By the next morning, Mandy had already decided they were getting the apartment.
Lip figured that out within about five minutes of waking up.
He rolled onto his side and found her sitting cross-legged near the foot of the bed with the laptop open in front of her, hair still a mess from sleep, face lit by the pale light of the screen. She was looking at the same listing from the night before with the kind of concentration she usually saved for things she had already chosen and was now pretending she was still considering.
He stayed where he was for a second, watching her scroll.
"You're still on that one."
Mandy didn't look up. "It's five-fifty."
"I know."
"It's walking distance."
This time he pushed himself up onto one elbow. "Why does that matter so much to you?"
Now she glanced over. "Because you work at the bar."
Lip sat up slowly and leaned back against the wall, dragging a hand over his face before answering. "Not for much longer."
That made her stop scrolling.
The silence lasted just long enough for him to know she was turning it over.
"Wait," she said. "What do you mean."
"The Alibi was always temporary."
Mandy studied him properly now, the listing forgotten for the moment.
He nodded toward the room, the laptop, the notebooks stacked on the chair, all the evidence of what had been taking over their evenings for weeks. "It was cash while we got this running."
"And now?"
"Now this is doing that job better."
She leaned back a little, still looking at him. "So you're quitting."
"Soon."
Mandy took that in longer than he expected. Not because she disagreed. More like she was adjusting the picture in her head. Lip at the bar had become part of the routine. The Alibi money, the deliveries, Kev yelling from the back room, Mandy wandering in and sitting at the counter while he worked. It had been woven into everything else so naturally it probably felt strange to picture cutting it loose.
"Huh," she said.
Lip looked at her. "That sound like a problem."
"No." She shook her head once. "I just thought you'd keep it a while longer."
"Why."
A small shrug. "Because you like it there."
He thought about that and smiled faintly. "I like the people there."
"Not the job."
"Exactly."
That seemed to satisfy her.
She looked back at the apartment listing and dragged the cursor down the page again, rereading details she had clearly already memorized. Rent. Heat included. Available next week. Second floor. No pets.
"Still," she said, "close is good."
Lip leaned forward enough to see the screen again. The photos hadn't improved overnight. Old brick building. One main room. A narrow kitchen tucked along one wall. A radiator under a wide window. Scuffed floors. White paint that had been redone badly in a couple corners. Nothing special.
Still, he kept looking at it.
"What time was the viewing?"
Mandy clicked back to the email without any hesitation. "Three."
Lip blinked once. "You already set it up."
She finally smiled, small but pleased with herself. "Obviously."
He let out a short laugh and leaned back again. "You really don't waste time."
By the time they went downstairs, the house was already in motion.
Fiona was in the kitchen with coffee, Debbie was digging through a drawer for something she should have found ten minutes earlier, and Carl was trying to make an argument out of absolutely nothing because it was too early for him to be useful and too late for him to go back to bed. Ian had already vanished, which meant he either had somewhere to be or simply had better instincts than the rest of them.
Mandy moved through the room like she belonged in it, grabbed a mug, poured herself coffee, and stood shoulder to shoulder with Lip at the counter while Fiona looked between them with the kind of expression that suggested she had noticed the shift in mood before either of them had said anything.
"You two are up early," Fiona said.
Mandy glanced at Lip before answering. "We've got somewhere to be later."
That got a pause.
Fiona took a sip of coffee. "Alright. What is it."
Mandy almost smiled. "We're looking at an apartment."
That shut the table up for a second.
Even Fiona's face changed, only slightly, but enough.
Carl recovered first. "You're moving out?"
"Maybe," Lip said.
Debbie looked from one of them to the other. "That was fast."
"It's not fast," Mandy said. "We've been talking about it."
Fiona gave them both a longer look this time, one that felt less like surprise and more like calculation. Rent, furniture, timing, risk. Lip could almost see the list moving behind her eyes. Then she leaned back against the counter and said, "If the place isn't falling apart and the landlord looks mostly sober, take it seriously."
Mandy smiled into her coffee. "That's encouraging."
"That's realistic," Fiona said.
Carl made a face. "You guys are gonna leave me here with Frank."
Lip looked at him. "You'll survive."
"Rude."
Debbie rolled her eyes. "You annoy everybody on purpose. No one feels bad for you."
The moment passed into the rest of breakfast after that, but it sat underneath everything. Small, steady, real enough that Lip could feel it even while Fiona went back to bills and Carl started complaining about something else.
By mid-afternoon, he and Mandy were standing outside the building.
