Read Chapter 8: Flat Viewing

The wet sniff of a six-hour-old coffee and three empty energy drink cans greeted the knock at the door. Jazz glanced at Tom, who looked like a man who’d fought a war with a keyboard and lost. His shirt was untucked, his hair was doing something that could only be described as “aggressive,” and there was a smear of ink on his cheek from a pen he’d chewed through hours ago.

“Five minutes,” she hissed, straightening her own sweater. She’d at least managed to run a brush through her hair and slap on some mascara in the mirrorless bathroom, but the dark circles under her eyes were doing their own thing. “We present confident. We present together. We do *not* mention the patent unless he does.”

“And if he does?” Tom asked, his voice gravelly.

“Then we smile and say ‘pending’ and change the subject,” she said, her stomach twisting. The lie was a stone in her gut that had been growing heavier by the hour.

The knock came again—sharper, more impatient.

Tom pulled the door open with a practiced smile that didn’t reach his eyes. “Alex, hey. Come in, come in.”

Alex was exactly the kind of man who made Jazz instantly aware she hadn’t slept in her own bed in two days. Tall, casually dressed in a cashmere crewneck that probably cost more than their boiler repair, with salt-and-pepper hair that was either incredibly distinguished or a dye job gone wrong. He had the easy confidence of someone who’d never had to worry about a boiler in his life.

“Thanks for having me,” Alex said, stepping into the flat. His eyes swept the space with the practiced appraisal of a man who looked at everything and bought nothing. “Quirky layout. High ceilings.”

“Victorian conversion,” Tom said, launching into his spiel. “Original crown moulding, but we’ve wired it for the twenty-first century. Fiber optic, smart thermostats—well, we had a smart thermostat.”

“It’s being repaired,” Jazz cut in smoothly. “November in London. The boiler chose violence.”

Alex laughed, a warm sound that softened his edges. “I know the type. My first flat in Shoreditch—the landlord called the boiler ‘ornamental.’” He walked toward the kitchen, running a hand over the countertop. “So, this is where the magic happens? The flat that’s going to disrupt the hospitality sector from a two-bedroom in Camden?”

“Three-bedroom,” Jazz corrected. “But who’s counting.”

Tom shot her a look—*don’t be defensive*—and stepped forward. “What Jazz means is, we’ve got a scalable model. The flat is just our launchpad. We’re not building a hotel empire from here; we’re building the software that powers it.”

Alex nodded, his eyes landing on the whiteboard propped against the wall. Jazz’s stomach did a slow roll. The whiteboard had their entire dynamic buffer scheduling architecture sketched out in Tom’s messy handwriting, complete with a half-corrected formula she’d been meaning to fix.

“Is that the new feature?” Alex asked, moving toward it. “I read the pitch deck. Dynamic buffer scheduling. That’s an interesting play.”

Tom’s smile tightened. “That’s the differentiator. We’re not just matching travelers with hosts—we’re predicting demand patterns and adjusting availability windows in real time. It’s—” He glanced at Jazz, who gave him a barely perceptible nod. “—proprietary.”

“We’re still documenting the full spec,” Jazz added, moving to stand beside Tom. “It’s the kind of thing you want to get absolutely right before you broadcast it to the world.”

“Smart,” Alex said, and there was genuine interest in his voice. “So walk me through the pricing. The deck mentioned a tiered model.”

Jazz felt the ground shift beneath her feet. “Tiered?” she repeated, buying a second.

“Yes,” Alex said, turning to look at her directly. His eyes were kind but sharp. “You talked about a three-tier structure: a free tier for occasional hosts, a pro tier for regulars, and something about white-label for enterprise. I was curious how you landed on the numbers.”

Jazz froze. She knew the free tier. She knew the pro tier—barely. But white-label for enterprise? That had never been in any conversation she and Tom had had. They’d argued about whether to charge £2.99 or £4.99 per booking for two hours one night, and Tom had thrown a burrito at the wall in frustration. She’d never even *thought* about enterprise.

Tom, to his credit, didn’t miss a beat. “The enterprise tier is still in shadow,” he said smoothly. “We’re validating demand with a few friendly partners before we put a hard number on it. But the philosophy is simple: the more hosts you service, the more data you clean, the better the buffer predictions. So we price along that curve.”

