It was 4:00 PM.
The reservation at The Tops wasn't until 8:00 PM.
Jude stood in the center of his dorm room, fully dressed, smelling of expensive cologne and existential terror.
If the Jude from September, the one who wore the same gray hoodie for three days straight and considered a bag of spicy chips a balanced meal, could see himself now, he would have laughed until he choked. Or maybe he would have just stared in confused silence, unsure whether this was a prank or a fever dream.
Jude checked his reflection in the mirror on the back of the door for the tenth time in as many minutes.
He was wearing a navy suit he'd purchased with the small remains of his student loan refund. It was tailored, sharp, and paired with the blue tie Kelvin had suggested. His hair was actually styled, not just pushed out of his eyes, but deliberately arranged into something that suggested intention. He looked like a fully-functioning member of society. He looked like a man who had a plan, a future, and a pulse that wasn't entirely powered by anxiety.
"Too much?" he whispered to the empty room. "Do I look like I'm going to court?"
He adjusted his cufflinks. No. He looked good. For the first time in his life, he felt like the protagonist of his own story rather than the comic relief who existed to make other people look better by comparison.
He walked over to his desk, stepping carefully over a pile of Ollie's discarded laundry.
Sitting on the scratched wooden surface, right next to his laptop, was a bouquet of flowers. They weren't generic gas station roses wrapped in crinkly cellophane; they were white hydrangeas mixed with soft pink peonies, arranged with the kind of care that suggested someone had actually given a damn.
Expensive. Specific. Deliberate.
He had overheard Natalia mention them freshman year in the dining hall. She'd been scrolling through Pinterest, showing Emily a photo of some wedding arrangement, and said, "God, peonies are the only flowers that actually look real. Everything else looks like plastic."
Jude had remembered. He'd called three florists before he found one that had them in stock.
He reached out to grab the vase.
It was freezing.
Jude frowned, pulling his hand back. The glass was frosted over, condensation dripping down the sides and pooling on the desk. It felt like he'd just pulled it from a deep freezer, but the room was a stifling seventy degrees.
He wiped the water off the wood with his sleeve.
Right next to the vase sat the obsidian cube, the tracker Seraphile had given him.
It wasn't glowing red anymore. The pulsing light that had haunted his peripheral vision the night before had faded into dormant, matte black. But the cold radiating from it was intense, almost aggressive. It was sucking the heat out of the air around it, chilling the flowers, chilling the desk, chilling the very air Jude was breathing.
A smarter man, or perhaps a less love-struck one, would have seen this as a warning. A drop in temperature usually meant a spectral presence, a pressure change in the veil between worlds, or a sign that something was lurking just out of sight.
But Jude didn't see a warning. He just saw a vase that was surprisingly cold.
"Fucking broken window," he muttered, dismissing the supernatural omen with a shrug.
He picked up the flowers, wrapping a paper towel around the base to keep the condensation off his suit. The cold seeped through the paper, numbing his fingertips, but he ignored it.
His phone buzzed on the bed.
He picked it up, expecting a notification from Bob telling him to go kill a slime creature in a sewer somewhere. Instead, the screen was lit up with a barrage of texts.
OLLIE: CODE BLUE IS A GO. REPEAT. CODE BLUE. DO NOT SPILL SAUCE ON YOUR SHIRT. I PUT A TIDE PEN IN YOUR POCKET.
Jude checked his jacket pocket. Sure enough, there was a Tide pen. He smiled.
DAVID: Steak. Rare. Assert dominance. You got this, King.
KELVIN: Don't talk about the economy. Or the impending heat death of the universe. Just ask her questions.
And then, a notification from Emily.
EMILY: Have so much fun tonight!! You look great (Ollie sent us a pic he snuck while you were getting dressed lol). Be safe!
EMILY: Also, Greta says "If he fucks this up I will burn his dorm down."
EMILY: She means good luck. <3
Jude stared at the screen. A month ago, a text like that would have sent him spiraling. She means good luck. It was a lie, obviously; Greta probably actually did want to burn his dorm down, but it was a nice lie. It was inclusion.
He wasn't the outcast today. He was part of the tribe.
Jude slipped the phone into his pocket. He checked the time again.
