I Slept With My Ex's Best Friend novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: Boxes

Linnea delivers Tanner's belongings and his unpaid rent bill to his campaign kickoff in front of the crowd, and Tanner introduces Jace as his campaign manager.

"Months," I said.

I turned the phone so Jace could see.

He read it. His jaw moved once.

"We've been alone in a room maybe three times," he said. "Ever."

"Twice. The third time was a bathroom line."

"So that's a no on months."

"That's a no on months."

He set his coffee down.

"I'll call him."

"Don't." I was already pulling my jeans on. "He wants a phone call. He wants a fight he can screenshot."

"What do you want?"

I stood there with one sneaker on and thought about it.

Tanner had a campaign kickoff today.

Noon, Library Mall, a podium, a banner, a guy with a real camera. I'd ironed the banner myself last Sunday.

"I want to give him his stuff back," I said.

Jace drove me home.

He pulled up in front of my building on Johnson and left the engine running.

"I have to be somewhere at noon," he said.

"Okay."

"I'll explain later."

That was a strange thing to say, so I filed it.

He leaned across the bench seat and kissed me once, slow.

Then I went upstairs.

Gretchen was sitting on my kitchen counter in her pajama pants with a box of cereal, eating it by the fistful.

She pointed at me.

"You," she said. "Slept with the Senator's best friend."

"Yes."

"The tall quiet one. With the truck."

"Yes."

She threw a handful of cereal in the air.

"I have been praying for this since freshman year."

"You don't pray."

"I started. For this."

I told her what the post said. She already knew. She'd read every comment.

Half of campus thought I was a cheating snake.

The other half wanted to know if Jace had a brother.

"So what do we do?" Gretchen said. "Do we post? Do we key his car? I can get the key."

"We pack."

It took two hours.

Tanner had moved into my apartment in August to save money, he'd said.

He had not, at any point since August, paid rent.

He had a lot of quarter-zips.

He had a framed photo of himself shaking hands with the governor.

He had a whole shelf of protein powder in my kitchen and a mini fridge in my second bedroom just for his energy drinks.

Gretchen taped every box and labeled it in Sharpie.

TANNER: SWEATERS.

TANNER: MORE SWEATERS.

TANNER: HIS FACE (FRAMED).

"Who gets the second bedroom?" she asked, standing in the middle of it.

"Do you want it?"

She stared at me.

"Lin. My lease is with a guy who keeps a snake in the bathtub."

"Then it's yours."

She hugged me so hard I heard my back crack.

We loaded ten boxes into her hatchback and borrowed a hand truck from the bike shop downstairs.

At five to noon we rolled down to Library Mall.

There was a crowd, maybe a hundred and fifty people, mostly his frat friends and the poli sci kids and students who'd come for the free coffee.

The banner hung between two lampposts.

RASMUS FOR PRESIDENT. RESPECT ON CAMPUS.

My font.

Tanner was at the podium in a navy quarter-zip, mid-speech.

"...and respect starts with how we treat each other. With honesty. With..."

He saw me.

He saw Gretchen.

He saw the hand truck stacked with ten boxes.

I rolled them straight up the center aisle.

People stepped aside to let us through.

The guy with the real camera swung his lens around.

I parked the hand truck right next to the podium.

"Linnie," Tanner said into the microphone, with a little laugh. "Hey. This isn't really the time."

"I know you're devastated," I said, loud enough that I didn't need a microphone. "So I thought I'd save you the trip."

I patted the top box. TANNER: HIS FACE (FRAMED).

People laughed.

Gretchen handed me an envelope. I'd printed it at the library on the way.

I held it up.

"Also, this is the rent you owe me. August, September and October. Twenty-seven hundred dollars. Since you lived in my apartment, and I'd hate for you to have to worry about it while you're grieving."

I set it on the podium in front of him.

Somebody in the crowd went, "Oh, damn."

"For the record," I said, turning to the crowd, "last night a freshman kissed him on a dare in front of forty people, and when I asked him to choose, he chose her. Then I left. That's the whole story. There were no months."

My voice didn't shake once.

I'd practiced in the hatchback.

The crowd was quiet in that way that meant everyone was filming.

Tanner put his hand over the microphone. He leaned down.

His smile was perfect. His eyes were not.

"You think this hurts me?" he said, so quietly only I could hear. "You just made me the most famous candidate on campus."

Then he straightened up and took his hand off the mic.

"Okay! Okay. Clearly emotions are high. I get it. I respect it." He laughed. "That's literally my platform."

A few people laughed with him.

"And actually, this is perfect timing," he said.

"Because I want to introduce the guy who's going to run this whole campaign. My best friend since we were eight years old."

He pointed into the crowd.

My stomach dropped.

Jace was standing by the lamppost at the edge of the crowd, in the same flannel he'd been wearing on his bedroom floor at midnight.

Tanner waved him up.

Jace didn't move.

But he didn't leave either.

"Meet my campaign manager," Tanner said into the microphone, beaming at me. "Right, buddy?"

Every phone on Library Mall turned to Jace.

He looked at me.

He didn't say no.

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