She laughed, swatted his arm lightly with the back of her hand, and somehow that turned into a solid five minutes of increasingly ridiculous arguments neither of them had any intention of losing.
"Okay, fine," she said eventually, holding up both hands in surrender
"New topic. Where’d you even grow up? You talk like someone who’s lived in this city his whole life and hated every second of it."
"That’s oddly specific."
"I’m good at reading people."
"You’re guessing."
"I’m guessing accurately. Answer the question."
Jason leaned back and then replied "Born here. Never left. Which, statistically, makes me either extremely loyal or extremely unimaginative."
"Or just unmotivated to take that step"
"That too." He picked up a fry from his meal and pointed it towards her.
"Your turn. Since you’re apparently the interrogator today."
"I ask, you answer. That’s not how this works."
"That’s exactly how this works. I answered three questions already."
"Two."
"Three. The rice thing counted twice, it had follow-up."
She rolled her eyes, but she was smiling. The kind of smile that told him she wasn’t actually going to fight him on it.
"Fine. I grew up two towns over. Moved here for school, stayed because the store gave me hours and I got attached to my regulars. Including," she added while tilting her head at him "one extremely specific customer who buys instant noodles like they’re going extinct."
"That customer sounds like a man of taste."
"That customer once bought seven packs in one visit."
"That customer was preparing for a hypothetical emergency."
"That customer’s emergency was a Tuesday."
Jason opened his mouth, found no defense to her statement and closed it again. "Okay. Fair."
She laughed at that, delighted with herself in a way that should have been annoying but somehow, it wasn’t.
"Do you actually like your classes this semester, or are you just surviving them?"
"Depends on the day. There’s one professor who genuinely seems to enjoy watching us suffer. I’m convinced he grades on a curve designed entirely around how many of us cry first."
"Sounds like one of my professors. Different class, same energy."
"You said he had a personal vendetta against your entire class."
"He does. It’s very specific to us. I think he had a bad semester once and just never forgave the concept of Tuesdays."
"That’s fair. Tuesdays have wronged a lot of people."
"See, this is why I like talking to you. You just get it." She said it easily, like it hadn’t cost her anything, and then seemed to catch the shape of her own sentence a half-second late a small flicker of something crossing her face before she covered it by reaching for her drink.
Jason noticed it but filed it away next to the other thing he wasn’t going to examine too closely today.
"What do you actually want to do?" he asked instead, quieter than the rest of the conversation had been
"After graduation, I mean. Assuming the professor with the vendetta doesn’t personally end your academic career first."
She considered it longer than she had any of the joke questions, turning her cup slowly between her palms
"Something that doesn’t feel like waiting. I don’t know exactly what that looks like yet. But I don’t want to spend the next ten years just getting through things. You know?"
"Yeah." He did, actually, more than he probably should’ve admitted out loud.
"I know."
Something passed between them then brief, unshowy, the kind of quiet that didn’t need filling. She glanced at him like she was deciding whether to say something else. He waited, in no particular hurry to break it.
And then the system notification popped up
Attraction level: 27% — 30%
Jason was caught off guard by the notficiation but before he could even have a reaction, her phone buzzed.
She checked it, and something in her expression shifted not much, just enough that he noticed.
"What’s up?"
"It’s Max." She looked up
"He’s done."
Just from that statement alone, Jason’s heart dropped along with the fry that was in his hand, just about entering his mouth
The walk back to Max’s shop should have taken longer. At least, that’s what Jason had expected.
Coming to the café, he’d barely registered the route too busy following Sarah, too busy trying not to look like a man with no idea where he was going. Now every turn looked familiar.
That corner, then left, past that building, right again. They were already close.
The walk had apparently been short the entire time and his brain had just stretched it into a three-hour expedition because he’d spent the whole thing panicking about $168 sitting in his account and $180 waiting for him on the other end of it.
Twelve dollars. That was the gap. A stupidly small number to be standing between him and getting his phone back, and yet right now those twelve dollars might as well have been twelve thousand.