4:15 PM.
He was insanely early. Natalia lived twenty minutes away by foot. If he left now, he'd be standing outside her apartment complex for three hours like a stalker with a bouquet.
But he couldn't stay in this room. The nervous energy was vibrating under his skin, making him pace, making him fidget, making him want to climb the walls. He needed to move. He needed air.
"I'll just walk slow," Jude reasoned aloud. "Take the scenic route. Get some air. Look at buildings. Count cracks in the sidewalk."
He grabbed his keys. He took one last look at the room; the messy bunk beds, the poster of a band he didn't listen to anymore, the obsidian cube sitting silently on the desk, radiating its invisible frost.
For a second, just a split second, Jude felt a prickle on the back of his neck. The same feeling he'd gotten in the alleyway before the Scavenger attacked. The feeling of being watched by something that didn't have eyes.
He turned around.
The room was empty. The cube was black and silent.
"Get a grip, Miller," he exhaled, shaking his head. "It's date night. No demons allowed."
He grabbed the flowers, adjusted his grip on the cold stems, and walked out the door, locking the heavy deadbolt behind him.
He stepped into the hallway and headed for the stairs, the bouquet of white hydrangeas bright against his dark suit, walking toward the best night of his life.
Or the longest.
The walk to Natalia's apartment was a two-mile exercise in psychological warfare.
For the first mile, Jude felt invincible. The cool autumn breeze didn't cut through his suit jacket—it felt refreshing, bracing. He walked with rhythm, the bouquet cradled carefully in his arm like something precious.
You got this, he told himself, stepping over a crack in the sidewalk. You are an Earth Angel. You work for the divine bureaucracy. You killed a Scavenger with a sword made of light. You have literally flown off a skyscraper and caught someone falling from the sky. Dinner is nothing. Dinner is just calorie consumption with eye contact.
He checked his reflection in a shop window. He looked sharp. He looked capable. He looked like someone who belonged in the world rather than hiding from it.
Then he turned the corner onto Natalia's street, and the building came into view.
It was a modern high-rise, glass and steel jutting into the darkening sky. It looked less like a home and more like a fortress specifically designed to keep people like Jude out.
The confidence evaporated instantly, replaced by the familiar cold pit of nausea in his stomach.
What if I spill water on her? What if I have spinach in my teeth? What if I run out of things to say and just start talking about the history of the zipper? Why do I know so much about zippers?
He stopped in front of the glass doors, taking a deep breath that rattled in his chest. He smoothed his tie. He checked his breath into his cupped hand. Minty. Acceptable.
"Game face," Jude whispered to himself. "Don't be the mascot. Be the date."
He buzzed up. The door clicked open.
The elevator ride to the 15th floor took approximately seventeen years. Every floor number that lit up felt like a countdown to execution. When the doors finally slid open, the hallway smelled of vanilla and expensive carpet cleaner; the scent of people who had their lives together.
Jude walked to door 1504. He raised his hand to knock. He hesitated, his knuckles hovering an inch from the wood.
Run, his brain screamed. Go home. Text her you have cholera. It's historically accurate. It could happen.
He knocked. Three sharp raps.
He waited.
Seconds ticked by like hours. He shifted his weight from foot to foot, adjusting the flowers, wiping his sweating palms on his pants. Maybe she wasn't ready. Maybe she'd changed her mind. Maybe she was currently climbing out a back window to escape—
The door swung open.
Jude's brain simply stopped working.
Natalia stood in the doorway. She wasn't wearing the oversized t-shirts from movie nights or the hoodies from class. She was wearing a sleek emerald green dress that followed her curves with the kind of precision that suggested either excellent tailoring or actual magic. Her heels added three inches to her height. Her hair was a wave of dark silk, and her makeup was flawless; highlighting those dangerous, dark eyes that had been making Jude's brain short-circuit since freshman year.
She was a 10. She was a 10 on a scale where the maximum was supposed to be 5.
"Hi," Natalia said, smiling.
Jude stood there. His mouth opened, but no sound emerged.
The practiced lines, You look lovely tonight, Ready to go?, I love that color on you, dissolved into static. He felt like he was staring directly at the sun and couldn't look away.
