For a little while after the first order came in, neither of them moved.
The laptop stayed open between them on the bed, the small notification still visible in the corner of the screen like it might vanish if they looked away too fast. The room had gone completely still around it. No talking downstairs, no footsteps in the hall, no television. Just the soft hum of the laptop and the old house settling into the night.
Mandy leaned forward first.
She read the order details again, slower this time, like checking whether it still looked the same on a second pass.
"Eight dollars," she said quietly.
Lip nodded once. "Before costs."
"Still."
She sat back a little and looked up at him, the expression on her face caught somewhere between disbelief and something brighter.
"That's a real person," she said. "Somewhere."
"Yeah."
"Who bought something from a store we made in your room."
A small smile pulled at one corner of his mouth. "That's the internet."
That got a laugh out of her, quick and soft, but it did not last long. Her attention went right back to the screen.
Lip reached over and closed the laptop partway, mostly because if he kept staring at the order page much longer he was going to start feeling stupid about how much one cheap phone case suddenly mattered.
Mandy looked at the closed screen and shook her head once.
"You do get that this counts."
Lip sat back against the wall. "One order isn't exactly business."
"No, but it's also not nothing."
That was true enough that he did not bother arguing.
For a minute she just sat there with her hands resting on the edge of the laptop, thinking. Then her head snapped up.
"Did you order it already?"
He looked at her. "What."
"From the supplier. The case."
"Yeah."
Her eyes narrowed slightly. "Already?"
"I did it right after the order came in."
That seemed to catch her off guard all over again.
"You move fast."
"That's the point."
She stared at him for another second, then let out a quiet breath through her nose and looked back at the laptop.
"I swear sometimes it feels like you're ahead of the room before anybody else even knows they're in it."
Lip said nothing to that.
Mandy watched him long enough to notice that too, but she let it go. Instead she opened the laptop again and looked at the dashboard one more time, as if the second sale might have shown up in the last ten seconds just to keep the first one company.
Nothing had changed.
She sighed and shut it again.
"Alright," she said. "What now."
Lip rested his head back against the wall. "Now we wait."
That did not seem to satisfy her much, but there was not much else to do.
The next morning, Mandy woke first.
That alone was strange enough that Lip noticed before he was fully awake. He rolled over and found her sitting on the edge of the bed with the laptop already open in front of her, hair a mess, one knee drawn up, face lit pale blue by the screen.
He squinted at her for a second.
"You're checking again."
She did not look away. "Just seeing."
"Seeing what."
"If there's another one."
Lip pushed himself up slowly and rubbed at his eyes. The room was still half gray with early light, the kind that made everything look unfinished.
"It's been one night."
Mandy finally glanced over. "That's enough time for somebody to buy a phone case."
He leaned over and looked at the screen anyway.
Same numbers.
Same one order.
Nothing new.
Mandy closed the laptop with a small sigh. "Fine."
Lip reached for the hoodie hanging off the chair. "You're acting like we're waiting on a heartbeat."
"Aren't we?"
That almost made him laugh.
Downstairs, the house was already awake in the usual rough-edged way. Fiona moving around the kitchen. Carl saying something Debbie immediately hated. A cupboard slamming. A fork dropped. The smell of coffee and toast drifting upstairs.
By the time they got down there, Mandy had mostly dropped the restless edge, but not completely. Lip could see it in the way she kept glancing toward the laptop she had left upstairs, as if it might produce a second order out of spite while they were gone.
The day at school passed the way most school days did near the end of the year—slow in the wrong places, quick in the others, everybody halfway distracted by the fact that summer was close enough to smell.
Teachers kept talking about finals.
Students kept pretending that was shocking.
No one sounded like they believed much of anything coming out of their own mouths.
Mandy checked the store during first break on Lip's phone. Then again after lunch. Then once more before the last class. By the third time, he looked over at her while they were standing in the courtyard and said, "You're worse than Kev counting cash at the end of a shift."
She did not even look embarrassed. "I'm invested now."
"You were invested yesterday."
"Yesterday it was still one order."
Lip leaned one shoulder against the wall behind the ledge and watched her refresh the page again. "And today?"
"Today I want another one."
The courtyard around them moved the way it always did—groups shifting, voices carrying, somebody laughing too loud at something that was not worth it. None of it mattered much. Mandy's attention stayed on the phone.
Then her face changed.
Not dramatically. Just enough.
"Wait."
Lip straightened a little. "What."
She turned the screen toward him.
At the top of the page was another notification.
New Order.
For one second he only looked at it.
Then he let out a breath that might have been a laugh.
Mandy was already grinning. "That's two."
Lip took the phone and opened the order. Another phone case. Different city. Same price. Same cheap little item suddenly feeling bigger than it had any right to.
He handed the phone back.
Mandy looked at the page like it had personally proven something to her. "Okay."
He glanced over. "Okay what."
"Okay, now I'm listening."
That made him laugh properly.
She bumped her shoulder into his. "You were right."
He lifted a brow. "Careful."
"No. You can have that one."
She still looked pleased with herself for saying it, which made the whole thing even better.
By the time school let out, the good mood had not worn off.
It stayed with them on the walk back through the neighborhood, light enough not to turn into some huge conversation, but present. Mandy kept taking his phone and checking the dashboard again every few blocks, mostly to make sure the second order had not somehow vanished. It never did.
