Infinite Cashback System

Chapter 355: 355 | You Don’t Get to Invalidate His Lived Experience

Kumiko’s lower lip started to tremble. This happened frequently. Kumiko Yamanaka’s lower lip lived on a hair trigger, and Jordan had come to think of it as a load indicator, the little needle that told you how close the girl was to overflowing, and right now that needle was buried in the red.

"Nobody buys me things," she said, so quietly he almost missed it. "Guys don’t. They let me pay for my own stuff. Or they say we’ll split it and then their card gets declined and I cover it and they never pay me back and then they ghost me. One guy took me to a restaurant and made me venmo him for my half of the appetizer we shared." Her voice cracked on the word appetizer, which was possibly the saddest place a voice had ever cracked. "So I stopped expecting it. I just pay for everything myself so nobody can disappoint me about it."

"Yeah, well." Jordan crossed the kitchen and stood in front of her, close enough that she had to tilt her head back to hold his eyes, close enough that the strawberry of her shampoo registered in the back of his skull as a thing he was choosing not to think about too hard. "That was them. This is me. And I’m going to buy you a dinner outfit whether you like it or not, so you might as well pick something you like."

He put his hand on top of her head.

The Headpat engaged. He felt it the way he always did now, a low current that started in his wrist and ran down through his palm into the crown of her skull, and Kumiko’s whole body responded like someone had cut the tension wires holding her upright. Her shoulders dropped. Her breath left her in a long, shaky exhale that turned into a sound halfway between a sigh and a whimper, a soft hnn that she’d deny making later if anyone asked. Her eyes went heavy. She swayed forward until her forehead pressed against his sternum, and her hands came up to fist loosely in the waistband of his sweatpants for balance, and the fight went out of her completely.

"That’s cheating," she mumbled into his chest, her voice gone thick and slow. "You can’t disable my counterargument with the head thing."

"Watch me."

"I had a whole point about markup."

"I know. It was a good point. I don’t care." Jordan traced his thumb along the part in her hair where the twin tails split, and she made another one of those sounds, a small liquid moan that vibrated against his chest and did absolutely nothing helpful for his composure. Kumiko in a state of total nervous-system surrender was a specific problem, because the same touch that turned her soft and pliant also stripped every filter off her body language, and right now she was pressing into him with a full-body devotion that had opinions about the thin waistband her fingers had hooked into. "So. Toothbrush. Charger. Whatever you sleep in. We buy the rest there. Deal?"

Kumiko was silent for a long moment, her cheek warm against his skin, and when she finally spoke her voice had dropped into something drowsy and honest, the voice she used when the head thing had turned off the part of her brain that lied for self-protection. "Nobody’s ever wanted to spoil me before."

"Get used to it."

From the kitchen island, Chloe made a sound. Not a laugh. A short exhale through the nose that Jordan had learned meant Chloe Kim was feeling something and would rather be shot than admit it. She had picked her mug back up and was watching them over the rim, her dark eyes, the real ones without the blue contacts, catching the LED glow of the half-installed streaming rig in the corner, and there was an expression on her face that she would deny existed if he named it.

"You’re going to make her cry again," Chloe said.

"She cries at everything. It’s a Kumiko thing. Structural."

"I do not cry at everything," Kumiko said into his chest, and then immediately sniffled, which undermined the position considerably.

"You cried at the plushie box tipping over yesterday."

"That was different. Mr. Snuggles hit his head."

"Mr. Snuggles is a stuffed animal."

"He has feelings, Jordan-kun, and you don’t get to invalidate his lived experience just because he’s filled with polyester—"

Jordan lifted his hand off her head, and Kumiko blinked twice as the world reassembled itself around her, the drowsy pliance draining out as her regular voltage came back online in stages. First spatial awareness, then the realization that both her hands were hooked into his waistband, then the full-body flush that started at her ears and spread down her throat and disappeared into the collar of the gray henley.

"I—" She released his sweatpants like they’d caught fire and took a step back, one hand flying up to press against her mouth. "I was using you for balance. That was a balance thing. Structural. Like you said."

"Right."

"Don’t look at me like that."

"Like what?"

"Like you know."

"I do know."

Kumiko made a strangled sound and turned away to bury her face in the couch cushion, twin tails splayed out across the fabric, and from that position her muffled voice announced that she was going to pack light and buy the dinner outfit and it was fine, it was all fine, everything was fine, and Jordan should stop being so unfairly attractive during logistics discussions because it was affecting her ability to advocate for fiscal responsibility.

Chloe slid off the island and crossed the kitchen. She stopped in front of Jordan and looked up at him, and she didn’t touch him, but she stood close enough that he could feel the heat coming off her, close enough that the chamomile on her breath mixed with the cedar of his soap in the six inches between them.

"You cleared four grand on a hotel room," she said, low, just for him. "And now you’re going to walk into Downtown Disney and drop another two thousand on clothes for the two of us, and every dollar you spend on me comes back at two-x and every dollar you spend on her comes back at whatever her rate is now."

"Point-eighty-four when I checked this morning. It’s climbing."

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