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Chapter 26: I Will Survive!

Chapter 26: I Will Survive!

Rose: Daniel is here.

He read it twice before it fully landed.

Adrian: You invited Daniel here?

Rose: I told him I was inside. There was no invite.

Great. Fantastic. Exactly what he wanted on a day he was already regretting even existing.

Adrian: So we leave.

Rose: We can’t.

Three dots appeared, disappeared and then appeared for a long agonizing moment before her reply came.

Rose: Getting up and running the second he walks in is the single most suspicious thing we could do right now.

She wasn’t wrong, which was the annoying part.

He put his phone away and told himself the same thing he’d been telling himself since the beginning of the night: get through it. That was the whole plan. It had worked so far.

Jenna glanced at him, but didn’t seem to catch anything, or so he hoped.

In time, Daniel showed up loud, same walk as always, like the room owed him rent, trailing four or five people who all laughed a beat too fast at whatever he’d just said.

Adrian clocked him. His eyes moved past him without much interest, landing instead on the guy beside him.

Tall. Built like he actually used the gym equipment instead of just posing near it.

A little older, maybe a sophomore or two, perhaps he was just a friend of Daniel’s.

Then Adrian noticed the arm.

It was resting around someone’s shoulders, unthinking, the way you only rested an arm around someone if you’d done it a dozen times before. His eyes followed it up.

Maya.

He recognized her before his brain caught up to what that meant. She looked normal. That was the part that got him.

He’d been out there yesterday trying his best to move on from her. The girl who was laughing at something, head tilted slightly, and the guy’s arm sat around her like it had always belonged there.

Drew noticed the sudden change in Adrian’s expression. "Yo... Adrian?" A pause. "You good?"

He didn’t respond. All he did was stare. Rose paused for a moment and followed his line of sight, spotting Daniel and his clique. Jenna followed the same line of sight and landed on Maya a beat later.

"No way."

He’s a better match. Her words, weeks old, finally returned to him. He looked at the guy again, he still couldn’t see it.

His gaze returned to her, still utterly unsure of what he could possible do next.

He thought for another moment and realized, with total clarity, that he didn’t want to stand here and watch her be happy in front of him.

"Hey." Rose had noticed him go still. "What’s wrong?"

Adrian didn’t answer immediately. He could explain it.

He could point toward Maya and say exactly what was wrong, but that would mean saying her name out loud, and somehow that felt worse than leaving.

So he made the simpler choice. He stood.

"I’m going home."

"What?" Drew said.

"...What?" Rose said at the same time as Drew. Her eyebrows lifted. "No you aren’t... we had a deal."

Drew’s eyes widened. "A deal? What deal?"

Jenna glanced at Rose, then at Adrian, clearly trying to figure out what she’d missed.

Adrian ignored all of it. He looked at Rose.

"Sorry." His voice came out quieter than he’d intended. "I just can’t keep doing this right now. If I do, I’ll just fuck everything up."

Adrian turned before anyone could stop him and walked toward the exit, weaving through Daniel’s group without slowing down.

He didn’t look back. There wasn’t anything behind him that he needed to see.

He got in the car and didn’t start it.

Just sat there with the keys doing nothing in his hand while his brain replayed the highlight reel: the arm around her, the "someone better" line he’d let himself believe was just a breakup cliché instead of an actual description.

He thought about the guy only for a moment before he caught himself doing it.

Seriously? He shook his head. I’m comparing myself to a sophomore.

He didn’t want her back. That much he was sure of. But knowing she’d moved on and seeing it were apparently two very different things, and he sat with that discomfort for a moment before starting the engine, because there wasn’t anywhere else to go except home anyway.

He drove without really watching his speed.

His thoughts kept circling back to the refreshment center, to the arm, to the laugh, and the number on the speedometer crept up without his permission.

A light went red somewhere ahead of him and he didn’t slow enough, passed through it a beat too late, a horn blaring somewhere behind him, and it was enough to snap him back into his own body.

His phone buzzed. He ignored it. It buzzed again. He ignored that too, until the third time made him glance down.

☎️ Calling=> Mom.

That’s right. He had called her this morning. Seems she just saw the missed call.

He eased off the gas, annoyed at himself. Then, he pulled over before answering.

"Hi, sweetheart." Her voice was warm in the way it always was. "You finally remembered to call your mother after breaking your promise."

Adrian released a breath. "I’m sorry ma. Something came up."

"Ah. Nonsense." She said playfully. "I’m just playing with you, Ady."

"Yeah." He smiled. "...Uh. Thanks."

There was a short pause in the phone line before she responded.

"Anyway," she said, "I called because I picked up some extra hours this week. Made a few calls...and."

She waited as though there was a drum roll.

"I managed to put a bit together for you. I want to send it, for your allowance."

Adrian paused. Surprised.

"You don’t have to do that."

"Of course I do. I’m your mother." That tone left no room for argument.

He looked through the windshield.

"...Thanks."

There was a pause.

"That’s a very quiet thank-you."

Adrian rubbed his thumb against the steering wheel.

"It’s been a rough morning, ma."

"Is it a girl?"

His eyes closed.

"Why would you assume that first?"

"Because I know you."

That shut down his argument before he’d even formed one.

"Is it?"

"No." A beat. "Jesus."

His mother laughed.

"You don’t have to tell me what happened," she said after a moment.

"Whatever it is, it happened. You’re allowed to be upset. Disappointed. You’re a man, Adrian. You’re allowed to have a bad day."

"This wasn’t just a bad day."

A short pause. His mother’s voice softened, the teasing disappeared from her voice.

"Then don’t pretend it was."

Adrian didn’t answer.

"You don’t have to forget what happened, Adrian. Just don’t let it decide what you do next."

He stared through the windshield for a long moment.

"You already started something new down there," she said. "Don’t let something old undo it."

Adrian finally nodded, even though she couldn’t see him.

"...Yeah."

"I mean it."

"I heard you, Mom."

"Good. Now go eat something before you start making me worry properly."

That got a small smile out of him.

"Okay."

"And I’ll send the money over soon."

"Thanks."

"Love you."

"Love you too, ma."

The call ended. He set the phone on his thigh and let his head fall forward until his forehead met the steering wheel, cool against his skin.

No tears. No dramatic collapse. Just the particular exhaustion of a day that had spent him down to nothing, sitting there in his car with no real purpose.

Then, his phone buzzed.

He barely reacted the first time.

BZZT. BZZT. BZZT.

Three in a row, heavier than a text. He lifted his head and picked the phone back up.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

BILLIONAIRE CASHBACK SYSTEM

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

[SECONDARY PROGRESSION CONDITION DETECTED]

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Analyzing...

[████████████████] 100%

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Adrian stared at the screen like it had personally wronged him. This was new. It had never done this before.

[PROGRESSION COMPLETE]

New Function Unlocked:

◆ REGRET INVESTMENT MODULE ◆

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

[PRIMARY OBJECTIVE GENERATED]

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Make Maya regret her decision.

Not make her suffer. Not win her back. He read it twice just to be sure.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

[OBJECTIVE REWARD]

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Base Reward: $10,000

Progression Multiplier: ×1.0

Current Reward: $10,000

Maximum Reward: UNLIMITED

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Ten thousand dollars. For that. His eyebrows went up on their own, some small ugly part of him doing math before the rest of him had even decided how to feel about the offer.

Still, curiosity won out over the unease.

[ACCEPT OBJECTIVE?]

[ YES ] [ NO ]