He Asked Me Out to Get Back at Her, I Gave Him a Rulebook Instead novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Rule Four

Frannie walks the dress into his poker night with an invoice, Linc turns up useless at the greenhouse, and Frannie learns her capstone garden is on the list to become Ainslee's family building.

I didn't text him back.

I put the dress back in its tissue, tied the gold ribbon in a double knot, and sat down at my drafting table with a calculator.

Ainslee blew on her toenails.

"Keep it, sweetie. Nobody needs to know you can't zip it."

The words drifted over her shoulder.

[she's gonna cry in the shower lol]

[ainslee is so gracious honestly]

I wasn't going to cry in the shower.

I was going to send a bill.

The Sayre house stood at the top of the hill, white columns and a porch.

Sunday night was poker night.

I walked up the porch steps with the box under one arm and a page from my green notebook in my hand.

The game was in the back room, under a moose head somebody's grandfather had shot.

Eight boys sat around a felt table in quarter-zips.

Austin had a cigar he wasn't smoking.

Linc sat at the far end with his sleeves shoved up and a stack of chips in front of him.

He saw me in the doorway and his face did something complicated.

"Greenhouse girl," Austin said. "You lost?"

"Delivery."

I set the box down on the felt, right on top of the pot.

Chips slid everywhere.

"Rule four," I said. "Gifts are for me, sized for me, or not at all."

I unfolded my page and laid it next to the box.

"So this is an invoice."

Linc picked it up.

He read it out loud, because I'd written it to be read out loud.

"One silk slip dress, size zero, purchased for the wrong girl. Eleven hundred and forty dollars. Payable to the Founders' Garden restoration fund, Halloway College."

The room went off.

Boys pounded the table.

"She invoiced you," Austin wheezed. "She invoiced you, bro."

"Restocking fee?" Linc asked me.

"The garden doesn't charge one. It's very forgiving."

"And if I don't pay?"

"Then you're the guy who bought his fake girlfriend his ex's dress size and stiffed a garden." I nodded at the phones already out around the table. "In front of eight witnesses."

He looked at me for a long beat.

Then his mouth twitched.

He took out his phone.

"What's the account?"

"It's on the bottom of the page. I'm organized."

He paid it right there, thumb moving fast, jaw tight.

His phone chimed.

"Congratulations," I said. "You're a patron of the arts."

"Of the dirt," he said.

"Dirt is the art."

I picked up the box.

"I'll return it for you. Buy yourself some boots."

I was halfway down the porch steps before I noticed something.

The sky over the lawn was clear.

No floating words, all night.

I figured they'd gotten bored of me.

Monday, at six in the morning, it was still dark and forty-one degrees.

The campus greenhouse sat behind the science building, a long glass shed fogged from the inside.

Jess was already there, filling seed trays with the hose on mist.

She wore muck boots, overalls and a flannel shirt, and her short red hair stuck straight up.

"He's not coming," she said.

"He signed."

"Frannie, that man has never seen six a.m. from this side."

At six oh four, headlights swung across the glass.

A black car parked on the grass, which you are not allowed to do.

Linc got out in a camel coat, pressed chinos and leather loafers.

He was holding two coffees from the café in town that didn't open till seven.

"How," Jess said.

"I paid a guy," Linc said.

He walked into the greenhouse and stepped straight into a puddle of fish emulsion.

He looked down at his loafer.

He looked at me.

"Boots," I said. "I told you boots."

"These are boots. They're boat shoes. A boat is wet."

Jess walked all the way around him.

"Is it house-trained?"

"Mostly," I said.

"I'm standing right here," Linc said.

"Then stand over there, by the compost."

I handed him a shovel.

He held it.

For an hour he turned compost wrong and complained right.

He said the worms were judging him.

He said his coat cost more than the greenhouse.

Jess said the greenhouse had a better personality.

He laughed at that, a real laugh, surprised out of him.

At seven he leaned on the shovel, red-faced and steaming in the cold.

"Same time next week?" he asked.

"Rule five. Every week till Founders' Day."

"What happens at Founders' Day?"

"You get your life back."

He nodded slowly and walked out to his illegally parked car.

There was compost on the back of his coat.

Neither of us told him.

At ten I had a meeting with my capstone advisor.

"Frannie, the trustees released the site list for the Ogden Center."

He turned his monitor so I could see.

A glass building, rendered in perfect sunlight, all clean lines and happy students.

Behind the chapel, where my garden stood.

The fieldstone wall was gone in the picture.

So was the pear tree.

"They vote at the Founders' Day gala," he said. "I'm sorry. I didn't know."

I walked back to Wexford Hall without feeling my feet.

Ainslee was in our sitting room with two of her friends and a bottle of rosé.

She had the rendering open on her laptop.

The words floated in with her laugh.

[THE OGDEN CENTER omg her dad is so generous]

[the roommate's face rn]

Ainslee looked up at me and smiled her softest smile.

"Did you hear, sweetie? Your little weeds are my building."

← Chapter 1 · All chapters · Chapter 3 →

Want to keep talking to characters like these? Chat with AI romance characters: AI Boyfriend · AI Girlfriend · Dark Romance · Fantasy Romance · BL (Boys’ Love) · Billionaire Boyfriend · Mafia Boyfriend · Possessive Boyfriend · Hockey Boyfriend · Older Boyfriend · K-Drama Boyfriend · Anime Boyfriend · Vampire Boyfriend · Werewolf Boyfriend · Demon Boyfriend · Fae Romance · GL (Girls’ Love) · Anime Girlfriend · Goth & Alt Girlfriend · Gamer Girlfriend · Tsundere Girlfriend · Fantasy Girlfriend