Day 11 of 14 · Friday, October 23 into Saturday, October 24, 2026
Hey, [DEV] here.
RJ got five people into the pool in October, Finn finally opened the living-room floor, and Ash found the last verse of a song she wasn’t ready to share. Nobody got much use out of the training room. Honestly, they’d earned the day off.
Coffee, with an arabesque
Finn was up at seven. Yes, seven. Stretching in the living room, with the door open for once. Performance-day nerves had arrived before most of the house knew there was a performance day to be nervous about.
Julian came downstairs, made two coffees, and put one on the windowsill without asking anything. Finn drank it mid-arabesque. That was the whole conversation. Apparently some relationships come with a silent breakfast setting.
Wes and Eva had the shared-bathroom routine down to a system, with a little more gentleness underneath it this morning. Neither volunteered a comment. Training was canceled by common consent. Nobody felt the need to explain why.
Cowards identified. Plunge completed.
At exactly two, RJ collected on the sign she’d taped to the pool cover. The final lineup was RJ, Dustin, N30N, Wes, and, somehow, Randi.
“One frame of this exists and I burn the negative,” Randi said. Then she got in with full commitment. Taka and Mori stayed at the agreed safe distance with the long lens. Taka got the keeper.
Eva declined with dignity. Julian declined with a book. Finn declined because Friday, which apparently qualified as a complete explanation. Ash supervised from a lawn chair under a blanket. A sensible woman surrounded by questionable decisions.
Wes described the water as “like being hit by a building made of cold.” Everyone screamed except Dustin, who floated there looking perfectly fine and refused to explain himself. That has now become a house mystery.
Hot chocolate followed. The plunge came off the chalkboard. RJ cried a little and blamed chlorine. Nobody challenged the diagnosis.
Four minutes. No cameras.
The afternoon turned into preparation without anyone officially declaring it. Early showers. Shirts chosen a little more carefully. Randi charging batteries. Mori printing something and keeping it out of sight. Finn borrowed the pool-house key at four and came back at six, faintly chlorine-scented and very pleased with himself.
At eight he appeared in rehearsal clothes: “Living room, ten minutes, everyone who wants to.” Everyone came. RJ and Dustin cleared the furniture in ninety seconds, with the suspicious efficiency of people who had absolutely discussed this beforehand. Eva supplied candles.
Randi lifted her camera. “No cameras tonight,” Finn said. “One frame at the end, if I survive.” She put it away. Immediately. That’s about as much respect as Randi can fit into one gesture.
His solo lasted four minutes. He’d choreographed it himself over three days in the pool house. The music was Ash’s unfinished song, her rough voice captured from the kitchen doorway, still carrying all the things a polished track normally smooths away. Finn had heard it through the house and quietly built something around it. The melody Eva had overheard during rehearsal had been his careful hum of Ash’s song.
When he finished, nobody spoke for a moment. Then he looked at Ash, still breathless. “It needs a fourth verse. It’s yours. I just wanted to show you what it was from the outside.”
Ash sat down slowly on the couch arm. “You made it look like what it sounds like to me.” She had to look at the floor for a while after that. N30N put a hand on her back. Julian stood at the back of the room with bright eyes and his jaw set, and clapped last, longest, and loudest.
The noise came back all at once. RJ announced she was learning to dance on Monday. Dustin told her she had “the rhythm of a folding chair.” Finn somehow glowed through both assessments.
Randi took her one agreed photograph: Finn mid-bow, distracted sideways by something RJ shouted, caught between delight and embarrassment. She showed him the screen. “That’s the one,” he said. “That’s exactly what it felt like.”
The rehearsal, returned
Mori slipped upstairs during the noise and came back with a print. No speech, no presentation. Just a photograph handed to Finn.
It showed the pool-house window from outside, the edges fogged, his silhouette held halfway through a movement. A piece of the work that had happened before anybody applauded.
“You saw,” Finn said.
“The whole house saw the door was closed,” Mori said. “Nobody saw this.”
Finn kept the print with him as he went around the room. There wasn’t much else that needed saying.
Later, Julian finally found a quiet bit of kitchen counter beside him. He tried explaining how different it felt to see the whole thing, tripped over the number of years, and gave up correcting the part that wasn’t the point. “You were watching tonight,” Finn said. “I’m always watching,” Julian said. “That’s the whole problem.” They stayed shoulder to shoulder, out of the traffic, for a while.
The fourth verse
At midnight the kitchen was down to Ash with her guitar, Finn cross-legged on the counter, and N30N by the window with his tea.
Ash played through the song, including the rewritten third verse. Then she stopped. “The fourth verse goes like this. Maybe.” It wasn’t fully built yet. She sang it anyway.
It was about doors and rain, and seeing a version of someone through a window. Finn listened, then said, “It’s done.” This time, Ash knew it too.
She did set one condition: nobody hears the finished version until it’s recorded properly. “I want it real before it’s public.” Finn raised an imaginary glass.
“Day one of the Ash Holloway catalog,” N30N said. Ash told him to shut up. The smile lasted all the way upstairs.
Two days
Wes ended up last in the kitchen, standing in front of the open fridge. The croissant note, the group photo, the workout evidence: there was quite a bit to look at by now.
Eva appeared in socks with a misshapen croissant. “They’re worse today.” “They taste the same.” They ate standing shoulder to shoulder in the fridge light.
“Two days,” Wes said. “Two days,” Eva answered. Sunday was still theirs to deal with. Neither tried to bring it forward.
When she took the plate back, her hand brushed his. Deliberately, this time. No witnesses. No announcement. They both noticed.
The house was dark by half past one. No frost tonight. Sunday will be their last full day together; they leave Monday morning. For now, nobody had started packing.