They arrived in front of the repair shop. Sarah was in front of him leading the way so she reached the door first and pushed it open without a flicker of hesitation, because why would she hesitate her only job here was to check if the phone worked, smile and have a playful banter with Max, and leave.
Easy. Simple. No financial crisis attached.
Jason envied her with the specific, bitter envy of a man about to do long division in front of a witness.
He stopped just outside and the door swung shut behind her.
Okay. Breathe
He inhaled slowly, exhaled, and arranged his face into the calm of a man collecting a completely normal phone after a completely normal repair not the face of someone whose entire financial strategy currently amounted to
Please don’t make this awkward
He pushed the door open. The bell chimed.
"Hey, boy!" Max’s voice hit him before he’d even cleared the doorway
"Phone’s good as new. Runs better than it probably did before you cracked it."
As good as new Interesting phrase. That sounded expensive.
"...Really?"
"Would I lie to you? Go on, check it." Max slid the phone across the counter.
Jason picked it up, and the screen lit up clean and whole no spiderweb, no dead zones, home screen loading like it had never met tragedy in its life. He scrolled. Tapped. Opened an app just to watch it open, then the camera, then tapped a few more times partly to test it and partly because he genuinely couldn’t bring himself to put it down yet.
Flawless
If he weren’t currently doing math about to ruin his evening, he might’ve had a real moment about it.
Max watched him with the patient amusement of a man who’d clearly seen this reaction a hundred times. "So? Working?"
"Yeah. Yeah, it’s...yeah."
"Great." Max clapped his hands together, all business now.
"We dive into the final phase. Payment."
Right. The part where I find out if I still have a soul by the end of tonight
"Where do you want it? Zelle, cash app, whatever’s easiest."
"Bank transfer’s fine. Pull it up."
Jason pulled out his phone and opened his banking app with the grim focus of a man defusing something.
He typed in Max’s account details, checked them twice because sending his entire remaining balance to some stranger named Michael instead of Max would be a genuinely spectacular way to die and then typed the amount.
$168.00
Not $180. No miracle deposit from a distant relative who’d suddenly remembered he existed. Just everything he had, offered up like a sacrifice to a god who also, unfortunately, ran a small business and had rent to pay.
His thumb hovered over the note field
Say something. Buy yourself goodwill, because you are fresh out of actual currency
He typed: please this is everything I have rn. I’ll bring the rest this week I SWEAR on my life. be gentle and don’t kill me
He looked at it for a second and deleted the last sentence
It now read: please this is everything I have rn. I’ll bring the rest this week I SWEAR on my life. be gentle
Better. Less likely to get me banned from the shop
He hesitated for a while and then added: I promise I’m not trying to run away with the phone
Immediately after typing the message, the thoughts followed
Why did I write that? Now it sounded exactly like what someone planning to run away with their phone would say
He deleted it.
The final message then read: please this is everything I have rn. I’ll bring the rest this week I SWEAR on my life. be gentle
Then he looked up. Directly at Max.
The kind of eye contact usually reserved for hostage negotiations or asking your landlord for one more week.
Please. Please be a reasonable man today. I will owe you my soul on a payment plan if you just don’t do anything dramatic right now
And then he sent it.
Account Balance: $0.43
Max’s phone buzzed in his pocket. He pulled it out without breaking stride, thumb already swiping the notification open, completely unaware he was currently holding Jason’s entire nervous system hostage in one hand.
"Oh, you sent it already," he said, mild as anything, still reading
"Nice."
Jason’s heart was doing something that probably violated at least one law of physics.
He watched Max’s face for a reaction the way a man watches a judge about to read a verdict he already suspects is bad news and then Max’s eyebrows went up, and his expression shifted into something Jason recognized immediately and did not trust even a little.
He’d seen that exact smile on teachers right before punishment.
On his mother, the time she’d caught him lying badly.
Ohh...That can’t be good. I’m dead