Infinite Cashback System

Chapter 348: 348 | People Aren’t ATMs

The smoothie shop sat across the street from the humanities building, a pink-and-green establishment called JuicedUp that served fourteen-dollar drinks to college students who believed acai was a personality trait. Eliza held the door open for Jordan, which was new. During their two months of fake dating she’d never held a door, carried a bag, or made any physical gesture that implied she considered Jordan a person rather than a service.

The interior smelled like frozen fruit and manufactured wellness. Pop music played at a volume designed to encourage spending and discourage thinking. Two girls from their sociology class sat in the corner and noticed Jordan and Eliza walk in together, their eyes widening before their heads dipped toward a shared phone screen. Campus gossip moved faster than light and Jordan would bet cash that Kyle received a screenshot within four minutes.

Eliza ordered a medium strawberry acai bowl. Jordan ordered a large mango protein smoothie, extra banana, peanut butter.

"Twenty-three dollars," the cashier said.

Eliza produced a credit card with the ease of someone who’d been taught that paying was a weapon and had only recently considered that it could also be a gift. Jordan watched her sign the receipt and add a four-dollar tip, which she did without being asked, another behavioral data point that didn’t match the girl who’d accepted a twenty-eight-hundred-dollar Prada bag and said "thanks, that’s sweet" before texting Cameron from the bathroom.

They sat on opposite sides of a small table near the window. Jordan chose the seat facing the door because Maya had mentioned during clinch work on Tuesday that positioning matters even when nobody’s throwing punches, and the lesson had seeped into his daily life the way all of Maya’s lessons did, silently and permanently.

Eliza arranged her acai bowl and spoon with the deliberate care of someone who needed to occupy her hands. Her cream sweater had slipped off one shoulder, revealing the black strap and a strip of collarbone that caught afternoon light from the window. Her eyelashes cast tiny shadows on her cheeks when she blinked. She was, by any objective measurement, extremely pretty. Jordan observed this with the clinical detachment of a man whose bed contained two other women’s hair ties and a rubber duck named Gerald.

"Can I say something without you leaving?"

"You can say whatever you want. I have twenty-eight minutes."

Eliza’s smile flickered, caught between amused and hurt. "You used to never time things."

"I used to do a lot of things differently."

"Yeah." She stirred her acai bowl without eating it. "You really did."

Jordan drank his smoothie and said nothing. The mango was cold and good and cost more than a reasonable person would pay for blended fruit, but Eliza was paying and Chloe had told him to order the large and drink it slow, and Jordan had learned over the past six weeks that following Chloe’s instructions produced better outcomes than any alternative strategy he’d ever devised.

"The debate today," Eliza said. "You were different. Not just from before. Different from Thursday." She pushed a blueberry to the edge of her bowl with the spoon. "On Thursday you were professional. Today you were angry. When you talked about Cameron’s grandfather and the VA loan, you weren’t reciting sources. You were mad."

Jordan considered lying. Chloe’s protocol specified indifference, not vulnerability. But the truth would move the needle further than a lie, and the truth cost nothing because Jordan no longer cared what Eliza thought of his emotions.

"Cameron kissed you in a parking lot on Christmas while I stood six feet away. He put his hands on you and you leaned into it. He called me a simp and you didn’t correct him. Then you walked into a love hotel with him while I watched." Jordan’s voice remained level. The smoothie remained in his hand. His pulse didn’t move. "So yeah. When I stand in front of a classroom and explain that Cameron Mitchell’s wealth came from a system designed to benefit people who look like Cameron Mitchell, I’m not just talking about macroeconomics."

The color left Eliza’s face. It happened in stages, starting at her lips and spreading outward until her cheeks matched the white of the table.

"Jordan..."

"I’m not finished." He drank. Swallowed. Set the cup down. "You asked what kind of person you are. Here’s what I figured out. You’re someone who took everything I gave you and treated it as currency. Not because you’re evil. Because nobody ever taught you that people aren’t ATMs. Your mother taught you to secure the best outcome and maintain it at any cost, and for two months I was the outcome and you maintained me by smiling once a week and letting me buy you things."

Eliza’s spoon had stopped moving. Her lower lip pressed inward, and her chin did the thing Jordan remembered from Tuesday, the half-inch dip that meant the real person underneath the polish was about to say something she couldn’t take back.

"You’re right."

"I know."

"I didn’t think about you as a person. I thought about you as a situation I was managing." Her eyes were wet and she didn’t wipe them. The tears sat along her lower lashes and caught light and she let them stay, which was the bravest thing Jordan had ever seen Eliza Hartwell do. "Cameron doesn’t think about me as a person either. He thinks about me as something he acquired. Like a watch or a car."

"Yeah."

"I picked him because his family is richer than yours and his name opens doors yours doesn’t. I knew exactly what I was doing and I did it anyway and I told myself it was smart." Eliza’s hand gripped the spoon hard enough to bend the biodegradable plastic. "It wasn’t smart. It was cowardly."

Jordan’s phone buzzed against his thigh. He left it.

"Do you want to know what Cameron does when we’re alone?" Eliza’s voice dropped to the register where confession lives, low and stripped of ornamentation. "He talks about himself. For hours. His portfolio, his lacrosse stats, his father’s connections, the house in Tahoe his family is renovating. He never asks me a single question. Not about my classes, my friends, my family, my day. He orders for me at restaurants without looking at my face. He calls me sweetheart because he forgets my name when he’s been drinking, which is most nights."

"Sounds like you picked a winner."

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