly. “Emily and Dash go to a quiet café four blocks off campus every Friday at four o’clock. It’s where they take their private dates—away from campus eyes and away from Council businesses.”

Alex’s eyes widened slightly. A private, off-campus routine was gold. It was an unscripted venue: no administrative shields, no official agendas, no Student Council offices for Emily and Dash to hide behind.

“How do you know that?” Alex asked, searching the other woman’s face.

Jordan’s jaw set into that familiar, unyielding line. “You don’t want to know. The intel is solid. Take it or leave it.”

Alex studied her for a beat, then smiled faintly, a spark of strategic clarity lighting up her eyes. “If it’s solid. Then it gives us the exact opening we need.”

“Good,” Jordan said simply, already opening the door and walking outside.

Alex joined her as they jogged to catch up with Magnus and Sofia.

***

The next afternoon, around four o’clock, Alex pushed open the door of the café and walked inside with Magnus following close behind.

“This is the place?” he asked.

“Should be,” she confirmed. “If Jordan’s intel is solid.”

“Looks normal. A bit cozy, even.”

“That’s kinda the point, babe. They’re here on a date. And as are we. So look the part.”

“Right, sure,” he muttered. “It’s not like telling someone to look normal doesn’t have the exact opposite effect or anything.”

She snorted softly at his remark before squeezing his hand once. They had discussed the plan the previous night after Jordan and Sofia had eventually left. Emily and Dash had smoothly put a rain check on Alex’s dinner invitation, which meant this lead Jordan provided was their only way in.

The idea had been simple enough. Find Emily and Dash on their date, turn it into an impromptu double date, and finally have a conversation with them somewhere that wasn’t Student Council territory. If the conversation went particularly well, Alex could potentially steer it somewhere more personal. And if the mood aligned, she might even push things toward a foursome. Alex had not decided exactly how far she wanted to push things today. She needed to see what they gave her first.

So, for now, they just needed to get the other couple away from the official version of themselves.

Alex scanned the room. Then she stopped so abruptly in her tracks that Magnus nearly walked into her.

“Okay. What’s wrong?” he asked, already halfway to overthinking and spiraling despite telling himself to act like it was just a normal date.

She pointed. He followed her gaze.

Emily and Dash were sitting at a table near the back. Except they weren’t alone. And it definitely didn’t look like a date.

Four other students were seated around them, all with folders and laptops spread across the table. Documents were stacked between coffee cups, and Dash was pointing at something on a printed sheet while Emily made notes beside him.

Then, as if on cue, Dash looked up. His eyes met Alex’s instantly, and his polished, unshakeable Student Council President smile bloomed across his face with effortless warmth.

“Alex! Magnus!” Dash called out smoothly, raising a hand in polite greeting. “What a coincidence running into you two all the way out here! As you can see, we’re right in the middle of an executive Council briefing, but we’ll definitely catch up with you two later!”

Emily looked up beside him, offering them both a sweet smile that contained zero embarrassment.

Alex’s face twitched — barely so, and for just a fraction of a second — before she schooled her expression back into the pleasant social mask she wore in public. Her fingers closed around Magnus’s forearm with enough force to bruise.

“Of course,” she said, her voice dripping with artificial sweetness. “Don’t let us interrupt official Council business.”

She turned on her heel and dragged Magnus toward a vacant booth on the far, opposite side of the café.

They slid into the leather seats. A waiter took their order, and they ordered two iced coffees they didn’t particularly want.

The meeting did not wrap up quickly.

“This is ridiculous,” Alex muttered into her drink when it arrived.

Magnus picked his own cup up and appeared to inspect it. “I thought they’re supposed to be having a date right now, not an official meeting,” he said quietly.

“That’s what Jordan said,” she confirmed.

“So, either Jordan heard wrong or—”

“—or they somehow saw this coming,” she finished for him.

“Which do you think it is?”

“I don’t know yet.”

He glanced back at the other table. Emily was speaking to one of the staffers, apparently completely absorbed in whatever document they were discussing.

