Chapter 230: 231 | Harrison Van Allen the Third
Kumiko snatched the bag away so fast she nearly gave herself whiplash. "No! I was saving it! For you! Sit!"
Jordan sat.
The lecture hall continued to fill around them. Devon Park took his usual spot in the middle-right section, laptop already open and covered in finance club stickers. A group of athletes claimed the back row and immediately started scrolling through their phones.
And then Alexis Van Der Berg walked in.
The effect was immediate. Conversations dimmed. Heads turned. Even Dr. Jones looked up from his slides for a moment before returning to his notes with the air of someone who had seen too many freshman queens to be impressed.
Alexis wore white. Of course she wore white. A cropped Aritzia top that showed a sliver of toned midriff, paired with distressed Re/Done jeans and Golden Goose sneakers that looked deliberately scuffed in a way that probably cost extra. Her honey-blonde hair fell in perfect waves past her shoulders, and her blue eyes scanned the lecture hall like a general surveying a battlefield.
Those eyes found Jordan.
Something flickered across Alexis’s face. Recognition. Annoyance. Something else that Jordan couldn’t quite identify before her expression smoothed into the default mask of aristocratic boredom she wore like armor.
She walked directly toward them.
Kumiko’s hand found Jordan’s knee under the desk. Her fingers curled into the fabric of his jeans, a small anchor against whatever storm was approaching.
"Kumiko." Alexis’s voice was honeyed acid. "Jordan."
"Hey, Alexis."
Alexis’s eyes dropped to where Kumiko’s hand rested on Jordan’s leg. Her perfectly shaped eyebrows rose approximately two millimeters.
"Interesting seating choice."
"Third row is optimal," Kumiko said. Her voice was steadier than Jordan expected. "Close enough to seem engaged but far enough that Professor Jones cannot see if you check your phone."
"I wasn’t asking about the row."
The air between them felt heavier. Jordan recognized this dance from watching Chloe navigate social situations. The subtext beneath the text beneath the actual words being spoken.
Alexis was pissed.
Not obviously pissed. Not throwing-drinks-at-faces pissed. But the kind of pissed that built up slowly over time, layer by layer, until it became something sharp enough to cut.
"Is this seat taken?" Alexis gestured to the empty chair on Jordan’s other side.
"No," Jordan said.
Alexis sat down. Her signature scent, Baccarat Rouge 540, filled the immediate vicinity with something expensive and intoxicating. Jordan’s nose registered the notes automatically: cedar, amber, something sweet underneath that made his hindbrain pay attention even when his conscious mind wanted to ignore it.
"So." Alexis pulled out her phone and began scrolling. "You’re dating my best friends now."
"Alexis." Kumiko’s voice carried a warning.
"What? I’m just stating facts. One month ago Jordan McKnight was that weird guy who spent forty-five hundred dollars on a girl who didn’t even kiss him. Now he’s dating Chloe and apparently also dating you, which is..." She paused, considering. "Impressive, I guess. For a former simp."
Jordan felt his jaw tighten. The Christmas parking lot. Eliza. Cameron Mitchell’s tongue down his girlfriend’s throat while Jordan stood there like a broken NPC.
The old Jordan would have apologized. Would have made himself smaller. Would have accepted the insult and internalized it like poison.
The new Jordan smiled.
"Former simp is the key phrase there," he said. "People change."
Alexis’s phone lowered slightly. Her blue eyes met his, and Jordan saw something flicker behind them. Surprise, maybe. Or curiosity. Or the particular interest of a predator encountering prey that refused to run.
"Do they?"
"I did."
"Hmm."
Dr. Jones cleared his throat and began his lecture. The familiar monotone filled the hall, slides advancing with mechanical regularity as he explained aggregate demand curves with all the passion of someone reading a grocery list.
Jordan tried to focus on the material. He really did. But Alexis sat six inches to his right, close enough that her perfume kept drifting into his awareness, and Kumiko sat to his left with her hand still on his knee, and somewhere across campus Chloe was in her own class thinking about streaming schedules and business plans.
His phone buzzed. A message from Kumiko, despite the fact that she sat directly next to him.
Alexis is being weird.
Jordan typed back: Define weird.
She keeps looking at you when she thinks I am not looking.
Jordan risked a glance to his right. Alexis’s eyes were fixed on her phone, scrolling through what appeared to be Instagram. But her head was tilted slightly in his direction. Listening.
He typed: Maybe she’s just interested in the lecture.
Kumiko sent back a string of skeptical emojis.
The lecture continued. Dr. Jones droned on about fiscal policy and government spending multipliers. Jordan took notes because he’d learned that Brooke would quiz him on this material later and her disappointment was worse than any professor’s.
At the thirty-minute mark, Alexis leaned closer.
"My parents are making me meet with someone this weekend." Her voice was low enough that only Jordan could hear. "Calligraphy and tea ceremony lessons. With my potential future husband."
Jordan kept his eyes on the slides. "Congratulations?"
"His name is Harrison. Harrison Van Allen the Third." The disgust in her voice was barely concealed. "He’s twenty-three and already works at his father’s investment firm. Drives a Porsche. Has a summer house in the Hamptons. Everything you’d expect from old money trying to marry into even older money."
"Sounds ideal."
"He talked about himself for forty-five minutes last time we met. His portfolio performance. His yacht. His vintage Rolex collection. His charity board appearances." Alexis’s nails clicked against her phone case. "Not once did he ask me a single question about myself."
Jordan wasn’t sure why she was telling him this. They weren’t friends. They were barely acquaintances. The only connection between them was Chloe and Kumiko, and apparently Jordan dating both of them had done something to Alexis’s mental calculus.
"That sucks," he said finally.
"It does."
"You could say no."
Alexis laughed. The sound was sharp and humorless and drew a brief glance from Devon Park two rows back.
"You don’t say no to a Van Der Berg arrangement. My father would disown me. My mother would never speak to me again. My entire social position would collapse overnight." She paused.
"Not that you’d understand that. Your family owns convenience stores, right?"
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