"Hi," Jude finally croaked. It was weak, but it was technically a word.
He realized he was still clutching the flowers like a weapon. He thrust them toward her, nearly hitting her in the chest.
"These are for you."
Natalia blinked. She looked down at the bouquet. Her eyes widened, and her hand flew to her mouth.
"Peonies?" she gasped, her voice dropping to a genuine whisper. "And hydrangeas? Jude, these are my favorites. How did you know?"
"I heard you say it once," Jude managed, finally finding some footing. "A while ago. Freshman year. You said everything else looked like plastic."
Natalia looked at him, really looked at him, with an expression he hadn't seen before. It wasn't the pitying look she gave the mascot. It was surprise. And something warmer underneath.
"You remembered," she said softly.
She took the bouquet. Her fingers brushed his, and she flinched slightly.
"Whoa," she laughed, cradling the vase. "They're freezing! Did you keep these in a freezer?"
The tracker. The obsidian cube on his desk had been leaching heat out of everything near it all day.
"My dorm," Jude lied quickly, forcing a casual shrug. "The window seal is broken. It's basically an icebox in there. My roommate wears a coat to bed."
"Well, they're beautiful," Natalia said. She turned, walking into the kitchen to set them on the island. "Give me two seconds to put some water in this, and I'm ready. You look really good, by the way. Seriously. The suit works."
Jude exhaled, the tension in his shoulders dropping several inches. "Thanks. You look incredible. Obviously."
The Uber ride was short, but the air in the car was electric; the good kind, not the kind that preceded explosions.
When the car pulled up to the curb, Jude moved before he could overthink it. David's voice echoed in his head: Don't open the door for her, it makes you look like a servant. Let her do it. Alpha move.
Jude ignored the voice of the toxic gym bro in his head entirely. He walked around the back of the car and opened the door for her.
Natalia paused as she stepped out, looking up at him as he held the door frame. She smiled; a small, private smile that didn't feel performed for anyone else's benefit.
"Thank you," she said, brushing past him.
They stood on the sidewalk in front of The Tops.
It was chaos.
Friday night in Center City, and The Tops was the place to be seen. A line of overdressed people stretched out the door and halfway down the block. Through the massive glass windows, the restaurant was packed shoulder-to-shoulder with the kind of crowd that made Jude feel underdressed despite his tailored suit. The host stand was swarmed by irritated men in expensive suits trying to bribe their way to tables.
Natalia's radiant confidence flickered. The girl from the hallway shrank slightly.
"Oh no," she murmured, clutching her purse tighter. "Jude, look at the line. We're never getting in."
She turned to him, anxiety creeping into her voice. Natalia hated waiting. She hated the feeling of being unimportant, of standing in the cold while others were warm inside.
"Maybe we should just go somewhere else," she suggested, biting her lip. "There's a Shake Shack down the street? Or we could just order pizza back at my place? I don't want to stand here for two hours just to get turned away."
Jude looked at the crowd. He looked at the stressed hostess trying to manage the mob.
He smiled. It wasn't a nervous smile. It was the smile of a man holding an ace he'd kept hidden all night.
"Don't worry about it," Jude said calmly. "Trust me."
He placed a hand gently on the small of her back, a bold move that sent a jolt of electricity up his own arm, and guided her through the crowd toward the front.
"Excuse us," Jude said, his voice polite but firm as he navigated through the wall of bodies.
They reached the host stand. The hostess, a frazzled woman with a headset and the dead eyes of someone who had been asked "how long is the wait" approximately four thousand times tonight, looked up with an expression that promised violence if he asked that question again.
"Name?" she said flatly.
"Reservation for Miller," Jude said. "Two people. 8:00 PM."
Natalia held her breath. She braced herself for the I don't see it or the We're running forty minutes behind.
The hostess typed into her iPad. Her frazzled expression vanished, replaced by professional brightness.
"Ah, Mr. Miller," she said, her entire demeanor shifting. "Right on time. We have your preferred table ready. The quiet corner booth, away from the kitchen traffic, just like you requested."
Natalia's jaw actually dropped. She looked at Jude with wide eyes.
"You requested a specific table?" she whispered.
