Watching Them Burn: My Rebirth Story novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: No Is a Full Sentence

Dane's friends corner her in the dining hall; she turns it on them, and Willa posts that Dane is heartbroken.

The next morning, Dane's whole swim team was waiting outside the dining hall.

There were six of them in matching blue jackets.

Dane stood in the middle with a bouquet of red roses as big as a toddler.

"Darby!" he called across the lawn.

Every head on the quad turned.

Bree Castell grabbed my elbow. She was my roommate, and I had known her for exactly two days.

"Is that the guy who got shot down in Psych?" she whispered. "Oh my God, he brought a team."

"Keep walking," I said.

"Darby, wait," Dane said.

He jogged up and blocked the dining hall door.

His friends fanned out behind him, and one of them started a slow clap.

"Say yes! Say yes!" a boy shouted.

The others picked it up.

Students in line stopped to film on their phones.

Dane held out the roses with a stiff smile. He had not slept. He still had last night's wrinkles in his shirt.

"I was nervous yesterday," he said. "I did it wrong. Let me try again."

"You did it fine," I said. "I answered fine too."

"One date. One. You don't even have to like it."

"That's a good deal," Bree muttered. "For him."

"I said no, Dane."

"You said no to a boy you didn't know. Now you know me."

"I know you very well," I said.

The chanting got louder.

Somebody pushed a camera right into my face.

I had been in this exact spot once before, in my first life.

That time I had gone red, taken the roses and said, fine, one date.

The whole quad had cheered me for saying yes to a man who spent our marriage replaying another girl's voice.

I put my tray down on the nearest table.

Then I took a breath and spoke to the cameras instead of to him.

"Everyone filming, can you hear me?"

The chanting dropped a little.

"This boy asked me out yesterday. I said no. Today he brought six friends and a bouquet to my breakfast so I can't say it again without a crowd watching."

Dane's smile slipped.

"That isn't what this is."

"Then ask me alone, without the audience, and see what I say."

His ears went red.

"Fine. Then say yes alone."

"No," I said. "That's my answer in private too."

The cameras swung to him.

A girl in line made a small sound. Another one groaned.

One of the swim team boys shuffled back a step.

Dane lifted the roses higher.

"Just take them."

"I don't want them."

"Then I'll leave them at your door every day until you do."

"Then I'll leave them in the hall every day, and you can explain to housing why there's a pile of roses outside room 214."

A short laugh cracked out from the table beside me.

It was low, and surprised, and it had come from a man in a gray campus lifeguard shirt who was eating a plate of eggs.

He was tall, with dark hair cut close to his head.

He looked at me for a second with a pair of gray eyes.

Then he turned to Dane without moving his shoulders.

"She said no twice, Abercrombie," he said. "Is there a third one in your pocket?"

Dane turned his head.

For a moment, the color left his face altogether.

"Hanlon."

"Morning."

"Stay out of this."

"I was eating," the man said. "You're standing in front of the syrup."

The quad laughed.

Dane's friends lowered their hands. One of them was already looking at his phone.

Dane dropped the roses on the nearest table.

They hit the wood and spilled red petals across somebody's toast.

"This isn't over," he said to me, loud enough for the cameras.

He walked away, and his friends followed him.

Bree pushed the dining hall door open with her whole body.

"Okay," she said. "I'm going to remember that for the rest of my life. Who was that?"

"I don't know," I said.

That was true.

I had lived to twenty-four and never met him once.

The man in the gray shirt was already carrying his plate to the return belt.

He didn't look back.

By lunch, the clip of Dane and the roses had been posted forty times.

Bree held up her phone in the library while I tried to read.

"Okay, you're famous. Wait. Wait, there's another one. This one is from a girl called Willa Stanhope."

I put down my pen.

It was a photo of Dane alone on a bench with his head in his hands.

Under it she had written: He's been up all night. He isn't a bad guy, he just cares too much. Please be kind to him. #teamdane

Three thousand people had liked it.

The comments were already a pile.

Poor guy. She's so cold. Who does she think she is?

Bree read them out loud with her mouth hanging open.

"Wow. Who is this Willa? Why is she doing PR for him?"

"She's his friend."

"She's good," Bree said. "That's scary. Look, she did the whole thing in nine minutes."

My phone buzzed on the table.

It was a number I had saved the day before.

Hey Darby! I saw the video. I'm so sorry, I know it must've been awful. Don't read the comments. I'm on your side, I promise. Dane's just hurting. Can we get coffee?

It was the exact message she had sent me in my first life, on the exact day.

I stared at it.

Then I typed back: Sure.

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