If you hold a call to expiration and it finishes in the money, exercising means buying 100 shares per contract at the strike — which you may not want or be able to afford. The good news: you can almost always avoid this entirely.
The simple way to avoid it
Sell the option before it expires. If you close your call in the market before the bell, you capture its value as cash and there's nothing to exercise — no shares, no capital requirement, done. This is exactly what nearly all traders (and every scalper) do: you wanted the option's gain, not to own SPY, so you sell to realize the gain and walk away clean. Holding to expiration is a choice, not a requirement.
If you do hold to expiration
If you don't close it and it finishes ITM, your broker will typically auto-exercise it, turning it into a 100-share-per-contract purchase — requiring the capital to buy the shares. If you can't cover that, brokers often close the position for you near expiration, but you shouldn't rely on that — it's messy and can be costly. The clean, controlled move is always to sell the option yourself first. (Note: you can only be assigned when you sell options, not when you buy them.)
No — you don't have to buy the shares. Just sell the option before expiration and take the cash. The forced-purchase scenario only happens if you hold to the bell.
The quick takeaway
You're not forced to buy 100 shares — simply sell the option before expiration to avoid exercise entirely. That's standard practice for anyone trading options for the move, not the stock. NoVo has you exit the option well before expiration by design, so an unwanted share assignment isn't something you'll bump into. See also how NoVo handles assignment.