The prompt waited where he'd left it, a small, neat doorway in the air.
[Recommendation: Set custom notifications?][Public visibility: LOW / MEDIUM / HIGH]
He selected LOW without ceremony.
[Notifications updated: Public visibility LOW][Lock screen preview: MINIMIZED]
Dylan's elbow nudged a salt shaker. "You going to explain your superhero phone or do I need to start a religion?"
"It's not that interesting," Alex said. Keeping things boring was a skill; boredom was camo if you wore it right. "And it's mostly random."
"Random is the name scammers use for patterns they haven't learned yet," Dylan said, then softened it with a grin. "I say this as a scientist whose last A in science was tenth grade."
A waitress dropped a new leather check presenter on the table. "This one's yours," she said, nodding at Alex and Dylan. "Kitchen comped the pie for the ladies, but you two are on this."
"Absolutely," Alex said. He made his expression do polite and only polite.
Dylan cracked the presenter. "Twenty-six eighty-nine. I have six if you want to do old-timey cash theater."
"I've got it." Alex slid his card without flourish. The earlier high had cooled; he wanted to feel the floor. He wanted to know how bad a miss looked with eyes on him.
The waitress ghosted the card to the register and back with a practiced rhythm. The HUD tracked along, unassuming.
[Bank Alert: Completed debit $29.89 - DOWNTOWN DINER][Tier-2 CASHBACK roll…][Result: ×0][No cashback credited][Daily cap remaining: adequate]
His pocket vibrated once with the minimized lock-screen preview he'd just chosen - no banner, no tease, just a discreet blip where earlier there had been fireworks. He let breath out slow through his nose. Perfect. He needed both stories - the miracle and the shrug.
Dylan studied his face the way a friend studies a poker table. "That time it didn't pay you to tip like a maniac."
"Random," Alex said, and gave him the smallest of smiles. "Your scientist instincts were right."
"Don't weaponize my own words against me."
The waitress slid the receipt back. Alex signed his name with the confidence of someone who knew how pens worked. Dylan framed the paper with both hands like he would take a picture. "I want a scrapbook of the times capitalism flirted with us."
"Let's not make it weird," Alex said. He tucked the receipt and stood, letting the booth exhale his weight. "You on fries custody for Jack?"
"Already texting him that love is real and it's crinkle-cut." Dylan pocketed his phone and rose. "By the way, Ivy was kind of… I don't know. She has very main-character cheekbones. Are we doing a coffee scene?"
"She said we owe each other coffee," Alex said, which was true and safely vague. He slid his own phone out, saved Ivy Monroe with an actual number and not just the idea of one, and added Arts / black sundress / paint strap as a note. Memory could be loyal. It still liked help.
The HUD stayed peripheral, clean. No confetti, no boasts.
"Promo is shy now," Dylan said as they angled toward the register and then the door. "Maybe it only triggers when you rescue maidens from point-of-sale dragons."
"Good to know your model includes dragons," Alex said.
"Every good model includes dragons." Dylan palmed the door for him, gentleman by way of sitcom. The bell above the frame pinged a single note that didn't think it was a metaphor.
Evening had edged a little closer while they ate. The streetlights tested themselves in pale circles. A couple argued at a crosswalk as if taking turns holding a sign that said it's not about the thing. Air smelled like clean exhaust and fry oil cooling off its day.
Dylan hooked a finger under the to-go bag with Jack's fries - heavy enough to be a promise - and then turned back to Alex with the kind of casual that tried too hard. "So, not to be weird, but let me see the text."
"What text?"
"The bank thing." Dylan wiggled his fingers. "Not your lock screen life story. Just the thing that said 'you are the chosen one of cashback' earlier."
The phone sat warm in Alex's palm, face down. The minimized preview he'd set meant that when he turned it over, Dylan would see exactly nothing unless Alex tapped through. He could open a blurred banner - harmless. He could show the most boring version of the truth.
The HUD, unhelpfully helpful, surfaced again with good manners.
[Public visibility: LOW][Quick toggle? LOW / MEDIUM][Reminder: MINIMIZED previews are non-descriptive]
Dylan waited, hand out, palm up, the way you hold out a flat palm to earn an animal's trust. Not pushy, but present. He still had grease salt on two fingers from the fries. His eyes were bright with curiosity and the low-grade fear friends get when something shifts under their feet.
"Dude," he said, softer. "I'm not trying to audit your soul. I just want to see if my brain invented the glow."
"You didn't invent anything," Alex said.
"Great. Then my brain is absolved. Show me?"
The door breathed open behind them and someone stepped out, letting a wash of diner talk spill into the night. The wash snapped off as the door swung closed, leaving the two of them in a bubble where the question hung like new weather.
Alex turned the phone over, thumb near the lock. The screen looked clean and private, a blank desk waiting for an object. He could open the banking app and show a line item and let Dylan build his own myth around it. He could laugh and pocket it and change the subject so hard the subject forgot it was a subject.
The HUD wrote its last polite nudge in the air:
[Advisory: Reduce visibility to maintain advantage?]
He held still long enough to feel his pulse answer in his fingers.
"Here," he said, and paused, because he needed the word to do two jobs - bridge and gate.
Dylan glanced at his hand, then at his face, reading like a teammate waiting for a call.
Across the glass, the diner bell pinged again. A car rolled by with the bass turned to a heartbeat doing pushups. Somewhere down the block, laughter tried on different shapes.
Alex's thumb hovered over the phone's lock, the HUD still patient and white in the corner of his vision, offering LOW like a held-out coat.
He had to decide what Dylan got to carry.