Infinite Cashback System

Chapter 259: 259 | I’m Not Dressing Up For My Ex-Girlfriend.

The Morning Person trait pulled Jordan out of sleep at 6:41 AM like clockwork, his eyes opening to amber light and the familiar ceiling of Chloe’s loft. She’d rolled onto her stomach during the night, one arm dangling off the mattress and her face buried so deep into the pillow that Jordan genuinely checked to make sure she was breathing. The blue streak in her hair fanned across white cotton like a brushstroke someone had left behind in a hurry.

Jordan lay there for a full minute watching the day’s timeline build itself piece by piece inside his skull like someone was stacking a Jenga tower that already looked unstable.

Classes ran straight through until noon without breaks. Econ at nine meant sitting between Kumiko and Alexis in their usual row, which guaranteed at least one whispered conversation about last night’s group chat activity that he hadn’t checked yet. Math at ten put him next to Ava in the back corner where she’d probably already finished half the problem set before the TA even showed up. Sociology at one was three rows of people he didn’t know and fifty minutes of pretending to care about social constructs while his brain catalogued everything else competing for attention.

The library meeting with Eliza came after that at two. Debate project partnership. Forty-five minutes in a study room with his ex-girlfriend who’d explicitly asked him to meet her there yesterday, which meant she wanted something beyond just coordinating citation formats and topic selection. He still hadn’t decided what his face was supposed to do when she showed up.

Boxing at Iron Coast started at three-thirty. Maya had promised him sparring drills today instead of conditioning work, which meant she’d found new and creative ways to make him regret asking for technique training. His ribs still remembered Tuesday’s body shot combinations.

Then home for a shower and wardrobe change before dinner with Lila at seven. Kumiko had transformed that into a full-scale recruitment event sometime between midnight and dawn despite receiving explicit instructions to keep the guest list at two people maximum. His phone had seventeen unread messages in the group chat, which meant she’d either invited half the campus or was planning something that required multi-paragraph justification text.

Jordan stared at the ceiling and did the math on hours versus obligations.

The numbers didn’t work. They never worked anymore. Three weeks ago his biggest scheduling conflict was deciding which League stream to watch while his takeout cooled on the nightstand. Now he ran a content creator agency that existed mostly on paper, co-owned a million-dollar hot springs resort he refused to acknowledge, maintained relationships with two girlfriends who had catalogued his stress responses in a shared document, and somehow found himself meeting his ex-girlfriend in a library study room fourteen hours from now.

Chloe’s phone alarm went off at 6:47, blasting a K-pop song that could have woken the entire fourth floor.

"Mmrgh." Chloe’s hand shot out from under the pillow and slapped the nightstand three times before her fingers closed around her phone. The music cut off mid-chorus. She went completely still after that, like her body needed to confirm the alarm was actually dead before committing to consciousness. Ten seconds passed before she rolled onto her back and stared at the ceiling with the kind of raw betrayal usually reserved for finding out your favorite show got cancelled.

"Making coffee," Jordan said as he swung his legs off the bed. "Yours is ready in four minutes."

"Five." Chloe dragged the blanket up over her head, cocooning herself completely. "Five minutes or I’m filing paperwork."

"Four and a half."

Something emerged from beneath the blanket that could have been acceptance or could have been a promise of violence. Jordan decided to take it as the first option and headed for the stairs.

The coffee machine gurgled and hissed on the counter while Jordan leaned against the granite and unlocked his phone.

Kumiko had sent nine messages starting at 5:58 AM and ending at 6:12, beginning with a play-by-play of her morning stretching routine that included timestamps for each pose and concluding with a photograph of her breakfast toast.

She’d arranged strawberry jam to spell LOVE across the bread, except the V looked closer to a U and the E was missing its middle horizontal line completely, giving the whole thing a ransom-note quality that was somehow both charming and vaguely threatening.

Jordan typed back: good morning. your toast says LOUE.

Kumiko’s response arrived in under four seconds: IT SAYS LOVE IF YOU BELIEVE HARD ENOUGH

He smiled and set the phone down. Then picked it up again. Scrolled past Kumiko’s messages to the conversation with Eliza from the previous night.

perfect. see you then.

thanks for being professional about this. i know i don’t deserve it.

Jordan read that second message twice. The old version of him would have spent forty minutes crafting a response that communicated forgiveness, understanding, and a subtle plea for her to recognize his value. He would have deleted six drafts, sent something too long, then immediately regretted half of it.

The new Jordan closed the conversation and opened his closet app instead.

Because here was the thing. He had to meet Eliza today. In a study room. Alone. For the first time since Christmas Day, when she’d walked into a love hotel with Cameron Mitchell while Jordan stood in the parking lot and cried for twenty minutes. The question that kept nagging the back of his skull wasn’t whether he could handle it emotionally. He could. He’d proven that yesterday in Delgado’s class when they’d been assigned as partners and he’d felt nothing more significant than the mild annoyance of being stuck in traffic.

The question that nagged was stupider. More embarrassing. The kind of question that would have made Kyle laugh and Chloe narrow her eyes.

What should he wear?

Jordan caught himself scrolling through the outfit photos from his Nordstrom shopping trip. The charcoal slacks Alexis had selected. The navy button-up Chloe had tied a Windsor knot for. The bomber jacket that made his shoulders look like they belonged on a magazine cover.

He stopped scrolling.

What the fuck was he doing?

This was Eliza Hartwell. The girl who called him "just some guy from class" while Cameron groped her in a parking lot. The girl who accepted a twenty-eight hundred dollar Prada bag and still couldn’t remember his birthday. The girl who had dinner with him twelve times over two months and never once touched his hand across the table.

Jordan was not dressing up for Eliza Hartwell. That was simp shit. That was old Jordan behavior. That was the kind of desperate, validation-seeking garbage that led to spending forty-five hundred dollars on a woman who viewed him as a walking ATM with a pulse.

He locked his phone and pulled open the dresser drawer.