Infinite Cashback System

Chapter 370: 370 | That is a Very Good Question

Isabella shifted Sofia’s weight again and looked at the three of them with an expression Jordan couldn’t fully categorize. Warm. Evaluative. Present in a way that most adults weren’t, as if she was seeing the actual people standing in front of her rather than the social categories they occupied. She tucked a strand of brown hair behind her ear, the movement unconscious and unself-conscious, and the gesture drew Jordan’s attention to her neck, which he was going to stop looking at immediately.

"Okay," Isabella said with the decisiveness of someone accustomed to making fast calls and standing behind them. "Dinner. Carthay Circle, Blue Bayou, Lamplight Lounge, wherever you want, my treat. And I won’t take no for an answer because I’ve been told I’m extremely persistent and also because my four-year-old would have been standing alone by that statue for a lot longer if you three hadn’t stopped."

Kumiko grabbed Jordan’s arm with both hands. "Jordan-kun. She’s offering Blue Bayou. That’s the restaurant INSIDE Pirates of the Caribbean. You eat IN the ride. The food arrives and you can hear the water and the crickets and the blue light and I have wanted to eat there since I was EIGHT YEARS OLD."

Jordan’s attention moved to Chloe. She’d already pulled up the Disneyland app. Her fingers worked the screen like someone who’d spent too many hours coordinating logistics, the movements efficient and practiced. After a few quick swipes and taps, she looked up at Isabella. "Blue Bayou has an opening at seven-forty-five. Party of four."

Isabella’s expression shifted. The fear bled out of it. The tear tracks remained, but everything else transformed into something bright and slightly dangerous, the particular variety of grin that Jordan associated with people who viewed social dynamics as a puzzle to be solved in real-time and had already started calculating angles. "Seven-forty-five is perfect."

The reservation took Chloe maybe five seconds to complete. Jordan registered the fact that she’d charged it directly to his card. No question, no confirmation, just the familiar weight of his phone buzzing once in his pocket with what he knew was a transaction notification. He did not pull it out to check the amount. He was too busy processing the immediate reality of standing at Disneyland with his sociology TA, who was currently adjusting her daughter on her hip, while his two girlfriends stood on either side of him wearing matching Mickey ears.

The universe, Jordan thought distantly, had clearly decided that his stress levels were insufficient and required immediate escalation.

Sofia pressed Detective Blueberry against her face and made a muffled observation into the plush. "Mama, the big boy has two girlfriends."

"I heard, sweetheart."

"Is that allowed?"

Isabella met Jordan’s eyes over the top of her daughter’s head. Something passed through her expression that Jordan couldn’t categorize. It registered somewhere in the territory of intellectual satisfaction, the particular spark that appeared when a researcher stumbled across an unexpected but perfect data point for whatever perpetual thesis she was building about human behavior and social structures and the way people organized themselves into configurations that made no logical sense but somehow functioned anyway.

"That," Isabella said, with the measured delivery of someone who was both answering a four-year-old’s question and simultaneously filing away the entire situation for later academic dissection, "is a very good question."

Kumiko beamed like she had just won first place at a cosplay competition. Her entire face lit up with the unmistakable glow of someone who had received external validation for something she’d already decided was correct and wonderful. Chloe’s mouth performed its characteristic two-millimeter adjustment. Jordan stood there between them in his ridiculous Mickey ears and his gray henley and his dark jeans, feeling the phantom ache in his shoulder from where a professional boxer had connected during sparring that morning, the buzz of his phone in his pocket from what he knew was the dinner reservation confirmation, the unread text from Eliza that he’d spotted on his lock screen earlier asking if they could "talk soon" because she "missed him" and wanted to "explain things properly."

He calculated the timeline. Forty-five minutes until their seven-forty-five reservation. Forty-five minutes to maintain normal human behavior protocols in a restaurant that existed inside a theme park ride with his two girlfriends and his sociology TA and her four-year-old daughter who had already identified the fundamental structural problem with this entire arrangement.

The bar for what constituted a normal Saturday had officially relocated to a depth that required specialized diving equipment to reach.

The Cast Member named Maria appeared at the edge of their group with a professional smile and a Polaroid camera. "Hi there! I see we found Mom. Would the group like a complimentary photo to remember the moment?"

Kumiko said yes before the question mark had fully landed.

They arranged themselves by the Partners statue with the castle glowing pink and gold in the deepening dusk behind them. Isabella held Sofia on one hip. Kumiko stood on Jordan’s left, her arm looped through his elbow and her sequined ears catching the fading light. Chloe stood on his right with her shoulder pressing against his arm and her hand resting at his waist, possessive and barely visible. Jordan occupied the center in his Mickey ears, six feet two inches of reformed disaster and unearned blessings.

Maria counted down from three.

The Polaroid ejected with a mechanical whirr.

Kumiko claimed the photo before the image had finished developing and held it at arm’s length, shaking it gently while narrating its emergence from chemical blur into recognizable faces. "Oh. Oh no. Oh this is so good. Jordan-kun look at your FACE you look so—"

"If you say devastated I’m throwing you in the moat."

"—HAPPY. You look happy. Like genuinely, actually, for-real happy."

Jordan looked at the developing photo in Kumiko’s hands. Five people and a plush Stitch, framed against a castle designed to make grown adults forget that parking cost thirty dollars. His own face stared back at him from the glossy surface with an expression he didn’t fully recognize.

Kumiko was right. He looked happy.

Isabella Rossi studied him from across the photo frame with Sofia’s head against her shoulder and Detective Blueberry crushed between them, and her dark eyes held the same restless, analytical warmth they’d held since the moment she’d looked up from her crying daughter and found three strangers who had stopped.

"Blue Bayou at seven-forty-five," Isabella said. "Don’t be late. Sofia gets cranky when she’s hungry."

"I don’t get cranky," Sofia said, already cranky.

Visit and read more novel to help us update chapter quickly. Thank you so much!