Infinite Cashback System

"The thing where you said. About Jordan. Being. My." Kumiko could not finish the sentence. The word "boyfriend" sat on her tongue like a live coal, too hot to hold and too precious to spit out.

She swallowed it instead and felt it burn all the way down into her stomach, where it joined the anxiety and the Pocky and the general sense that her life had departed from recognizable reality sometime around two thirty that afternoon.

Chloe poured hot water over the chamomile. The smell reached Kumiko immediately, earthy and sweet, the same tea Chloe drank every night because it helped her sleep. Kumiko knew this.

She knew Chloe’s favorite tea and Chloe’s morning routine and the exact shade of blue in Chloe’s hair streak and the name of Chloe’s dead father and the password to Chloe’s Netflix account.

She knew these things because Chloe was her best friend and Kumiko paid attention to the people she loved with a ferocity that scared normal people away.

Jordan would not be scared away. Chloe said so. Chloe said he would not leave.

The elevator dinged a third time. Jordan passed the door without stopping, his footsteps continuing toward the elevator. Fourth trip. Kumiko heard the muffled sound of him adjusting something heavy, probably the monitor box that he mentioned was awkward. His grunt echoed faintly through the hallway walls.

Chloe brought two cups of tea to the coffee table and sat beside Kumiko on the sectional. Not touching. Close enough that Kumiko could feel the warmth coming off Chloe’s body and smell the vanilla of her expensive shampoo.

"He’s going to ask me, isn’t he," Kumiko whispered.

Chloe blew on her tea. "We’ll see."

"That’s not a no."

"Drink your tea, Kumi."

Kumiko picked up the cup with both hands. Her fingers trembled enough that the chamomile surface rippled. She took a sip. It burned her tongue. She took another sip anyway because the pain gave her something to focus on besides the fact that Jordan McKnight was currently hauling electronics up four flights of an elevator and would return any second to have a conversation that might end with Kumiko becoming someone’s girlfriend for the first time since Takeshi Mori dumped her via Instagram story during junior year.

The front door opened. Jordan backed through it carrying a large monitor box braced against his hip and a Nordstrom bag dangling from his other hand. He kicked the door shut with his heel and deposited everything with the growing pile. The equipment now occupied a significant portion of Chloe’s entryway, boxes stacked at various angles with cables and packaging material visible through torn cardboard.

Jordan surveyed the haul. Wiped his forehead with the back of his arm. His black t-shirt had darkened with sweat at the collar and between his shoulder blades.

"That’s everything."

Kumiko watched him walk to the kitchen. He pulled a glass from Chloe’s cabinet, the third one from the left, because he knew which cabinet held the glasses. Because he lived here. Not officially, not on any lease, but in every way that mattered, Jordan McKnight had become a permanent fixture in this apartment over the past two weeks. His toothbrush sat in Chloe’s bathroom. His charger lived in her nightstand drawer. His scent had settled into the couch cushions so thoroughly that Kumiko caught it every time she sat down.

Jordan filled the glass from the Brita pitcher in the fridge and drank the entire thing in four long swallows. His Adam’s apple bobbed with each gulp. Kumiko tracked the movement with a fascination that bordered on scientific study.

He refilled the glass. Drank half. Set it on the counter.

"Be right back. Bathroom."

He walked past the sectional, past Kumiko and Chloe, and up the stairs to the loft. The bathroom door clicked shut. Water ran. Kumiko heard the toilet flush and then more water and what sounded like Jordan splashing his face.

Kumiko’s brain seized this thirty-second window of his absence like a starving person handed a plate of food.

He went to the bathroom. That’s normal. People use bathrooms. He is a person who uses bathrooms.

But what if he’s in there thinking. What if he’s standing in front of the mirror giving himself a pep talk like the protagonists in romantic comedies do before the big confession scene where they run through an airport or show up at someone’s door in the rain.

There is no rain. We are in Southern California. It does not rain here.

He could still show up at a door. We are next to doors. Doors are available.

Is he going to come downstairs and ask me out?

The question detonated in Kumiko’s chest with the force of a mortar shell. Her fingers tightened around the tea cup until the ceramic creaked. Her vision went slightly blurry at the edges. Her breath stopped for the third time in twenty minutes.

Is Jordan McKnight going to come down those stairs and ask Kumiko Yamanaka to be his girlfriend?

The bathroom door opened. Footsteps on the loft floor. Jordan appeared at the top of the stairs, his face freshly washed, droplets still clinging to his jawline. He had pushed his hair back from his forehead, and the dirty blonde strands sat differently than they had in the car, slightly darker where the water touched them. His hazel eyes caught the afternoon sun coming through Chloe’s massive factory windows, and for one fraction of one second, they looked gold.

Kumiko’s tea cup trembled so violently that chamomile sloshed over the rim and burned her thumb.

Jordan came down the stairs. He looked at the pile of equipment. He looked at Chloe. He looked at Kumiko. His expression held something complicated, something that reminded Kumiko of the face Naruto made in episode 133 when he realized that the person he needed to fight was also the person he needed to save, a look that said I know what needs to happen but I haven’t figured out the right way to do it yet.

Then he clapped his hands together once.

"So. We should get this stuff set up before it gets dark. Kumi, you said the lighting matters most with natural light from the windows, yeah?"

Kumiko’s entire fantasy scenario crumbled.

He was not confessing. He was not running through an airport. He was unpacking a microphone arm from a cardboard box and examining the desk clamp with the mild interest of someone reading the back of a cereal box.

"The, um." Kumiko set her tea down too hard. Chamomile splashed onto the glass surface of the coffee table. "The windows, yes. The natural light. For, for the camera. You want the light source in front of the streamer, not behind, because backlighting creates silhouette and the audience needs to see facial expressions for parasocial engagement."