"Mm," says Alice. "Guess it's not that likely that somebody really determined is gonna try."

Bella nods. "I mean, I guess I could also put an alarm on it, but no one pays attention to those."

"The only thing a car alarm ever does is annoy the fuck out of people," Alice asserts.

"Right. They were a significant component of making that poor defense lawyer lose so much sleep," Bella says sweetly.

"I'm gonna go look up what I have to do to be licensed to use my silly, excessive present that I cannot sensibly return because you had it made custom for me," Bella says, heading into the house after petting her bike one more time.

Alice gives the bike one last lingering look, and then follows her. That thing is gorgeous. And it suits her perfectly. He wishes he could actually get her a present that cool. But it's pretty much guaranteed that anything he might think to provide is inferior to what she could wish up for herself.

"You're covering for me. I can't get that for myself, not readily," Bella responds to this thought. "You as good as got me this, because otherwise I'd have to fabricate the plausible ability to build the damn thing in order to have it in public. Oh, and you got it for me from a super secretive private hobbyist you met on the Internet who did you a one-time favor and who does not want his or her name publicized."

"Cool," he says, and starts inventing hilariously implausible lies to cover for this imaginary person, because that is what he would actually do in that case.

Bella looks up motorcycle laws in Washington. It turns out she needs Charlie's permission to take a sixteen-hour course and then pass a written test to be allowed to bike hither and thither. "Sixteen hours, dang," she says. "Oh well. If it turns out it would help, can I borrow some cash to pay an instructor to let me do that over a weekend instead of sitting through some regularly scheduled class that meets for an hour every evening for two and a half weeks?"

"Yup," says Alice.

"Grand. If you care, I'll pay you back when I too become a millionaire. If you don't, I will forget about it altogether after about twelve minutes of mild guilt." She starts looking for motorcycle instructors. She can just fly wherever, land a few blocks away, and claim to have gotten a ride.

"I so don't care," he says. "Oh, uh, people are really gonna think we're fucking if you show up to school on that thing. You cool with that?"

"Meh," says Bella. "Don't care enough to not use it. I will carry on denying it and say you're just buying me things with your court-awarded money because I helped you with the trial stuff."

"Not a fan of dresses or suits on me in general, although if I have to show up to something super-formal I'd wear a dress. Maybe now that I don't trip on imaginary things all the time I'll start showing up to dances? I'd wear dresses to those, and I'll let you make 'em if you want if you let me vet the design."

Bella grins. "Spiffy. I wonder if dancing is one pentagon, or one per type?" She tries it. "Huh. Works with one, but I probably couldn't win a waltz contest, I think this is just general I-can-dance-now."

"...Wanna dance?" he suggests, grinning. Because why not?

"D'you know how?" Bella asks. "Yet?"

He shrugs and burns a pentagon.

Bella can see it disappear. She shrugs and puts some waltz music on, and leads, even though he's taller and she's a girl.

Bella laughs, and twirls him accordingly.

He loves her so much.