Jude shrugged, feeling approximately ten feet tall. "I figured we'd want to actually hear each other talk."
"Right this way," the hostess said, grabbing two menus.
Jude followed, feeling Natalia's hand slip into the crook of his elbow. She squeezed his arm.
"Okay," she whispered, leaning close to his ear so only he could hear. "I'm impressed. You're full of surprises tonight, Jude Miller."
They were led through the crowded, noisy dining room to a semi-private booth in the back corner. It was intimate, lit by warm candlelight, and noticeably quieter than the rest of the restaurant, a pocket of calm in the chaos.
Jude waited for Natalia to step toward the booth, then gently pulled the chair out for her.
She sat, smoothing her dress, looking up at him with a mixture of confusion and delight. This wasn't the Jude who forgot his wallet. This wasn't the Jude who stumbled over his words and apologized for existing.
Jude took his seat opposite her. He placed the heavy leather menu on the table but didn't open it. He just looked at her.
"So," Jude said, leaning forward slightly, the candlelight catching the angles of his face. "We made it."
Natalia smiled, and for the first time all night, she didn't check her phone. She didn't scan the room to see who else was there. She just looked at him.
A shadow fell over the table.
A waiter materialized, appearing out of nowhere like a judgmental ghost in a tuxedo. He was tall, thin, and possessed a facial expression suggesting he had personally catalogued every poor decision Jude had ever made and was prepared to discuss them at length.
"Good evening," the waiter intoned, his voice dripping with bored sophistication. "Sparkling or still?"
"Still is fine," Jude said.
"And for the wine list?" The waiter presented a leather-bound tome to Natalia with a slight bow.
Natalia took it. She didn't open it immediately. She looked at Jude, a mischievous glint dancing in her eyes. It was a test. A playful one, maybe, but a test nonetheless.
She flipped the book open to the reds. Her finger traced down the list, bypassing the house wines, bypassing the reasonable mid-range options, and landing near the bottom of the page where the prices had too many digits.
"I've heard wonderful things about the 2016 Opus One," Natalia said, her voice deliberately casual. "A glass of that would be lovely."
The waiter's eyebrow twitched upward, a microscopic movement of approval.
Jude had no idea what an Opus One was. It sounded like a Transformer. Or possibly a prog rock band. But he saw the way the waiter looked at Natalia, and he recognized the challenge lurking in her smile.
"Actually," Jude said, leaning back and crossing his legs with a confidence he was absolutely manufacturing in real-time, "let's do the bottle."
Natalia's eyes widened. "Jude, you don't have to—"
"I insist," Jude interrupted, waving a casual hand. "We're celebrating, right? We made it past the velvet rope."
The waiter turned his gaze to Jude. He scanned him in a nanosecond—the off-the-rack suit, the watch that was definitely not a Rolex, the slight scuff on his left shoe.
"Sir," the waiter said, his voice dropping to a discreet murmur meant only for Jude's ears, "that particular vintage is quite… significant. Are you certain you wouldn't prefer to see the price list first?"
It was a polite way of saying: You look like you have thirty dollars in your checking account, and this bottle costs more than your rent.
Internal Jude screamed. He imagined his bank account weeping actual blood. He imagined Bob laughing at him from whatever celestial break room angels hung out in.
External Jude didn't flinch. He looked the waiter dead in the eye.
"I'm sure," Jude said, forcing a smile that was all teeth and no regret. "It's what the lady wants."
The waiter held the stare for a second, then gave a curt nod. "Very good, sir. An excellent choice."
He vanished into the crowd.
"You're crazy," Natalia laughed, leaning forward over the table. "Do you know how much that bottle costs?"
"Nope," Jude lied cheerfully. "And don't tell me. Ignorance is bliss. I'm choosing to live in bliss tonight."
"You're full of surprises," Natalia murmured, resting her chin on her hand and studying him like he was a puzzle she'd just discovered had more pieces than she'd expected.
"So," Jude said, eager to steer the conversation away from his impending financial ruin, "tell me about yourself, Natalia. And don't give me the bio from your Instagram."
