Rebate King: Every Beauty I Spoil Makes Me a Billionaire-Chapter 17: Not A Transaction...

The buzz around Stan eventually died down. People said their piece, traded their knowing glances, and moved on to fresh gossip and fuller champagne flutes.

Kyle himself didn’t push the matter any further, he’d already planted his flag, and digging in too aggressively would only make him look petty in front of a room he was trying to impress.

In his mind, the message had already been delivered. Maya was only standing by Stan now out of basic hostess courtesy, she couldn’t very well humiliate her own invited guest in front of a hundred people.

Once the night was over, once the party lights dimmed and the social pressure lifted, Kyle was certain she’d quietly distance herself from the bicycle boy and let the whole awkward acquaintance fade into nothing.

So the party rolled on with that quiet undercurrent of judgment beneath the music. Stan didn’t miss the looks. The way conversations shifted just slightly when he drifted near. The waiters who somehow always reached his side of the room last. The polite, frozen half-smiles that never quite reached anyone’s eyes.

He didn’t particularly care.

Then came the dance.

When the music shifted into something slower and the lights dimmed into warm gold, Maya didn’t hesitate. She walked straight across the floor, past Kyle, past three other men who’d visibly straightened their jackets in anticipation, and stopped directly in front of Stan.

She didn’t ask. She simply took his hand and led him into the center of the room.

Her cheeks were faintly pink as she lifted his hands and placed them gently on her waist, then settled her own arms around his shoulders. The gesture was deliberate, slow, unmistakable, seen.

A small ripple of disbelief moved through the room.

Kyle’s wine glass paused halfway to his mouth. The other male admirers scattered around the floor went very still, the bitter taste of public defeat settling on their tongues.

They watched, helplessly, as Maya occasionally shifted her hands from Stan’s shoulders to lock loosely behind his neck, sometimes barely moving at all, just swaying gently in place to the rhythm of the music, lost in her own little pocket of the world.

The first minute of the dance was a touch awkward. Maya was clearly shy, and her movements were small and self-conscious.

But Stan was easy to follow, relaxed, attentive, perfectly in step with the music, and once she felt how naturally he matched her, her confidence began to bloom. She started adding gentle hip movements, more deliberate footwork, the small playful flourishes of a girl who was actually starting to enjoy herself.

By the middle of the song, she was smiling.

And somewhere in the middle of all of it, Stan stopped caring about the stares entirely. The whispers, the cold looks, the half-laughed insults from the side of the room, all of it faded into background static. He was at a party, dancing with a beautiful girl who was clearly enjoying herself in his arms. That was a perfectly fine way to spend an evening.

The dance lasted long enough that Kyle and the other men eventually managed to find partners of their own, but their eyes kept drifting back across the floor. No matter how the lights moved, no matter who was dancing where, Stan and Maya remained the center of gravity in the room. The two everyone was watching even when they were pretending not to.

When the music finally faded, the guests drifted toward Maya in small clusters, each presenting their gifts with practiced ceremony.

The presents were uniformly extravagant. Designer handbags. Diamond pendants. Limited-edition perfumes. The cheapest item in the room was probably worth tens of thousands of dollars, and nobody was making any effort to be subtle about it.

Then Kyle stepped forward, holding an exquisite lacquered wooden box in both hands.

"Maya. Open it."

Maya took the box and lifted the lid.

Inside, nestled against pale velvet, was a delicate emerald-green lady’s watch.

A small chorus of gasps rose from the surrounding guests.

"My god, that’s a Patek Philippe."

"A custom model, that has to be over a million dollars."

"No way Kyle actually brought that out tonight."

"He’s serious about her, isn’t he?"

A wave of admiring murmurs rolled through the room. A million-dollar watch wasn’t something just anyone could afford to give as a casual birthday gift, and Kyle was visibly basking in the recognition. He let his eyes drift across the crowd, soaking in the flattery, before settling them squarely on Stan with a slow, deliberate, try-and-top-this smirk.

"Do you like it?" he asked Maya.

"It’s okay."

Maya nodded once, politely.

That was all the validation Kyle needed. ’It’s okay’ from a campus belle was practically a love letter, and besides, there was no way anyone else in this room was going to put a more impressive gift in her hands tonight.

He turned to Stan with theatrical innocence.

"Stan Harrison, don’t tell me you didn’t bring her anything?"

"I did."

Stan reached into his coat and produced a small, simply wrapped gift box, the kind of generic packaging you’d find at any cheap gift shop near a college campus. The contrast against the lacquered wooden boxes and velvet-lined cases of the other gifts was almost embarrassing.

Kyle’s smirk widened the moment he saw it.

"Oh? And what exactly did you get her?"

Maya took the box gently and opened it.

Inside, resting on a thin layer of paper, was a plain hairband. Soft fabric, simple design, the kind of thing that probably cost less than fifty dollars at most.

The room reacted instantly.

"You’re kidding me."

"He actually has the nerve to bring that out?"

"That hairband couldn’t have cost more than fifty bucks. Fifty bucks."

"Are you that broke? You couldn’t even buy her something decent?"

Kyle let out a slow, performative sigh, shaking his head with mock pity.

"Stan Harrison, do yourself a favor and take it back. Spare yourself the embarrassment. Maya isn’t going to wear something like that."

The other guests piled on with looks of open contempt. The gap between a million-dollar Patek Philippe and a fifty-dollar hairband was so absurd it almost looped back around into comedy. Bringing something that cheap to a party like this wasn’t just stingy, it was a kind of social suicide.

Maya looked down at the hairband in her hands.

For a long moment, she didn’t say anything.

Then she lifted it carefully out of the box, gathered her hair back with both hands, and slipped it on right there in front of everyone. She adjusted it gently, smoothing a few stray strands into place, and looked up with a small, genuinely warm smile.

"No, I love it. Really. Thank you, Stan."

Kyle’s smile froze on his face.

The room went quiet again, but it was a different kind of quiet this time. Confused. Off-balance.

For a million-dollar custom Patek Philippe, Maya Zimmerman had said ’it’s okay’.

For a fifty-dollar hairband from a gift shop, she was wearing it in her hair and beaming.

Kyle stared at her like she’d started speaking another language. ’What is going on? Have people stopped caring about money?’

What he didn’t realize, what none of them realized, was that Maya already knew exactly what Stan Harrison was worth. A million-dollar watch from Kyle was an attempt to impress her.

A fifty-dollar hairband from a man with nine figures in his bank account was something else entirely. It was the only gift in the room that wasn’t a transaction.

And that was why she was wearing it.