Friday.
Placed the order before I'd talked myself out of it this time. Before I'd told anyone, even.
Fifteen roll-ons, one for every girl on my daughter's formal table, plus a couple spare in case anyone else asks on the night.
Sixteen dollars each at the price I've been staring at all week. Thirteen once I actually opened my own account and went through with it — the member price, mine now, apparently, whether I'd quite believed it or not.
Hundred and ninety-five dollars, all up. Forty-five less than it would've been a fortnight ago, before any of this started.
Thumb over the confirm button longer than fifteen roll-ons really warranted. Then it was done. Order number, delivery estimate, the whole ordinary transaction of it.
Only after did I ring Ninuo.
Told myself it was just manners — you don't leave someone standing at the door they held open for you without at least saying thank you on your way through. Told myself that was the only reason.
She went quiet for a second when I told her, the good kind of quiet, then started talking fast, more excited about it than I was.
Then she said the other thing.
Because she's my sponsor, she said, whatever the company sends her way for this order — her cut, for bringing me in — she wanted to hand straight back to me. A reward, she called it. Nothing to sign, nothing owed either direction.
I told her no. Plainly, not the polite kind of no.
She laughed it off the way she does, said we'd sort it out later, said I'd change my mind once I actually saw the number.
I said I probably wouldn't. Didn't push it into an argument neither of us was going to win over the phone. Nothing had actually landed anywhere yet anyway, hers or mine, so there wasn't much to argue about yet, not really.
Told my daughter over dinner. Just the number — fifteen — and what they were for.
She put her fork down properly, the way she does when something's actually landed. "Fifteen. That's basically the whole table."
Asked what colour they came in, whether the box was nice enough to photograph, whether I'd let her help wrap them once they arrived.
Yes to all three, though I hadn't seen the box myself yet.
Sat at the table a while after she'd gone up, still turning the sponsor thing over.
It's not that I don't trust her. I do, more than most people I've known three months.
It's that I don't want the maths to ever get complicated between us. A gift someone insists on is still a gift I didn't ask for, and I've never been sure what you owe a person for those.
Told myself I'd say no again if she brought it up a second time. Didn't fully believe myself, saying it.
First order, though. Properly mine this time — my account, my thumb on the button, my name on the confirmation, done before I'd even told a soul.
Whatever Ninuo does with her end of it is still sitting somewhere between us, unsettled, waiting for whichever one of us brings it up next.