Infinite Cashback: My Wealth Rebate System

They wrapped the last set with Ben finally calling time, and Jason sat back against the bench, arms hanging loose and heavy at his sides, the kind of tired that settled deep rather than sitting on the surface.

Right. So this is apparently my life now, He flexed his fingers slowly, testing the ache that had crept in somewhere around the last few reps.

Every single day. Possibly forever. Because a floating notification told me my free upgrade comes with a subscription fee, and the fee is this. Whatever this is.

He thought back to the system’s exact wording, future improvements require real training and found himself almost laughing at how clinical it had sounded last night, stripped of any hint of what "real training" actually meant in practice.

Real training apparently, meant his own arms currently felt like they belonged to someone he owed money to.

"You’re doing the face again," Ben said, tossing his towel over one shoulder.

"What face."

"The face where you’re having some private internal crisis and trying really hard not to show it."

"I don’t have a face."

"Everyone has a face, Jason. That’s how faces work."

They headed to the locker rooms, showered fast, and Jason changed back into his regular clothes with the specific relief of a man returning a costume he hadn’t fully agreed to wear.

By the time they stepped back out into the morning air, bags over their shoulders, Ben had apparently used the entire shower as prep time for what he clearly considered the real main event of the walk home.

"So," Ben said, the second they were both outside, grin already loaded and ready. "Vivian."

"Here we go."

"I’m just saying. Big smile. Full introduction. Remembered your name. Brought up a specific moment from class." Ben ticked each point off like evidence in a trial he’d already decided the verdict for. "That’s not a small conversation, Jason. That’s a whole event."

"It was five minutes."

"Five very meaningful minutes."

"It was about a homework question."

"It started as a homework question. It’s never just about the homework question." Ben clapped him on the back, undeterred. "I give it two weeks before you’ve got a girlfriend."

"You’ve been saying that since freshman year about roughly four different girls, and I currently have zero girlfriends. Your track record is not exactly inspiring confidence."

"That’s because none of them had the specific energy Vivian had. This one’s different. I can feel it in my bones."

"Your bones are wrong."

"My bones are never wrong." Ben said it with total, unwavering conviction, the same tone he used for genuinely important claims and complete nonsense alike, which was, Jason reflected, most of what made him so hard to argue with.

Jason let the topic run its course without engaging further, mostly because he’d learned years ago that agreeing, disagreeing, and ignoring Ben all produced roughly the same amount of teasing, so there was no real strategic advantage to picking one over the others.

Besides he thought, glancing briefly at nothing in particular, even if there was something there, I’ve got enough going on right now without adding a second unexplainable thing to the pile. One mystery girl leaving my apartment last night was plenty for one week.

They walked another block in relative quiet before Ben spoke again, the teasing tone dropping into something more casual. "You going to Amanda’s thing tonight?"

Right. I totally forgot about that.

Jason had almost forgotten it was even happening, buried under everything else the last twelve hours had thrown at him. He ran the idea through his head for a second, weighing it.

Loud room, small talk, probably somebody’s cousin’s friend trying to sell me on a pyramid scheme disguised as a business opportunity. And after last night, with Sarah, the notebook, the system, all of it still sitting unresolved, the last thing I actually want is to stand in a crowded apartment pretending to be fine in front of an audience.

"No," he said. "I’ll pass."

"Okay, that’s good" Ben shrugged, unbothered.

Ben nodded solemnly. "Marcus is going, though. Obviously."

"Obviously."

"Man doesn’t skip a party in his life. I think if you cancelled oxygen he’d still show up somehow, purely out of spite."

"He’d find a way."

"He’d absolutely find a way." Ben shook his head, equal parts fond and exasperated. "Anyway. Same time tomorrow? Assuming you can still walk."

"We’ll find out."

They reached the corner where their paths split, the same intersection they’d met at that morning, and Ben lifted a hand in a lazy wave, already turning down his own street. "Later, man. Try not to die from soreness before tomorrow."

"No promises."

Jason watched him go for a second before turning the other way, the walk home stretching out ahead of him, quieter now without Ben’s running commentary filling every gap in the silence.

Jason pushed his apartment door open, stepped inside, and let it swing shut behind him with a soft click, the sound landing differently than it had last night, no dramatic weight to it this time, just an ordinary door doing an ordinary thing.

