Lust Meter System: Conquering Beauties

Saturday came a day and a half after the restaurant, one of those mid-morning stretches where neither of them had anywhere urgent to be.

Kelly’s apartment smelled like burnt toast, the second batch after the first one had gone black in a toaster that clearly hadn’t been cleaned since she moved in.

She stood at the counter scraping the char off with a butter knife over the sink while Liam sat on one of the two stools at her kitchen island, still in yesterday’s shirt, scrolling through something on his phone he wasn’t actually reading.

"You know most people would just throw that one out," he said.

"Most people don’t have three slices of bread left," Kelly said, not looking up from her scraping. Black flakes rained into the sink. "This is a functioning slice of toast. It’s just been through some things."

"That’s a very generous read of a piece of charcoal."

"I contain multitudes." She dropped the knife, inspected the toast with the seriousness of a surgeon checking their work, and decided it had suffered enough.

She slid it onto a plate next to the two that hadn’t caught fire and carried the whole thing over, setting it down in front of him like an offering. "Eat your damaged toast and be grateful."

He picked up a piece, took a bite, made a face he didn’t bother hiding.

"See," she said. "Character."

"That’s one word for it."

She hopped up onto the stool next to him, tucking one leg underneath her, and reached over to steal the good, un-charred piece straight off his plate before he could stop her, taking a bite and grinning at him around it.

"That’s cold," he said.

"You said it had character. I figured you didn’t need the good one."

They ate in a comfortable back-and-forth for a while, Kelly talking with her mouth half full about a group project that had fallen apart the day before, one of her partners disappearing entirely for two weeks and then resurfacing with a slide deck that was, in her words, aggressively wrong about the topic.

She did an impression of the guy’s presentation voice that made Liam nearly choke on a piece of toast, and she looked pleased with herself for it, filing it away like she’d remember exactly which jokes landed and use them again later.

"You have a whole bit for everyone in that class, don’t you," Liam said, once he’d recovered.

"Only the ones who deserve it." She shrugged, entirely unbothered. "It’s not personal. It’s public service. Somebody has to document this stuff."

"For who?"

"For posterity," she said, deadly serious for exactly one second before breaking into a laugh at her own answer.

His phone buzzed against the counter, sliding an inch with the vibration. Kelvin’s name lit up the screen. Liam turned it over without reading it, which Kelly caught immediately, her eyebrows lifting over the rim of her water glass.

"You’re not going to check that?"

"I know what it says."

"How do you know what it says if you haven’t opened it?"

"Because it’s the third one since yesterday and they’ve all said some version of the same thing." He picked the phone back up anyway, thumb swiping it open, and turned the screen toward her so she could read it herself.

*Kelvin: bro it’s literally been a day and a half*

*Kelvin: I have shown remarkable patience given the circumstances*

*Kelvin: a lesser friend would’ve already keyed it out of spite*

*Kelvin: this is your only warning*

Kelly laughed, a real one, head tipping back slightly. "A day and a half. He’s really out here treating this like a hostage situation."

"That’s exactly what he’s doing." Liam shook his head, half exasperated, half fond. "I told him Wednesday night I’d bring him by, and he’s acting like I’ve kept him waiting a month."

"To be fair," Kelly said, "some people have no concept of time when they want something."

"He’s one of them."

"You should just let him come over," she said. "Get it over with. Put the man out of his misery."

Liam glanced at her, surprised. "You’d be fine with that? Him coming here?"

"Why wouldn’t I be? I want to meet him properly at some point anyway. Right now he’s just a name that texts you constantly and apparently has strong opinions about my toast-making skills, which he’s never even tasted, so honestly his opinion is worthless, but still. I’d rather meet the guy than keep hearing about him secondhand."

"He’s a lot," Liam warned.

"I gathered that from the hostage negotiation."

"I mean it. He doesn’t really have an off switch."

"Neither do you when you’re annoyed about something," Kelly said, entirely too pleased with herself, "so I think we’ll manage."

Liam considered that for a second, decided arguing the point would only prove her right, and typed back to Kelvin instead. *Come by. Address incoming.*

He sent Kelly’s building info a moment later, and the reply came back almost instantly, a string of exclamation points with no actual words attached, followed by a voice memo that Liam didn’t bother playing, already able to guess the general shape of the noise it contained.

"He’s coming," Liam said.

"Obviously," Kelly said. "You guys are basically dating in my own opinion."

---

Kelvin arrived forty minutes later, faster than either of them expected, which told its own story about how far he’d actually been from showing up on his own the entire time.

He knocked twice, fast, then a third time before Liam even reached the door, and when it opened he was already halfway through a sentence that had clearly started before the door had.

"—because a day and a half is genuinely disrespectful, that’s real time, and I want it on record that I am the most patient friend anyone has ever had because a normal person would’ve—" He spotted Kelly standing behind Liam in the kitchen doorway and adjusted mid-sentence without missing a beat, his posture straightening a little, the complaint smoothing out of his voice. "Miss Kelly. Good afternoon. Glad you’re here too, actually, saves me having to hear about all this secondhand later."

