He Dated Me for My Sister novel · Chapter 21 of 24

Chapter 21: Fourteen Ninety-Nine

Colin was sitting on the curb outside the restaurant, in his camel coat, with his elbows on his knees.

It was cold enough to see my breath.

A parking meter ticked beside him, and the street was empty except for a taxi at the corner with its light off.

I sat down on the curb, two feet away.

He didn't turn his head.

"Is she still in there?" he said.

"She's in the coat check. Dad took her keys."

"Good." He laughed once, without any sound in it. "Good for him."

I set the blue ring box on the pavement between us.

He looked at it for a long time.

"It was twenty-three hundred dollars," he said. "Student loan refund. Delaney picked it out in a catalog. She said you'd cry."

"I'm not crying."

"I noticed."

Behind us the restaurant door opened and closed, and I heard Taylor's boots on the sidewalk, then stop.

She had her phone up.

She didn't say a word, and she didn't need to.

"Take it back to the jeweler," I said. "Get your money. You'll need it."

"Hannah..."

"First, you owe me something."

He turned then.

His face was blotchy and tired, and for the first time in two months he looked like a twenty-four-year-old, not a man in a hat.

"I'll pay you back," he said. "Whatever you want. I'm so sorry. I was an idiot, I did what she told me, I..."

"You said you'd Venmo me some money," I said. "If it ended."

He stared.

"That's what you wrote. In your first post. It's the one thing in all of it that you promised me."

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