"You don’t mind, do you?" Wade asked with a taunting smile...

Zack minded. That much was obvious from the way his fingers tightened around his beer bottle. But he said nothing.

Wade picked up one of the skewers, studied it for a moment, then set it back down as if it had failed some private standard.

"I remember when you had standards," he said to Zoey, his voice carrying the easy cruelty of someone who had practiced this conversation in his head more than once. "Every Friday, Apex Dining. You remember? Private room, river view. My Minimum spend is five hundred dollars. And with it’s quality, you never once complained about the food."

He smiled at her, nostalgic, almost gentle, like he was reminiscing about something they’d both lost.

"What happened? Why this? What’s this trash Standards?"

The question lingered in the air.

The implication settled over the table like smoke. This happened. Him. The man across from her with a barbecue stall, plastic stools, and no river view at all.

Zack slowly set down his chopsticks. Deliberately. Quietly. The movement of a man deciding he was about to stand.

He was seconds away from beating the stupid fuck out of Wade. But Stan’s hand closed around his arm first.

"Sit down," he said without looking at him, voice low and perfectly even.

Zack turned his head slightly.

"Sit down," Stan repeated. "And enjoy the show."

Something in that tone made Zack hesitate. Then obey. He picked his chopsticks back up. He did not, however, relax.

Wade, apparently satisfied with the damage he’d done, leaned back and spread a hand in generous permission.

"My treat tonight," he said lightly. "Everyone order what you actually want."

His gaze drifted to Zack for a brief moment.

"No need to hold back because of budget."

Hailey Yates visibly brightened. As the group’s self-proclaimed foodie, she immediately set her phone aside and leaned in.

"Then we won’t stand on ceremony, Young Master Hollis," she said warmly, already reaching for the menu.

She flipped straight past the barbecue section without hesitation and went directly to the premium pages.

Stan watched it all in silence.

He watched Hailey’s practiced ease as she skimmed the high-end selections. He watched Wade lean back with the faint, satisfied look of a man who believed he had just asserted quiet dominance over the table.

Then, exhaling softly, Stan picked up his own menu.

"Excuse me." Stan flagged down the nearest waiter. "Two cases of Louis XIII, please."

The waiter blinked. "I’m sorry?"

"Two cases. Louis XIII."

A beat of silence descended on the table. Even the grill seemed to pause.

The waiter recovered his professionalism with visible effort. "Sir, two cases of Louis XIII would come to approximately thirty thousand dollars. You’d like to confirm that order?"

"Yes," Stan said pleasantly.

Hailey’s head came up from the menu. "You can’t be serious. Two cases? You can’t possibly drink that."

"I wasn’t planning to drink it," Stan said. He turned back to the waiter. "Foot bath," he added, by way of clarification.

Wade’s expression had curdled somewhere between disbelief and fury. He stared at Stan with the particular look of a man trying to determine whether he was being robbed or simply mocked. Both possibilities appeared equally offensive.

The Louis XIII arrived, two gleaming cases, delivered with the solemn ceremony appropriate to their price tag. The waiter set them down. The table regarded them.

"One more thing," Stan said to the waiter. "Two more cases, please."

The sound Wade Hollis made was not quite a word.

His palm came down on the table hard enough to rattle the skewers. "Are you out of your mind?" His voice had dropped into a register that was presumably meant to be dangerous. "Sixty thousand dollars? You think I’m an idiot? You think I’m sitting here so you can drain my wallet for sport?"

"I think," Stan said, "that you sat down at someone else’s table without being invited, insulted the man who was paying the original bill, and then offered to treat everyone to prove a point." He picked up a skewer and examined it thoughtfully. "I’m just taking you at your word. Isn’t that what generous people do?"

"That’s," Wade stopped. "That’s not what this is."

"Then what is it?"

Hailey stepped in. "You’re being completely unreasonable. Wade was being generous, and you’re just exploiting that. It’s embarrassing, honestly."

Stan looked at her for a moment. "When he was insulting your friend’s boyfriend and calling this place a dump, was that the generous part? Or does the generosity only start when it benefits you?"

Hailey opened her mouth, unable to find word to retort she closed it.

Stan turned back to Wade. "If sixty thousand dollars is too much, just say so. Nobody will think less of you." He paused, letting that land. "Well. We might think a little less of you. But you started that problem yourself."

Wade’s face had gone through several colors. He leaned forward, his voice low and controlled now, stripped of the performative charm.

"I’m not paying. Let’s see you cover it yourself. Let’s see you reach into that student-budget wallet of yours and pull out sixty thousand dollars." He smiled thinly. "That’s when we find out who’s embarrassed."

Stan set down his skewer. He looked at Wade Hollis with the patient, faintly tired expression of someone who has heard this particular challenge before and found it underwhelming every time.

"So you’re nothing but just talk," he said. 𝒇𝒓𝒆𝒆𝙬𝒆𝒃𝓷𝒐𝓿𝙚𝙡.𝒄𝓸𝒎

He signaled the waiter.

Zack Howard tensed. "Stan, don’t try to save face."

Sixty thousand dollars wasn’t pocket change. Whether Stan could actually cover it or not, it wasn’t worth bleeding that kind of money over a pissing contest.

"It’s nothing," Stan said indifferently. "The waiter heard him say it was on him, he’ll have to pay for those after bragging so hard."

Sixty thousand. Six hundred thousand. The number didn’t matter, Stan could write the check without flinching. But that wasn’t the point.

The point was that Wade had been the one running his mouth all night about he was treating, he was hosting, he was the big man with the open wallet.

Some no-name punk thought he could flex in front of Stan Harrison? In front of Stan’s friends? Then he could damn well honor his own bragging.

....

A/N

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