Page 11 of Keep My Alpha

Hannover’s voice: Believing in the story doesn’t break it.

My own sticky note, tucked into Mary Oliver: Say yes.

I press Submit.

The screen changes. Thank you for your submission! A confirmation has been sent to your email. The auto-response pings my inbox before I’ve even exhaled.

I close the laptop. My hands are shaking, not a lot, but enough that when I reach for Stumble on the windowsill, I fumble her and have to catch her with both palms. I hold her up to the light from my desk lamp. There’s still a faint trace of the original pine scent caught in the carving, and I bring her to my face, inhaling deep.

I put her back on the sill, careful, at the head of the row, next to Button.

“If you’re real,” I whisper to whoever made them, “now would be a really good time to show up.”

Soren

My oat milk lavender latte is going cold between my hands, and I’ve rearranged the sugar packets in their little ceramic dish three times. First by color, then by brand, then back to color. The barista, a sophomore I might have Romantic Lit with, gave me a look on the third rearrangement that I’m choosing to interpret as endearment rather than concern.

It’s 6:04, and I’m early because I’m always early, because being early means I get to pick the table by the window where the light comes through the glass and makes everything look like a painting. Even a mediocre date looks better backlit. I read that somewhere. Or maybe I made it up. Either way, I’m here, in my nice purple cardigan, with a lavender latte and a table full of artfully sorted sugar, and this is a normal thing that normal people do.

Milo’s voice is on a loop in my head. You can always leave. You can always leave. You can always leave. He texted it three times before I left: once normal, once in all caps, once with a purple heart. Milo gets that some things need to be said until they stick.

The café is about half-full, and I’m doing that thing I do where I make up stories about everyone in the room instead of sitting with my own feelings. The girl in the corner with the enormous headphones is writing a manifesto. The two betas splitting a muffin by the door are on their third date and the muffin-splitting is a little ritual they started on the first one and now it’s their thing and neither of them remembers who suggested it. The barista is humming something that’s not quite any recognizable melody, and I like her for it. She’s making her own song. That’s brave, even if she doesn’t know she’s doing it.

I check my phone. 6:11. Derek said six. That’s fine. Eleven minutes is nothing. Maybe he hit traffic. Maybe he’s nervous too, circling the building trying to work up the courage, and that thought softens me toward him even though I have no evidence it’s true. I want this to be a good story. I want to sit here and have a nice conversation with a nice alpha and feel something, even a small something, even potential.

At 6:14, I open the group chat.

Soren: He’s late. Is that a red flag or am I being dramatic

Jude: red flag. burn him.

Milo: It’s only 14 minutes. Traffic maybe?

Shay: Statistically, lateness on a first date correlates with a 40% higher chance of being a fuckboy.

Benji: shay where do you get these numbers

Shay: I make them up but they feel true.

Jude: soren if he’s ugly you have my permission to fake a seizure

Milo: JUDE

Jude: WHAT. i’m being supportive

I’m trying to type a reply when the café door swings open and a wall of cologne walks in.

I wrinkle my nose. It’s that sharp, synthetic stuff from a department store, the kind that announces itself before the person wearing it and apologizes for nothing. It’s so thick I can taste it, chemical and metallic, like licking a doorknob at Macy’s.

And Derek is... fine. He looks like his pictures, which is a low bar he somehow cleared. Tall, broad shoulders packed into a polo shirt that’s fighting for its life. He walks like he’s the main character in a movie only he’s watching. I try to find something nice. Maybe he has kind eyes, maybe when he smiles the whole manufactured confidence will crack open and there’ll be someone real underneath. But his gaze lands on me and it’s assessing, not warm.

“Soren?” He says it wrong.

“It’s Soren,“ I say.

“Right, right.” He drops into the chair across from me, doesn’t say sorry for being late, and frowns at my latte. “You already ordered?”

“I got here a little early. I’m, uh. A punctual person.”