He toed off his shoes at the entrance, actually remembering this time, and set his gym bag down against the wall. The apartment greeted him in daylight now, sun cutting through the blinds in thin, even stripes across the floor, none of the shadowed heaviness from the night before still hanging around.

He unzipped the bag first, pulling out his damp towel and hanging it over the small drying rack by the kitchenette, the fabric still faintly warm from the gym shower. His water bottle went next, rinsed quickly under the tap and set upside down on the rack to dry, a small habitual motion his hands seemed to know without needing his brain fully involved.

Amanda’s party. The thought arrived quietly, almost as an afterthought, while he was folding his gym shirt and setting it aside for the wash.

He paused for a second, shirt still in hand, turning the thought over properly now that he’d actually noticed it. There’d been a time, and not that long ago either, when a party like tonight’s would’ve occupied his entire week leading up to it, every conversation mentally rehearsed in advance, every outfit considered twice. Amanda had been the center of a lot of his thinking, for longer than he probably wanted to admit out loud.

And now I just... forgot she existed for a solid twelve hours.

He set the shirt down, moving to unpack the rest of the bag, tossing his gym shorts into the small hamper by his closet.

Didn’t even remember the party was tonight until Ben brought it up. Didn’t think about her once this morning. Not during the gym. Not during any of it.

He crossed to his dresser, pulling out a clean set of clothes for later, laying them over the back of his desk chair without any real urgency behind the motion, just something to do with his hands while his mind kept working the thought over.

Why. He already half-knew the answer before he’d finished asking himself the question, and it arrived in two parts, distinct and separate, the way most things about last night had ended up sorting themselves into categories.

The system was the first part. Impossible to think about Amanda, about rejection, about any of the small human disappointments that used to occupy his whole evening, when there was a floating notification actively rewriting the physical shape of his own body while he slept.

Hard to be sad about a girl who didn’t want you when you’re busy processing the fact that your dick is two inches longer than they were yesterday.

Priorities had a way of reorganizing themselves fast when something genuinely inexplicable got dropped into the middle of your week.

He moved to the small kitchen, filling a glass with water, drinking half of it standing at the counter, working through the second part of the answer slower, more carefully, like handling something that might still be fragile.

Sarah.

That was the real one, if he was being honest with himself, and he generally tried to be, at least when no one else was around to overhear the process.

Somewhere between the kitchen and the couch and the kiss and the door closing behind her, Amanda had quietly gotten replaced as the person occupying the actual real estate in his head, without him consciously deciding to make the trade.

That’s probably not healthy he thought, setting the glass down, swapping one person out for another in under twenty four hours. That’s the kind of thing a therapist would have a whole diagnosis for.

But even acknowledging that didn’t actually change anything about the fact that it had happened, or that he wasn’t especially bothered by it happening.

He wandered toward his room, phone still in his back pocket, and sat down on the edge of his bed, the mattress dipping slightly under him, muscles in his legs finally registering the morning’s workout now that he’d stopped moving long enough for them to complain.

He pulled the phone out, thumb finding her name in his messages out of habit rather than decision, and the thread opened before he’d fully committed to the idea of opening it.

He read it again, slower this time, lying back fully now, staring up at the ceiling with the phone held above his face.

Should I say something.?

His thumb hovered over the keyboard, some half-formed sentence sitting just behind his teeth, something easy, something that wouldn’t push, wouldn’t demand the explanation she’d already asked to postpone.

He decided against it.

She said later. Properly. Not tonight, but later. I already agreed to that. Sending something now just because I’m bored and thinking about her isn’t actually about her needing to hear from me. It’s about me wanting to hear from her.

He set the phone down on his chest instead, staring at the ceiling, and let himself actually sit with the realization properly for the first time since he’d walked in the door.

It’s her, he thought, plainly, without any of the usual internal deflection.

Not Amanda. Hasn’t been Amanda since last night, probably. It’s just been Sarah, quietly, in the background of literally everything I’ve done today, and I only just now noticed I’ve been doing it.

The phone buzzed against his chest.

He sat up fast, thumb already swiping before he’d fully processed the motion, heart doing something quick and hopeful for exactly one second.

Mum: Hey sweetheart, call me when you’re free x

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