At the corner near the Gallagher house, she slowed and looked over at him.
"You going to the Alibi?"
"Yeah."
She shifted her bag higher on her shoulder. "I'm coming later."
He nodded. "Alright."
She started toward her house, then looked back once. "Don't tell Kev before I get there."
Lip smiled a little. "No promises."
That got him a look before she turned and kept walking.
The Alibi was busier than usual when he got there.
Not packed, but active enough that Kev was already halfway to overwhelmed and pretending he was not. Lip spent the first hour moving between small jobs—stocking, clearing empties, wiping down the far end of the bar after somebody spilled beer and then acted like the puddle had appeared on its own.
He did not bring the store up right away.
Mostly because Kev had the kind of mood where any new information would immediately become a five-minute speech, and Lip was not in the mood for that while carrying crates.
Mandy showed up a little before the crowd thinned.
She came through the door already looking like she had something to say, spotted Lip behind the bar, and headed straight for the counter. Kev noticed that much immediately, because Kev noticed anything that looked like gossip might be nearby.
"What happened," he said, before either of them opened their mouths.
Mandy leaned one arm on the bar. "Business."
Kev squinted. "That tells me nothing."
Lip came out of the back room with a crate of bottles and set it down behind the counter. "Two sales."
Kev stared at him. "Of what."
"Phone cases."
That only made him stare harder.
"You two are actually doing that."
From the register, V looked over. "Please tell me this isn't one of those scam things where everyone ends up selling vitamins to cousins."
Lip shook his head. "Online store."
V gave a small nod. "Alright. Less embarrassing."
Kev leaned in on the bar with both forearms like the conversation had finally become worth his full attention. "How much."
Mandy answered before Lip could. "Sixteen so far."
Kev made a face that landed somewhere between amused and impressed. "That's tiny."
"It's two orders," Mandy said. "That's the point."
Kev looked from her to Lip and back again. "You know what. Fair."
V pointed a pen at Lip from across the bar. "If this turns into something and you start acting insufferable in here, I'm banning you."
Lip smiled. "You'd miss me."
"Not enough."
Mandy took the phone back out and checked the dashboard again just to be difficult.
The rest of the shift went by easier after that.
Not because the work changed, but because the whole night had a different edge to it now. Lip kept moving through the usual tasks—glasses, bottles, wiping the bar, hauling things in and out of the back—but every so often he caught Mandy at the counter looking down at the notebook or checking the dashboard again, and the fact of it stayed in the background of everything else.
Two orders.
Not a lot.
Enough.
By the time they left, the streets had gone mostly quiet.
Summer was close enough now that the air had softened after dark. Still cool, but not sharp. The neighborhood lights glowed warmer than they had a few months ago, and half the windows on the block were open just enough to let television noise or voices drift out into the street.
Mandy walked beside him with her hands tucked into the sleeves of her hoodie.
After a while she said, "You know what this means."
Lip looked over. "What."
She kicked a pebble ahead of them. "You're getting harder to argue with."
That made him laugh once under his breath. "That must be rough."
"It is."
He waited a second. "You still bringing up college."
"Yes."
There was no hesitation in it at all.
Then she added, "But this helps."
He glanced up at the streetlights for a second. "I'll take that."
Mandy looked over at him. "Don't let it go to your head."
"That's no fun."
She smiled faintly and looked ahead again.
For a few blocks they walked without talking. Same pace. Same sidewalks. Same night. It felt easy enough not to fill.
When they got back to the Gallagher house, Mandy went upstairs first while Lip stopped in the kitchen for a drink.
Fiona was still up, paperwork spread across the table, pen in hand, shoulders tense in the way they always were when she had been staring at numbers too long.
She looked up briefly when he opened the fridge.
"You look happy."
He pulled out a drink and shut the fridge. "Good day."
Fiona looked back down at the paperwork. "Hold onto it, then."
That was all.
He took the drink and went upstairs.
Mandy was already on the bed again with the laptop open in front of her. She looked up the second he came in.
"Well?"
Lip shut the door behind him. "What now."
"Check."
He came over and looked at the screen.
At first it was the same as before. Two orders. Same totals. Same quiet little dashboard that still did not look like much from the outside.
Then another notification appeared.
He stopped.
Mandy saw his face before she saw the screen. "What."
Without saying anything, he turned the laptop toward her.
Another one.
New Order.
Mandy stared at it. "No way."
Lip clicked it open anyway.
The page loaded.
Another order.
Another phone case.
Twenty-four dollars total now.
Not much. Not enough to impress anybody who did not understand what they were looking at. But enough to make the room feel different all over again.
Mandy sat back slowly and looked at him like she was trying to line up the screen with the fact of him still standing there in the same bedroom, in the same house, in the same neighborhood.
"That's three."
"Yeah."
She laughed, quieter this time, but it carried more weight somehow. Less shock now. More realization.
Lip leaned one hand against the bed and looked at the page again.
Three small orders.
Three strangers.
One notebook plan that had stopped being theory.
It still was not big.
It still was not stable.
It still could have fallen apart tomorrow if the wrong part failed.
But it was moving.
And that was more than enough for one night.
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