Alex nodded slowly. “Makes sense. And the free tier—what’s the cap? Ten host profiles?”

“Twelve,” Jazz said, because it was the only number she could think of that didn’t sound insane. “We found twelve is the sweet spot. Enough to see value, not enough to run a full commercial operation without upgrading.”

Alex’s brow furrowed—just a little, just for a second. “Huh. The deck said twelve. Most teams I see go with five or twenty. Twelve is… specific.”

“We did the math,” Tom said, his voice a little too tight.

The silence stretched, a rope being pulled taut. Jazz could feel the sweat forming at the nape of her neck. Alex looked between them, and for one terrible moment, she saw the flicker of something—suspicion? Amusement?—cross his face. Then it was gone, replaced by a smooth smile.

“Well, specificity is good. It shows you’ve thought about it,” he said, clapping his hands together. “Mind if I see the bedroom setup?”

Jazz blinked. “The—the bedroom?”

“For the demo,” Alex clarified. “I’m assuming you’ve staged one of them as a mock host suite. To walk investors through the guest-side experience.”

Tom’s face went blank. Jazz could see the calculation happening behind his eyes—*we have not done that, we have a mattress on the floor peeling paint off the radiators*—and she knew she had to step in fast.

“Actually, we’re running a live demo tonight,” she said, gesturing vaguely toward the hallway. “Real host, real booking. The bedroom is currently in operational mode, so we’ve had to swap the staging kit out. But I can walk you through the guest flow right now if you want.”

“Later maybe,” Alex said, his tone pleasant but nonspecific. He drifted back toward the front door, his gaze landing on the pile of post-it notes stuck to the wall—Davis’s name circled three times, a phone number, a string of error codes. “You’ve got a full plate. I can see that.”

Tom stepped forward. “Alex, we’re in a sprint. The deadline is tight, we’ll hit it, and when we do, we could use a partner who understands that passion and velocity matter more than polish.”

Alex paused, his hand on the doorframe. He looked at Tom with an expression Jazz couldn’t read. Then he turned to her. “You’ve got a good partner,” he said, nodding toward Tom. “Most founders would have crumbled under this kind of pressure. You two seem to hold the line well together.”

Something hot and sharp flared in Jazz’s chest. It wasn’t pride—it wasn’t even warmth. It was the sudden, unmistakable irritation of watching Alex’s gaze linger on Tom a beat longer than necessary, his smile going just slightly softer as he added, “That’s rare. Treasure it.”

“We do,” Jazz said, her voice clipped. “Thanks for coming by. We’ll send you the updated deck.”

Alex pulled the door open, stepped out into the thin November light, and looked back once. “I look forward to it. And Tom—try to get some sleep. You’re running on fumes, and I can see the genius under there asking to be let out.”

The door clicked shut.

For a moment, the flat was silent. The radiator hissed. The kettle on the counter let out a measly dribble of cooling steam. Jazz turned to Tom, whose cheeks had gone the color of a traffic cone.

“He called me genius,” Tom said weakly.

“He complimented your aura,” Jazz said, crossing her arms. “And did absolutely nothing to commit to an investment.”

“He said we hold the line well together.”

“He was being polite because he knows we’re two broke idiots who just lied about a pricing tier we never invented.”

Tom’s face fell. “Shit. The enterprise tier. That was from the deck Marcus wrote. I didn’t draft that. I didn’t even read that far.”

“Twelve was a guess,” Jazz admitted. “I just picked a number that sounded researched.”

Tom ran both hands through his hair, making it even worse. “So we just told an investor—a potential angel—that we have a tiered strategy we haven’t built, a patent we haven’t filed, and a demo we haven’t fully tested?”

“Yes,” Jazz said. “But he left. Which means he didn’t see through us *yet*. Which means we have time.”

She looked at the whiteboard, the chaos of post-its, the coffeemaker that had given them three cups then died a noble death. Somewhere in the distance, a clock chimed. Davis’s booking was in four hours.

“Time,” Tom repeated dully. “Right. Does Marcus’s deadline still matter if we don’t survive tonight?”

Jazz opened her mouth to answer, but the flash of Alex’s warm smile directed at Tom flickered behind her eyes—and she didn’t like what it did to her pulse.