"Hey, Kelvin," Kelly said, amused by the sudden shift in him. "You can relax, you know. You’re not in my classroom."

"Old habits," Kelvin said, stepping inside and dropping his jacket over the back of the nearest chair, though he kept a noticeably more composed air about him than he had a second ago. "How’s the semester treating you, Miss Kelly?"

"It’s treating me fine. You could be treating my inbox a little better, though. Still waiting on that assignment from you."

Kelvin winced. "I’m aware. It’s coming."

"It’s due Monday."

"It’s coming very soon," he said, and Kelly gave him a look that suggested she’d heard that exact sentence from him before, which only made Liam laugh under his breath.

"Don’t laugh," Kelvin said, rounding on him. "You know he’s been dodging me about this car for a day and a half? A whole day and a half. I had to hear about it secondhand."

"I told you Wednesday I’d bring you by," Liam said.

"You said ’soon.’ Soon isn’t a day. Soon is a made-up word men use to buy themselves time." He glanced at Kelly. "No offense to your teaching methods, Miss Kelly, but I feel like you’d back me up on this one."

"I’m staying out of it," Kelly said, though she was clearly fighting a smile.

"Don’t encourage him," Liam said to her.

"I’m not encouraging anyone," Kelly said. "I’m a neutral party."

"Too late," Kelvin said, glancing around the apartment with the easy familiarity of someone who’d clearly been there before, before his eyes landed back on Liam with sudden, singular focus. "The car. Now. We’ve done pleasantries. I’ve seen the picture, I need to see it in person."

"It’s downstairs."

"Then we’re going downstairs."

"Kelvin, you just got here, sit down for two sec—"

"Downstairs," Kelvin said again, already turning back toward the door like he might simply leave without either of them if they didn’t hurry up.

Kelly grabbed a jacket off the couch, grinning. "I want to watch this."

The three of them went down together.

When the elevator doors opened onto the parking lot and the car came into view, blue and gleaming faintly under the overcast sky, Kelvin actually stopped talking mid-sentence.

He didn’t say anything for a full three seconds, which Kelly would later point out was possibly the longest silence she’d ever personally witnessed from him.

"Okay," he finally said, voice noticeably quieter. "Okay, yeah. The picture didn’t do it justice. That’s, that’s a whole different thing in person."

"That’s all you’ve got?" Liam said. "After all that buildup?"

"I need a minute," Kelvin said, walking a slow circle around it, one hand hovering just above the hood without quite touching, like he wasn’t sure he was allowed. "I need a whole minute. Do not rush me."

Kelly leaned against the wall by the elevator, arms crossed, watching the whole thing with visible enjoyment. "He’s very committed to this bit."

"It’s not a bit," Kelvin said without turning around, still circling. "This is a moment. Let a man have his moment."

He got in eventually, once Liam relented and unlocked it, sliding into the passenger seat with the reverence of someone entering a place of worship, running his hand along the dashboard, adjusting the seat, testing every button within reach while narrating his findings out loud like a man conducting an inspection.

Kelly climbed into the back seat uninvited, leaning forward between the two front seats to watch, and for a solid ten minutes Kelvin catalogued every feature of the interior with the kind of focus most people reserved for things that actually mattered.

"You’re being unreasonable," Liam said eventually.

"I’m being thorough."

"You’re being a lot."

"There is no meaningful difference between those two things in this context," Kelvin said, entirely serious, still adjusting the mirror for the fourth time.

Kelly laughed from the back seat, and Kelvin glanced at her in the rearview mirror, his tone settling into something more genuine, less performance now.

"He talks about you, you know, Miss Kelly," Kelvin said. "Not a lot. Liam’s stingy with information on a good day. But enough. More than I’ve heard him talk about anyone in a while, honestly."

Liam shot him a look through the mirror that Kelvin ignored completely.

"Is that right," Kelly said, glancing at Liam with open curiosity now.

"I plead the fifth," Liam said.

"Coward," Kelvin said cheerfully.

They didn’t end up driving anywhere that day, the whole outing collapsing into just sitting in the parked car for the better part of half an hour while Kelvin asked increasingly specific questions about the engine that Liam only had partial answers for, occasionally deferring entirely and just repeating something vague he’d heard once, which Kelvin accepted without complaint because the answers themselves weren’t really the point.

Kelly stayed folded into the back seat the whole time, adding the occasional comment, laughing more than either of them, clearly enjoying watching the two of them exist in their normal rhythm rather than the more careful version Liam usually presented when it was just the two of them.

Eventually Kelvin declared himself satisfied, climbing out of the passenger seat and shutting the door with a firm, approving thud, giving the roof one last affectionate pat like he was saying goodbye to an old friend.

"Yep," he said, stepping back to admire it one more time, hands on his hips. "That’s one sweet ride. Can’t wait to take it for a spin alone."

"Never," Liam said flatly, already holding his hand out for the keys back.

"Aww, come on man," Kelvin whined, clutching a hand to his chest like he’d been wounded, giving Liam the full weight of his best pleading look.

Kelly giggled from where she still sat folded in the back seat, watching the two of them over the headrest. "Hehehe."

Visit and read more novel to help us update chapter quickly. Thank you so much!