It's approximately ten minutes before someone—not someone interesting, or at least not Googlably so—asks her just who made her dress. The lady in question is dressed very nicely herself, in something sleek and elegant and muted pink-red that complements her curling steel-grey hair.

"Laney did, actually," Bella says with a smile. She has no way to know if this woman is asking her because she likes the dress or because she doesn't, but this answer will cut off most overt sniping. "Yours is lovely!"

"Very much so," Bella enthuses merrily. "I'm Bella. What's your name?"

"Sophie," says, apparently, Sophie. "It's just lovely to meet you. Are you one of Laney's friends?"

"He's my boyfriend, as of recently," Bella says. "How do you know the family?"

"Judith and I go way back," she says airily. "I haven't seen much of her since she started seeing that man, but I think that'll change now, don't you?"

"Seems likely, especially since you're here," Bella says.

Sophie chuckles. "Yes, I suppose so."

[Hiding in the basement,] says Alice. [Sophie, huh? Who's she?]

[Random person, unGoogleable, gray hair, pinkish dress, old friend of your mom's who stopped hanging around when your mom started seeing "that man".]

[Huh. Never heard of her. Maybe I should come up and say hi.]

"Hi, Bella!" says the interesting rich person. "I'm Nathan." Referring to her recently consumed jalapeno popper, "Are those things any good?"

"Everything Hilary makes is good," Bella says. "This thing in particular is not only good, but also spicy and cheesy. Nathan... wait, Nathan Hall?" She's pretending she doesn't have all publicly available information about him memorized, aww. "Didn't you found Postnet?"

"I've heard of it, that's all. I don't have massive hard drives that need to go anywhere so I haven't used it, but I read an article about it somewhere," she says vaguely.

"Well, if you do need to send a massive hard drive somewhere, I know just the people," says Nathan with a wink.

Bella laughs. "Good to know. Anything else in the works? I bet you don't personally courier drives, so now that it's up and running they probably don't call you much."

"Actually, funny story," he says, gesturing with his still-untouched popper, "I did do a run once. It just so happened that we were short a truck, and it just so happened that I was going in the right direction. I dropped off the goods along the way. It was all very exciting."

"Not so exciting that you did it twice, it sounds like," Bella points out archly.

"Well, we have people for that." He winks again. "And technically, I'm not qualified."

Bella chuckles. He doesn't seem to want to talk about whatever else he's doing. That's okay. There are more people around. Bella averts her gaze and drifts away after a few seconds have passed in silence and she can do it without being rude.

Across the room, Alice has found Sophie and they are getting along, or at least, she's laughing at his jokes.

Oh, there's a good excuse. Bella wanders in that direction, touches Alice on the shoulder and smiles - just a gesture of having noticed that he's there - and now she's on the other side of the room, next to Mr. Faceless Corporations. "Oh, hello!"

Bella doesn't like that; shades of Mike in a dude three times Mike's age is about three times less pleasant. But she is in a room full of people and she has freaking magic; she just won't go off anywhere with this guy, that's all. [Do you know this one?] she asks Alice, before politely, leaning on that acting pentagon, saying, "My name's Bella."

"Likewise," says Arthur, with a big, big smile. "What's a nice girl like you doing in a room full of old farts?"

Bella reaches behind her and grabs Alice's hand, although she doesn't pull on it enough to suggest he turn around. "Visiting," she says.

"With Junior?" asks Arthur, raising his eyebrows at their joined hands, as though he can just imagine the sort of person who'd visit Junior. Alice does not, indeed, turn around, nor does he pay Arthur any attention whatsoever, but he does squeeze Bella's hand.

"I don't think he really goes by that," says Bella, a faint edge to her voice. She squeezes back and lets go; she communicated her point.

"I can never keep up with these nicknames," Arthur says dismissively.

"'Junior' is a nickname," Bella points out, shrugging. "Ooh, watercress sandwiches." New hors d'oeuvres are being put out periodically, and she's going to be leaning heavily on that. She strides for the little sandwiches and takes one.

"Check again," Bella recommends. She turns to a nearby Startup Lady and fakes enthralled surprise. "Holy cow, are you Marisa Page? I just missed your speaking engagement three weeks ago. Someone from my class on operating systems went, but I had a conflict."