It looked exactly like the listing had promised and exactly like the listing had tried not to show too clearly. Old brick. Three floors. Narrow front steps with paint worn off the rail. A side gate that probably stuck in winter. The kind of building that had been standing long enough to survive several rounds of people trying to fix it cheaply.
Mandy stood with her hands in her jacket pockets and looked up at the windows.
"This is it."
Lip checked the address on his phone anyway. "Yeah."
She didn't look nervous. Not really. But there was something tighter in the way she stood, some small current under the surface that had not been there when she was browsing listings on his bed. This was different. Looking was one thing. Standing in front of an actual building with actual keys and an actual landlord was another.
The landlord opened the front door before they could knock twice.
He was older, heavy around the middle, wearing a jacket that looked like it had been practical for years and then given up trying to look good. He looked at them both quickly, then stepped aside.
"You here for the studio?"
"Yeah," Lip said.
"Second floor."
The hallway smelled faintly like dust and old heat. The stairs were narrow but solid underfoot. Somewhere behind one of the closed doors on the first floor, a television was playing quietly enough to be more vibration than sound.
Mandy walked a half step ahead of him all the way up.
The apartment itself was small.
That was the first thing either of them noticed, even if neither said it right away.
One main room. Enough space for a bed and maybe a couch if they were smart about where everything went. A kitchenette built against one wall with a sink, a stove, and just enough counter to pretend it was normal. A bathroom tucked into the corner behind a door that had been painted over too many times. Nothing extra. No hidden second room. No wasted space.
But the window was bigger than Lip expected.
It let in more light than the photos had shown, enough that the whole room felt less closed off once he stepped farther in. The floors were worn but clean. The walls were plain. The radiator under the window looked old enough to outlast all of them.
And the quiet hit him almost immediately.
Not Gallagher-house quiet. Not the kind of quiet that still had voices under it and footsteps through it and the constant sense that someone would shout your name from downstairs any second.
Real quiet.
The kind where you could hear yourself crossing the room.
Mandy walked slowly from one side to the other, looking around like she was already trying to place things in it. Bed there. Table there. Maybe shelves against that wall. The movement of her eyes made it obvious.
"This is perfect," she said.
The landlord looked like he had heard every possible version of that sentence and trusted none of them. "Heat's included."
Lip walked over to the radiator and rested a hand on it, more because it gave him something to do than because he doubted it. "It work?"
"Yeah."
Mandy had moved to the window by then. She looked out once, then back into the room, measuring it again with that same quiet intensity.
"How soon can somebody move in?"
Lip looked over at her.
She didn't care.
The landlord answered before he could. "Next week."
That was all it took.
Mandy turned back toward Lip, and the look she gave him said enough without any help. She was already there in her head. Already walking through the room in socks. Already setting a mug by the sink. Already shutting the door behind them and knowing no one else was in the apartment unless they wanted them there.
Lip looked around one more time.
It wasn't big. It wasn't pretty. It wasn't the kind of place anybody dreamed about when they pictured leaving home.
But it was enough.
And right then, enough felt huge.
"Yeah," he said. "This works."
The landlord nodded once, as if he had expected that answer ten minutes ago.
Later that evening, Mandy was back in his room with the laptop open again.
The apartment listing was gone. The store dashboards had taken its place.
Phone cases on one tab. The clothing store on another.
Lip sat down beside her and leaned in enough to see the numbers properly. "How's the second one doing."
Mandy refreshed the page.
The dashboard updated.
"Three."
He looked at the number again. "Already?"
"First hoodie order came in an hour ago."
A small smile touched his mouth. "That's a good sign."
Mandy refreshed again, mostly out of habit now.
Another notification appeared.
She laughed softly. "Four."
Lip leaned closer to the screen. "That was fast."
"Streetwear was a good call."
He nodded once. "Different market."
"Same system."
She sat back against the wall with the laptop still balanced on her knees. The room around them was dim, lit mostly by the screen and the weak light coming in through the window.
He refreshed the page again, more from reflex than expectation.
Another order appeared.
Mandy pointed at the screen. "Five."
Lip looked at it for a second, then leaned back against the wall beside her.
Outside, the neighborhood had dipped into that quieter part of the night where most people were finally indoors and the street sounds softened enough to stop pressing through the walls. The laptop kept glowing between them. The numbers kept moving, slow and steady, one order at a time.
Mandy reopened the apartment listing again even though they had already seen it, already stood in it, already decided. She looked at the same photos with the same slight smile that had been coming and going all evening.
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