“Do you think they’re actually having a Council meeting?” he asked.

“It doesn’t matter what we think.” She shrugged. “That’s what they claimed it is.”

After several more minutes, Magnus leaned closer. “Should we just go?”

“Not yet.”

“Why?”

“Because leaving immediately would make it look like we came here specifically to ambush them.”

Magnus considered that. “I mean, we kinda did though, didn’t we?”

“Yes,” she muttered. “But we still can’t let them think that.”

“You think they don’t already think that?”

“They probably know we came for them, yes, but on the off-chance that they didn’t…”

“Right.”

So they waited as the “official” Student Council meeting kept going.

Ten minutes turned into twenty. Then thirty.

Every so often, members of the Student Council would look in their direction or at the door, but the meeting itself showed no signs of wrapping up any time soon.

By the forty-minute mark, after Magnus and Alex were both finished with their second drinks, Alex finally stood up.

“This is getting ridiculous!” she decided. “They’re not gonna stop, and we’ve waited long enough. Let’s go!”

They got up and walked out, neither of them saying anything to Emily or Dash on the way. Neither Emily nor Dash made any move to stop them, either.

Once they were outside, Magnus looked at Alex. “So…”

Alex exhaled slowly. “Looks like everything is coming down to tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow?”

“We have another meeting with them tomorrow afternoon, remember?”

“Right,” he murmured. “We’re still trying, then?”

“Doll or no doll, I’m not giving up until your deadline.” She squeezed his hand. “Are you?”

“Yeah, alright. I’m not giving up. I’m with you.”

“But, uh…” he added slowly, “Do you actually have another plan already?”

Alex smiled. “I have the beginning of one.”

***

Dash waited another full twenty minutes after Magnus and Alex had left to make sure they weren’t coming back before putting his pen away.

He looked at the four Student Council staffers seated around the booth. “All right, everyone. That covers the budget amendments. Thank you for rushing over on short notice. We’ll pick up the rest on Monday.”

The staffers nodded, gathered their binders, and filed out of the café, leaving the President and Vice President alone in the booth.

Emily leaned back against the leather cushion, letting out a long, slow breath. “That was a close one. Thank God they discussed that plan in his room last night. Otherwise, we wouldn’t have been able to do a thing to stop it.”

Dash gave a dry, quiet laugh. “Lucky for us indeed. Though it’s regrettable that our secret sanctuary is now compromised. We’ll have to find a new spot for our dates from next week onward.”

“True,” Emily agreed, swirling the ice in her glass. “But you said it yourself—canceling our date today entirely would’ve been much riskier and far more unpredictable.”

“It would have been,” Dash said, his tone shifting into calculated precision. “We both know how Alex Reyes operates. If she showed up here and found an empty booth, she wouldn’t have just given up—she would have tracked us down and launched a secondary surprise attack on the fly. One we hadn’t overheard, leaving us completely blindsided and in a tight spot. This way, at least, we threw her off-balance, exhausted her prepared play, and bought ourselves time while she recalibrates.”

Emily nodded slowly, a small smile touching her lips. “No use crying over spilled milk, I suppose. The second Jordan told her about this place, she’d effectively forced us to look for a new one.” She tapped her fingers on the table. “How did Jordan even find out, though? We’ve been so careful.”

“Campus rumors, probably,” Dash shrugged, entirely unconcerned. “Someone must have seen us walking over here on Fridays and mentioned it to a mutual friend.”

“Maybe,” Emily murmured, though her mind lingered on it for a second before letting it go. “Anyway… we’re still bringing it up tomorrow afternoon when they meet us, right?”

“Yeah, we should,” Dash said, his expression sobering as he glanced at the time. “His deadline is approaching fast, and we can’t exactly let him die like our last lead did.”

Emily’s face tightened slightly at that, but she nodded.

“We still hold every card that matters,” Dash concluded, closing his leather folder with a decisive click. “They’re going to be desperate by tomorrow. We control how much we let them know we know—and we keep that advantage firmly in our hands.”