Bella gives Arthur one wide-eyed look of affected hurt, then huffs audibly and takes a step towards Marisa. She will get mileage out of being a rude young lady if that is what it takes to disengage from him. "I got a copy of the handout, though." And looked at it for exactly one second. "My classmate wanted to ask you why you're using Common Lisp instead of his favorite implementation, but there wasn't time. He'll flip if I tell him I met you and got to ask."

"Scheme," Bella replies, bouncing on her toes a little.

"Well, your classmate might be disappointed with my answer," says Marisa, "but the truth is I'm just more comfortable in Common Lisp."

"I'll tell him," Bella says. "He might email you. I think he might have been planning to do that anyway. I'm all about Python myself."

"To each her own, I guess," says Marisa, with the air of one who definitely does not believe herself.

"Well, I know Lisp, I just get sick of staring at parentheses after a while," says Bella. "I'm trying to be versatile though."

"Versatility is good," says Marisa. "Are you in college?"

"Freshman at Stanford," Bella says. "My dad lives here, though, and also there's Laney, so I'm going to be up for the occasional weekend, and a party's a decent excuse for it to be this weekend and not another."

"Well, come talk to me if you change your mind about parentheses in the next four years, and there might be a job interview in it for you."

"Ooh. Thanks," says Bella, smiling brightly. "That's very kind of you!"

"Well, I like helping out my friends," she says. "And my friends' friends. And my friends' sons' friends, apparently."

Bella giggles. "That doesn't make it any less kind."

"In that case, thank you," she says. "And you're welcome."

Bella grins, and says, "I don't think I ever told you my name. I'm Bella Swan."

"It's nice to meet you, Bella Swan!"

"Likewise. How do you know Laney's mom, anyway?"

"Knitting," says Marisa, "believe it or not. I met her at a local stitch'n'bitch in New York a few years back. She didn't stick with knitting for long, but she stuck with me."

"Nice," Bella says approvingly. "My grandmother taught me to knit once, or tried. Couldn't remember how to cast on after I got home."

"Try Youtube," Marisa advises.

"That would probably help," agrees Bella. "I really love the internet."

"Don't we all," laughs Marisa.

"Enh, my dad doesn't really understand it," Bella volunteers. "My mom does though, at least well enough to operate her laptop and email me, and find urban legends to believe."

"Ooh." She snickers. "A crushing indictment of the older generation. But not, I must say, an inaccurate one."

"Plenty of people my age are at least as bad," laughs Bella. "But the people my age who are terrible with computers don't have tech-savvy children - well, I hope - to mock them."

"Somewhere in the world, I'm sure there is a teen mother with a five-year-old supergenius patiently telling her to power-cycle the modem again," says Marisa.

"Hi," he says, hugging her. [How'd your getting to know the rich people go?]

[I like Marisa, she's cool. That one guy Arthur is kind of a creep. The fellow with the literacy program is tiresome.] "Hi."

[Yeah, Arthur's an asshole,] Alice agrees. [Didn't know he was the kind of asshole who hits on teenagers, but it doesn't surprise me.]

[He didn't exactly hit on me. Then again, Mike never exactly hit on me either,] Bella says disgustedly.

[Yeah. I want that.]

[Great. Lair?]

[I have to leave via motorcycle, since that's how I got here, but if we go into and out of the lair through the basement and make sure we'll notice if someone wanders amongst the columns looking for us, yes.]

[Works for me,] he says cheerfully, and de-hugs to head for the basement.

They lair in the lair and snuggle.

Snuggles are indeed great! Bella needed some snuggles. That guy bothered her.

[Sure.] It occurs to Bella that she didn't mention the exact date to him at any point. [It's the thirteenth.]

[Okay! Can I bring you the cake?] As opposed to inviting her into his lair for it.

[What's the explanation for how you baked me a cake in Stanford or brought it to Stanford from Forks?]

[I'm rich and rich people can do anything? No one will care,] he predicts.

[Mmm... don't think so. It'd niggle at me if it were someone else. Either conjure it a cake box that makes it look like you bought it or we can eat in the lair.]

That handled, Bella shifts position slightly to take pressure off her elbow. Snuggle snuggle.

[Everyone's going to want to know where it came from. I think this again calls for "it was custom from a really exclusive place",] Bella sighs. [Put a logo but not a name on the box so it's hard to Google.]

[I could just make it a plain box,] he suggests. [With your name written on it in Sharpie, so it looks like it was one of a bunch and they needed to label them.]

[That works too.]

Yay! He did a smart!

Bella laughs and kisses him.

Alice giggles and kisses back.