Natalia rolled her eyes, but she was smiling. "Jude, we've known each other since freshman orientation. You know everything. You know my major, you know I hate cilantro with a burning passion, you know my mom calls me every Sunday at 9 AM to ask if I'm dating a doctor yet."
"I know the stats," Jude corrected. "I know the trivia. I don't know you."
He gestured around the room with his wine glass.
"Why PR? You could have done anything. Theater, fashion, law. Why Crisis Management specifically?"
Natalia paused. She traced the rim of her water glass with one finger. The playful party-girl mask slipped slightly, revealing something sharper and more interesting underneath.
"Because I like fixing things," she said slowly. "People think PR is just parties and smiling for cameras. It's not. It's control. It's taking a disaster—a scandal, a wreck, a mistake that should have ended someone—and spinning it until it looks like a victory."
She looked up at him, dark eyes intense.
"The world is messy, Jude. People are messy. They make terrible decisions and then they panic. I like being the one who cleans it up. I like being the one who decides the narrative." She paused. "Does that make sense? Or does it make me sound like a control freak?"
"It makes sense," Jude said. He thought about the P.I.T. internship application, the Crisis Management team. It fit perfectly. "It makes you sound capable."
"Capable," Natalia tested the word, rolling it around in her mouth. She seemed to like it. "I like that. Better than 'pretty.'"
The waiter returned, presenting the bottle with the reverence usually reserved for holy relics. He poured. They toasted. The wine tasted like velvet and money and terrible financial decisions.
"Okay, my turn," Natalia said, taking a sip and leaving a faint red lipstick mark on the rim. "Who is Jude Miller? The real one. Not the mascot."
"Just a guy," Jude deflected automatically.
"Bullshit," Natalia said, the word surprisingly sharp. "The Jude I knew for two years was 'just a guy.' He sat in the back of every room. He wore the same three hoodies in rotation. He apologized for taking up space."
She gestured at him with her glass.
"This Jude? The one who talks back to waiters and orders bottles of wine and actually looks me in the eye? I don't know him. Where did he come from?"
Jude swirled his wine, watching the red liquid catch the candlelight. He couldn't tell her the truth. I came from a gas station floor with a bullet in my head. I came from a Purgatory waiting room. I came from the realization that life is fragile and short and I was wasting it.
"I woke up," Jude said quietly.
He looked up at her.
"I spent three years waiting for my life to start. Waiting for permission to exist. Waiting to graduate, waiting to get a job, waiting to feel ready for something—anything."
He leaned forward, and the candlelight caught the sharp angle of his jaw.
"Then something happened. A few weeks ago. And I realized that waiting is stupid. If you want the girl, you ask the girl. If you want the table, you take the table. Because tomorrow isn't guaranteed to anyone."
It was the most honest thing he had ever said to her.
Natalia stared at him. The noise of the restaurant; the clinking silverware, the laughter, the soft jazz, seemed to fade away, leaving them in a bubble of their own making.
"I like the new Jude," she whispered. A genuine flush crept up her neck.
"I'm still working on him," Jude admitted with a lopsided grin. "But he's getting there."
"Are you ready to order?"
The waiter had rematerialized, notepad in hand, looking vaguely annoyed that they'd been having a moment without his permission.
"Ladies first," Jude gestured.
"I'll have the sea bass," Natalia said without consulting the menu. "And the truffle risotto for the table."
"And for you, sir?"
Jude didn't look at the price. He couldn't. If he looked, he might actually cry.
"The ribeye," Jude said. "Bone-in. Rare."
"Excellent choices," the waiter nodded. "I'll have that right out."
As the waiter departed, Natalia reached across the table. Her hand covered Jude's. Her skin was warm, soft, and electric.
"Thank you, Jude," she said softly. "This is really perfect."
Jude looked at her hand on his. He looked at her face, glowing in the candlelight. For this moment, the debt didn't matter. The demons didn't matter. The secret life of violence and divine bureaucracy didn't matter.
"Yeah," Jude smiled, squeezing her hand back. "It really is."
For the next hour, they were just two college kids on a date. They laughed. They ate. They drank the obscenely expensive wine. And for the first time in his life, Jude Miller didn't feel like he was watching the movie from the cheap seats.
He was in it.