Infinite Cashback System

The waiter nodded and moved on. Jordan watched his family process this information. Susan’s brow furrowed slightly. David’s eyes narrowed. Cassie’s hand stopped halfway to her bread plate.

"You’re not drinking," Susan said. It wasn’t a question.

"No, ma’am."

The table went quiet. Jordan could hear the ambient noise of the restaurant, other families at other tables having conversations that weren’t about to change the trajectory of their entire lives.

"Jordan." David’s voice was low and controlled. "Is there something you’d like to tell us?"

Jordan looked at Chloe. She gave him the smallest nod, almost imperceptible, her hand finding his knee under the table.

"There is, actually."

Susan’s napkin pressed against her mouth. Her eyes had gone wide and wet.

"Chloe and I have been together for about six weeks now," Jordan said. "And we’re having a baby. She’s due in September."

The silence stretched. Jordan counted seconds in his head. One. Two. Three.

Susan made a sound, something between a sob and a laugh, and her napkin went from her mouth to her eyes as she started crying in earnest. David sat very still, his hands flat on the table, his expression unreadable in the way it got when he was processing information that didn’t fit his existing models.

Cassie reached for the leather folder and then stopped herself, her fingers curling away from it like she’d touched something hot.

"September," David said finally.

"Yes, sir."

"That’s seven months from now."

"Math checks out."

David’s jaw tightened at the flippancy, but Jordan held his gaze without backing down. Three months ago he would have apologized. Would have made himself smaller. Would have offered excuses and explanations and promises he couldn’t keep.

Now he just sat there, Chloe’s hand warm on his knee, waiting.

"How far along?" Cassie’s voice cut through the silence, analytical and sharp.

"Six weeks," Chloe answered.

"So you conceived approximately one week after meeting."

"Cassie." Susan’s voice held a warning.

"I’m establishing a timeline, Mother." Cassie’s eyes hadn’t left Chloe’s face. "You’re keeping it."

"Yes."

"Both of you."

"Yes." Jordan’s voice came out harder than he intended. "Both of us. Together. That’s the plan."

Cassie leaned back in her chair, something flickering behind her controlled expression. She’d come to this dinner with a folder full of theories and a presentation designed to extract truth. Jordan had just handed her a truth she hadn’t anticipated.

"Well." David picked up his wine glass, swirled it once, set it down without drinking. "I suppose this explains a few things."

"Does it?" Jordan asked.

"The transformation. The focus. The way you sounded on the phone." David’s eyes moved between Jordan and Chloe. "You found something worth changing for."

Susan was still crying, but she’d lowered her napkin enough to look at them, her eyes red and her smile shaky but genuine. "A grandchild. David, we’re going to be grandparents."

"I gathered, Susan."

"In September. Our baby is having a baby." Susan reached across the table toward Chloe, her hand extended, and Chloe took it without hesitation. "Oh, sweetheart. Are you okay? Have you been to a doctor? Are you eating enough? Jordan, is she eating enough?"

"She’s eating, Mom."

"I’m fine, Mrs. McKnight." Chloe’s voice had softened in a way Jordan rarely heard, the corporate efficiency stripped away. "Jordan makes sure I eat. Eggs, mostly. He’s very insistent about the eggs."

"Protein is important during pregnancy," Susan said, nodding vigorously. "And prenatal vitamins. Are you taking prenatals? We should go shopping. I know a wonderful store in Costa Mesa that has everything you could possibly need."

"Mom."

"What? This is important, Jordan. Your father and I had no idea what we were doing when I got pregnant with Cassie. We made so many mistakes."

"You made me," Cassie said dryly. "I turned out fine."

"You turned out terrifying," Jordan said.

Cassie’s mouth curved, the first genuine smile he’d seen from her all day. "Compliment accepted."

The waiter returned to take their orders, and for a few minutes the conversation shifted to food, to the familiar rhythm of a family dinner at Giuliano’s. Jordan ordered the chicken parm. Chloe ordered plain pasta with butter and a side of bread, the kind of bland food that sat well on her stomach. Susan ordered too much because she always ordered too much, insisting that Chloe needed to eat for two now.

"She’s six weeks pregnant, Mom. The baby is the size of a lentil."

"Lentils need nutrition too."

David ordered the same steak he’d been ordering at this restaurant for fifteen years, and Cassie ordered a salad because Cassie always ordered salads at family dinners, as if calories consumed in front of relatives counted differently than calories consumed alone.

When the waiter left, David turned his full attention to Jordan.

"Walk me through this," he said. "From the beginning."

Jordan told him. Most of it, anyway. The parts he could tell. Meeting Chloe at a coffee shop off campus. The connection that built over the next few weeks. The decision to get his life together, to clean his apartment, to start going to the gym, to actually attend his classes.

"I was in a bad place in December," Jordan said. "You know that. I hit bottom and I decided I didn’t want to stay there."

"And Chloe was part of that decision."

"She was the biggest part of it."

Chloe’s hand tightened on his knee. She didn’t correct him, didn’t point out that he’d started changing before they officially got together, didn’t mention that the transformation had begun in his apartment at midnight on January tenth when he’d spoken his resolution into empty air and something golden had answered.

Some things were true in the ways that mattered even if the details weren’t accurate.

"You’re eighteen," David said.

"Yes, sir."

"Both of you."

"Yes."

David picked up his wine glass again, and this time he drank from it, a long slow swallow that gave him time to think. When he set the glass down, something in his expression had shifted.

"I was twenty when your mother got pregnant with Cassie," he said. "Everyone told us we were too young. That we didn’t know what we were doing. That we should wait."

Susan reached across the table and put her hand over her husband’s.

"They weren’t wrong," David continued. "We didn’t know what we were doing. We made mistakes. We figured it out as we went." He looked at Jordan, really looked at him, in a way he hadn’t since Jordan was maybe twelve years old. "If this is what you want, if you’re certain, then your mother and I will support you."

"It’s what I want."

"And you?" David turned to Chloe. "This is what you want?"

Chloe met his gaze without wavering. "I chose this, Mr. McKnight. I chose your son and I chose to have his child. I don’t make decisions I’m not prepared to follow through on."

David studied her for a long moment, and Jordan watched his father see what Jordan had seen the first time Chloe dropped her mask. The intelligence behind her eyes. The steel beneath her softness. The absolute certainty that she was exactly where she intended to be.

"No," David said finally. "I don’t imagine you do."

Susan burst into fresh tears and started talking about baby names.