Chapter 400 | Winning the Audit

Chapter 400: 400 | Winning the Audit

"I’m not talent."

"You’re a six-foot-two economics major with abs that cost you nothing and a face that photographs well in bathroom lighting. That’s the definition of talent." Her fingers moved across the keyboard. "Also Alexis Van Der Berg viewed your story nine times yesterday and commented ’this is embarrassing’ with no punctuation, which in Alexis-speak means she’s obsessed and trying to neg you into responding. Do not respond."

"I wasn’t going to respond."

"You were thinking about it."

Jordan had been thinking about it. "How do you know that."

"Because you check her Instagram four times a day and you think I don’t notice, but I notice everything, including the fact that you haven’t registered her yet even though she’s at fifty-two percent and climbing." Chloe closed the laptop and set it on the coffee table with a decisive sound. "Which means you’re waiting for something, and I need to know what you’re waiting for so I can tell you if it’s stupid or strategic."

Jordan looked at the ceiling and tried to organize his thoughts into words that did not sound insane.

"She called me Saturday night," he said. "At eleven-thirty. From her house. Her parents were asleep."

Chloe went very still in the way that meant he had just said something important. "And."

"And she told me about dinner with some guy named Harrison who explained foam to her for eleven minutes, and then she went home and her mom asked if she wore the Chanel or the Zimmermann, and when she said Zimmermann her mom said the Chanel would have been better." He watched the blades of the ceiling fan rotate. "Then she told me she sat in a bathroom at a three-Michelin-star restaurant staring at the picture of me in the mouse ears while wearing a dress that cost more than my car."

"What did you say."

"I asked what she was wearing."

Chloe’s hand tightened in his hair. "And?"

"And then I used the voice."

"Jordan."

"Full power. Both channels. Everything the System installed." He felt his own mouth curve. "She made a sound and dropped her phone."

Chloe did not say anything for six seconds, which was a record.

"That’s psychological warfare," she said finally.

"That’s strategy."

"That’s you being a problem on purpose because you like watching her try to hold her composure, which is fine, but you need to know that if you register her while she’s at fifty-two percent and emotionally destabilized you’re going to lock in someone who’s halfway between infatuation and resentment, and that’s a bad foundation." Her fingers resumed their slow rhythm. "You want her at sixty-five minimum. Seventy ideally. High enough that the attraction is structural instead of reactive."

Jordan turned his head to look up at her. "You’ve thought about this a lot."

"I think about everything a lot. It’s why you’re dating me." She met his eyes. "Also she’s rich, beautiful, and mean in the way that makes people desperate to please her, which means she’s dangerous, and I need you to not underestimate that."

"I’m not underestimating anything."

"You posted a thirst trap in mouse ears to make her jealous. That’s underestimating her."

Jordan had no counter for that so he sat up instead, which his lower back protested with a sound like bubble wrap, and Chloe watched him lever himself vertical with the expression she used when she was deciding whether to say something cutting or let it go.

She let it go.

"I’m making rice," she said. "You’re going to eat it and then you’re going to take a nap, and at nine tonight you’re going to text Eliza back and tell her Thursday works for the writeup, and you’re going to be normal about it, which means no flirting and no psychological warfare and no reminding her that you’re doing better without her than she’s doing without you, because that’s what she’s expecting and you’re going to deny her the satisfaction."

"What if I want to give her the satisfaction."

"Then you’re going to do it my way, which is slower and more painful and ultimately more effective, because I’m not interested in winning the argument. I’m interested in winning the audit." Chloe stood and her hand trailed across his shoulders as she walked past him toward the kitchen. "And I always win the audit."

Jordan slept from three to six-thirty and woke up to the sound of his phone buzzing on the nightstand in the dark. He grabbed it blind and squinted at the screen.

MAYA: you missed training

MAYA: which means you either died or you’re injured or you got distracted by something more important than not getting your ass kicked

MAYA: im assuming door number three based on the instagram post

MAYA: which is fine but you’re doing double tomorrow to make up for it

MAYA: wear a cup

Jordan stared at that last line and tried to determine if she was joking. Maya did not joke. Maya said things that sounded like jokes but were actually statements of operational intent.

He typed back see you at 6 and put the phone down and looked at the ceiling, which had become his primary conversational partner today.

Chloe was gone. The apartment smelled like jasmine rice and ginger, which meant she had made food and left it on the stove and gone back to her own place to work on something she had not mentioned. The System would tell him later, probably, in a notification that tracked her movements and categorized them as business development or nesting behavior or some third thing he had not unlocked yet.

He checked the time. 6:43. Two hours and seventeen minutes until he had to text Eliza and be normal about it.

Jordan got up, shuffled to the kitchen, and ate rice directly from the pot with a wooden spoon while standing at the counter in his boxers. His lower back had downgraded from catastrophic failure to strong protest. His shoulder still had Maya’s bruise painted across it in purple and yellow. The bite mark from Kumiko had settled into a perfect dental record on his left pec.

He took a picture of it and sent it to the group chat.

JORDAN: evidence

KUMIKO: oh my god i did that

KUMIKO: i dont remember doing that

KUMIKO: was i asleep

CHLOE: you were awake. you said "i want to mark you" and then you did

KUMIKO: CHLOE-CHAN

CHLOE: you also said "this is mine now" which was extremely possessive and extremely attractive

KUMIKO: im deleting my phone

KUMIKO: im moving to the woods

KUMIKO: im becoming a hermit who only speaks to squirrels

JORDAN: the squirrels are going to love you

KUMIKO: thank you that helps

KUMIKO: actually it doesn’t help

KUMIKO: im still mortified

CHLOE: don’t be. own it. you marked him and he liked it and now everyone who sees him shirtless knows someone got there first

Jordan looked at the bite mark in the bathroom mirror and decided Chloe was right. It did look possessive. It looked like someone had decided he was worth keeping and had made it permanent enough to last a week.

He liked that more than he probably should.

At 9:00 PM exactly he opened his messages and typed.

JORDAN: thursday works. library?

The reply came in forty-seven seconds.

ELIZA: library works. 2pm?

JORDAN: yeah

ELIZA: okay