Infinite Cashback: My Wealth Rebate System

Marcus’s sentence died halfway through itself. Jason noticed the sudden silence before he understood it.

Marcus had stopped mid-gesture, one hand still raised as though the rest of his point about the seating-chart conspiracy had simply vanished from his mind.

Jason followed his gaze and then his eyes locked in at the problem

Amanda, she was walking straight toward them.

She crossed the courtyard at a calm and unhurried pace, carrying herself with the effortless certainty of someone who expected the space ahead to make room for her and to be fair, it usually did.

She wasn’t alone, never was. She always has her lackeys moving along with her at all times

Two of her friends walked alongside her, one on either side, matching her pace with the easy synchronization of people who’d spent enough time together that they no longer had to think about where the others would be.

Jason recognized both of them by sight, if not by name. They were familiar campus faces, the kind you passed often enough to recognize but never knew well enough to greet.

Then one of them laughed. It was a short, bright sound.

Jason’s stomach dropped, he recognised that laugh.

He’d heard it before, from behind a tree, while she stood with Amanda and calmly picked apart everything he’d thought he meant to them.

He remembered the sound more clearly than he wanted to, the way it had floated across the space while he’d stood there frozen, listening to himself being reduced to something small and embarrassing.

He didn’t need to see her face.

His body recognized her first.

The memory arrived whole, dragging the feeling of that morning behind it.

Oh.

Jason’s jaw tightened.

It’s her.

He didn’t say anything. There was no need to at this point

Something in him had already gone still, the instinctive quiet that came whenever you found yourself standing too close to something that had hurt you before.

Then Amanda’s voice reached him.

"Jason!"

It sounded bright and familiar, almost cheerful.

She approached with the easy warmth of someone greeting an old friend at a coffee shop, not someone she’d humiliated weeks ago.

She stopped a few feet away, close enough that pretending not to notice her was no longer an option. Her two friends settled just behind her, flanking her without seeming to realize they’d done it.

"I texted you yesterday sending you an invite to my party but you didn’t reply."

It didn’t sound like a question. Amanda rarely asked questions when she already believed she knew the answer.

Jason held her gaze for a moment, several possible responses passing through his mind before he discarded them one by one.

"I saw your message."

That was all he said. He didn’t explain why he hadn’t replied.

Ben had been right, sometimes you didn’t need to say anything more.

Amanda blinked.

For a second, she simply looked at him, as though waiting for the rest of the sentence to arrive. An apology, perhaps or maybe an excuse.

Some familiar attempt to smooth over the uncomfortable edges before they could become anything real.

Jason watched the expectation fade from her expression.

Apparently, she’d been expecting the old version of him.

He wasn’t sure she knew yet that he wasn’t there anymore.

When nothing else came, something uncertain appeared across Amanda’s face before she covered it with a small laugh.

"That’s it? I saw it?"

She glanced toward her friends, inviting them into the joke.

"Wow...okay."

The friend on her left, the one without the laugh smirked.

"Guess someone’s playing hard to get now."

"Or just busy" the other one added.

There it was again.

Jason felt something tighten quietly in his chest.

Busy.

He almost laughed but not because it was funny even though that was one word for it.

Marcus, who’d been standing beside him in increasingly uncomfortable silence, finally jumped into the tension filled conversation

"Ha! Yeah. He’s, uh... busy."

He gestured vaguely with his hands toward Jason’s direction

"Very busy guy these days. His gym schedule has been brutal."

The joke landed somewhere between them and died as swiftly as it came, nobody laughed.

Amanda’s friend gave Marcus a polite, dismissive glance. The kind reserved for someone who’d interrupted a conversation without realizing he wasn’t part of it.

Then her attention returned back towards Jason as if Marcus hadn’t spoken at all.

Amanda’s attention returned to Jason.

The easy brightness in her expression had thinned.

Not disappeared just adjusted.

She was recalibrating now, Jason realized. The version of him who would have laughed awkwardly, apologized for not replying, and then spent the next five minutes reassuring her that everything was fine wasn’t giving her anything to work with.

"Look, I don’t know what your deal is lately, but it’s just a party, Jason. You act like I’m asking you to do some big thing."

Ironic phrasing, considering the week I’ve had.

He kept that to himself.

"I’ll think about it," he said instead.

It was generous and they both knew it.

Amanda’s eyebrows lifted with visible disbelief displayed on her face

"You’ve had an entire day to think about it."

"And I’m still thinking." Jason replied almost immediately

Before she could answer, her friend spoke. The one with the laugh.

Jason’s attention shifted toward her almost despite himself.

She had her arms folded now, amusement resting lightly across her face. But there was something underneath it this time

"Didn’t take you for the dramatic type."

She paused. Not for too long, just long enough for Jason to notice.

Her head tilted slightly, as though she were searching for the right word.

Or perhaps she’d already known exactly what she wanted to say and was simply deciding how gently to deliver it.

"I thought you were just..." another pause "...easygoing."

The word landed softly, almost harmlessly but Jason felt the old memory stir before he could stop it.

Easygoing.

The guy who never complained, the guy who was always available.

Her friend continued, her tone almost thoughtful now.

"Whatever anyone needed."

There it was, not the word itself but the shape beneath it. The meaning she’d left sitting there between them, waiting for him to pick it up.

Jason’s chest tightened.

Because suddenly he wasn’t hearing easygoing anymore.

He was hearing the word he’d spent the last few days trying not to think about.

The one Amanda had unknowingly or perhaps knowingly carried right back into his path.

Convenient.

Jason’s hands curled slightly at his sides. It was nothing obvious.

No one standing around him would have noticed.

But something inside him had tightened anyway, sudden and bright, anger was flaring through him with an intensity he hadn’t expected to feel again, at least not this soon

His mouth opened slightly

He wasn’t entirely sure what was about to come out.

The word was still hanging between them, sharp and deliberate, when a hand settled on his right shoulder.

It felt solid, unhurried and strangely familiar.

Jason’s attention snapped sideways.

"Hey, man."

Ben’s voice was easy and low, cutting through the moment without ever needing to rise.

"Sorry. Took forever in there."

His hand remained on Jason’s shoulder for another second.

"Water pressure’s garbage."