Infinite Cashback: My Wealth Rebate System

Jason sat on the edge of his bed listening to the sounds drifting in from the kitchen. The soft sizzle of batter hitting a hot pan. The quiet clink of a spatula against metal.

Sarah humming something under her breath that he couldn’t quite place, some tune that kept losing its own melody halfway through before starting over from a different place entirely.

Two days.

He let the thought settle properly this time instead of brushing past it.

I’ve known her well for two days and she’s in my kitchen right now making me breakfast wearing my shirt.

He glanced down at the sheets still slightly rumpled beside him and caught the faint trace of her perfume clinging to the fabric.

My bed smells like her now. That’s a fact about my life as of this morning.

It felt distantly unreal. The kind of thing that belonged in a movie montage rather than an actual Sunday.

He’d gone from standing alone in his living room convinced he’d ruined something to this in the span of two nights, and the distance between those two versions of himself felt too large to have crossed in such a short window.

And her attraction’s at fifty two percent now.

He allowed himself the small private satisfaction of that number settling somewhere alongside everything else, though even as he thought it, some quieter part of him noted how strange it was to have a number attached to a feeling at all.

Guess I’m not ruining things quite as badly as I thought.

The humming from the kitchen stopped. A pause. Then a small muttered curse followed by the scrape of the spatula against the pan more urgently than before.

"Everything okay in there," he called.

"Fine. Perfect. Under control." A beat. "One pancake had an accident. It’s fine. Casualties happen."

"Should I be worried about the rest of them."

"The rest of them are innocent. Leave them out of this."

He huffed a short laugh, shaking his head, and settled back to wait, the domestic absurdity of the whole exchange doing something warm and unfamiliar to his chest.

Sarah appeared in the doorway a moment later balancing two plates carefully, one stacked with pancakes clearly meant for him and a smaller portion on the other for herself, the edge of one pancake visibly darker than the rest, the casualty she’d mentioned apparently making the cut anyway. She crossed the room and handed him his plate first before settling down beside him on the bed, her shoulder pressing against his, the same easy closeness from last night already feeling routine.

"Okay don’t judge me," she said, cutting into her own stack. "I haven’t made these in a while."

"They look fine."

"They look fine is not the compliment you think it is."

"It’s an honest compliment. I’ll upgrade to great once I’ve tasted it."

She rolled her eyes and took a bite of her own first, watching him carefully as he cut into his. He took a bite. Chewed. Considered it seriously, drawing the moment out longer than necessary just to watch her fidget slightly beside him.

"Well," she said, unable to wait any longer. "Verdict."

"Acceptable."

"Acceptable." She looked personally offended, setting her fork down like the insult required her full attention. "I made you breakfast and the best you’ve got is acceptable."

"High praise coming from me."

"I don’t believe that for a second." She reached over without warning and stole a piece directly off his plate, popping it into her mouth before he could react. "Needed a second opinion. Mine."

"You have your own plate."

"Yours has more syrup. You’re better at pouring."

"That’s not a skill."

"It’s absolutely a skill. Some people drown the pancake. Some people underdo it completely. You found the exact right ratio." She reached for another piece and this time he caught her wrist before she could steal it, swatting her hand away lightly.

"Get your own."

"I’m getting yours. It’s better."

"It’s the same syrup."

"Doesn’t matter. Yours tastes better because I didn’t have to pour it myself." She said it with total conviction, like the logic was airtight, and stole the piece anyway while he was still holding her wrist loosely, the theft accomplished with her free hand before he’d even registered the maneuver.

"That’s cheating."

"There’s no rulebook. You can’t cheat a game that doesn’t exist."

"There’s an unspoken rulebook."

"Unspoken rules don’t count. I looked it up once." She said it with such casual confidence that he almost believed her had actually looked it up somewhere, filed away in the same mental drawer as her theories about smiles and chess commentary voices.

He gave up trying to defend his plate after that, letting her pick at it periodically between bites of her own while he did the same in return, reaching over to steal a piece off hers just to see her swat at him the exact way he’d swatted at her.

"Hey," she protested through a laugh. "That’s mine."

"You’ve been eating off mine for five minutes."

"That’s different."

"How is that different."

"It just is." She said it with total confidence again, offering absolutely nothing to back it up, and he found himself laughing properly at the sheer nerve of it, the sound easy and unguarded in a way mornings in this apartment hadn’t been in longer than he wanted to think about.

"You’re impossible," he said, still laughing.

"I’m delightful. There’s a difference." She reached for another piece off his plate, purely on principle this time, chewing it with the smug satisfaction of a woman fully aware she’d already won whatever argument they were technically having.

They settled into an easy rhythm after that, trading bites back and forth without any real system to it, Sarah narrating increasingly elaborate opinions about the specific ratio of pancake to syrup while Jason mostly just let her talk, content to watch her get worked up over something that objectively didn’t matter at all.

At one point she launched into a full, unprompted theory about how syrup should be applied in layers rather than all at once, gesturing with her fork for emphasis, and Jason nodded along seriously, asking exactly one clarifying question purely to watch her double down on an answer she was clearly making up as she went.

"You’re humoring me," she said eventually, narrowing her eyes.

"A little."

"That’s worse than disagreeing with me."

"Noted. I’ll disagree next time."

"Don’t. I like being humored." She grinned, stealing one final piece off his plate before he could object, and settled back slightly against the headboard, the morning light catching the edge of her hair.

Eventually she set her fork down, leaning back slightly with a satisfied sigh. "Okay. I’m full."

"Already?"

"I had a big dinner last night." She glanced sideways at him, a small teasing smile pulling at her mouth. "Among other things."

"Very smooth."

"I thought so." She watched him finish the last few bites of his own plate, comfortable in the quiet now that the teasing had settled into something warmer, less performative, the kind of silence that didn’t need filling the way it once might have.

She stood up a moment later, stretching slightly, the hem of his shirt riding up just enough to be distracting before settling back into place, and crossed over towards the edge of the bed toward his desk where her phone had been left charging since the night before, picking it up to check the time.

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