Half A Million For A Girlfriend, Both Men Belong To Me novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: Leash Boy

The campus believes the leash story, Autumn rearranges the seating chart, and Abby bills three public kisses; Rowan sits down at their table and asks to see the contract.

By the next noon, three different people had left dog leashes outside Beckett's dorm.

"A red one, a plaid one, and one with rhinestones," Dell reported, walking backward in front of me down the cafeteria steps. "I've been on the phone with Calloway Confessions since seven."

"Why?"

"I'm managing the story. You can't let a rumor run wild. It has to run in a direction."

"What direction?"

"Toward you being a legend."

I stopped at the door.

Inside, two hundred people were eating lunch, and about half of them turned to look at me at the same time.

Beckett was standing by the tray line with his hands in his hoodie pocket.

He had saved me a tray.

"Hey, girlfriend," he said, loud enough for the nearest table.

"Hold hands," I said quietly. "That's fifty."

"You haven't even said hello."

"Hello is free. Hands are fifty."

He took my hand, and a girl in the line dropped her fork.

We walked to the far end of the room together, because that was where the seating chart said we belonged.

Autumn had made the seating chart.

She ran the student council's lunch committee, and she stood at the end of the aisle with her color-coded planner, smiling.

"Abby," she said, and she held out a coffee. "I got you this. Oat milk, right? I'm so sorry about yesterday. I was embarrassed, and I took it out on both of you."

I had not said anything about oat milk to anybody.

"Thank you," I said, and I took the coffee, because it was free.

"I'm really happy for you two," Autumn said.

She tapped her planner against her chest and walked away.

On the open page I saw a spreadsheet with a column labeled B.A. SIGHTINGS and a date for every day this semester.

I didn't think anything of it.

I thought it was a good spreadsheet.

"Table fourteen," Beckett said, reading the card. "Next to the dish return."

"We're in the best seats," I said. "Everyone can see us, and everyone can smell the gravy."

We sat down.

A hundred and fifty people were pretending not to watch.

"First kiss," I said. "A kiss with a small audience is two hundred."

"The front row is watching. Two hundred."

He leaned across the table and kissed me.

It was short, and it was warm, and his hand came up and rested against my jaw for exactly as long as it took for twelve people to say "oh."

He pulled back and looked at my face.

"Two hundred," I said. "Send it."

His phone buzzed in his pocket.

"Received," he said, and I could hear that he was almost laughing.

The next table started to clap.

"Applause surcharge," I said. "A kiss with applause is three hundred."

"That's a hundred dollars for the clapping."

"I didn't set the clapping. They did."

He kissed me again, and this time he tilted my chin up with two fingers.

It lasted longer, and somebody whistled.

When it ended, I had forgotten what I was going to say about the whistle.

I sat very still and counted the syrup bottles.

"That's three hundred," Beckett said, very politely. "Do you want it in cash or in a transfer?"

"Transfer."

By then someone at the next table had a phone up, and two more were holding theirs.

"Cameras," I said. "A kiss on camera is four hundred."

"Is that the last tier?"

"It's the last tier I've written down."

He looked at me.

His amber eyes had gone darker, and his thumb was moving, slowly, against my wrist.

"Abby," he said. "What happens at five hundred?"

"At five hundred I get to say no."

He kissed me the third time with a hundred and fifty people filming.

I counted it as four hundred dollars, and that was the number I held on to.

I lost count of the clock for the first half of it.

When it was over, he rested his forehead against mine for a moment, and the whole cafeteria groaned at once.

"That's nine hundred dollars total," I said. My voice came out a little wrong. "Two, three, four."

"I can add."

"You owe me nine hundred."

"You'll have it by noon."

I picked up my fork, set it down, and picked it up again.

The sound in the room dropped away so fast that I looked up.

A man was walking down the aisle between the tables.

Everyone moved a half step to let him pass without seeming to.

He wore a charcoal suit and no tie, and he was tall, and his dark hair was cut short.

His eyes were grey, and he was looking at neither the cameras nor the kiss.

He was looking at me.

He stopped at table fourteen and pulled out the chair across from us, beside the dish return, and sat down.

"Abigail," he said. "Good afternoon."

He set a pen on the table between the syrup and the salt.

"Show me the contract."

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