Baited by Love novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Refused

Betsy cannot stop serving: water for nobody, sandwiches for the sad rugby team, one for a stranger at a bus stop. The first man who ever refuses her is Lars, and then her service card turns up online with four thousand views.

At six forty the next morning I woke up and made sixty-four degree water for nobody.

I stood at the sink in my dorm with the little thermometer and a glass, and I adjusted the cold tap until the number was right.

Then I looked at the glass, remembered, and poured it down the drain.

It was the saddest thing I had ever done with a glass of water.

My body had not gotten the news.

I packed eight sandwiches before I could stop myself, all on the diagonal, because the knife went that way on its own.

In Hall B, a cortado was already sitting on my desk, oat milk, no lid.

"Thank you," I said out loud to whoever was running the promotion.

Behind me, somebody dropped a pen.

I did not turn around, because turning around is not something I do.

Cutting through the quad after class, I saw the rugby team sitting on the grass in a row.

They had lost by four points to a school that only had a lacrosse field, and every one of them was good-looking and miserable.

I stopped walking.

I tried to keep going.

I got as far as the fountain.

"Hi," I said, standing over them with my bag open. "Has anyone here eaten lunch?"

"No," said the captain, a very tall man with a split lip. "Why?"

"Because you look disappointed."

"We lost to lacrosse."

I handed him a sandwich.

Then I handed one to the man beside him, and the one beside him, and the one beside him.

By the fourth, they had started to cheer.

By the seventh, the whole team had stood up, and a boy in the back was chanting my name, which I had never told him.

At the bus stop on Willow Street, a man in a long coat was staring down the road at a bus that had just left.

He was so handsome that my knees noticed.

He was also so let down that I forgot I had an economics quiz at two.

I gave him the last sandwich and sat with him until the next bus came.

"Why are you doing this?" he asked.

"It's a compulsion," I said. "Please eat."

He ate it and got on the bus looking much better, and I missed the quiz.

I ended up on the library steps at four o'clock, tired and sticky, with no sandwiches left to give.

Someone was sitting on the top step with a chemistry textbook open on his knees.

It was Lars Ashdown, the boy from the row behind me, the one who had turned a page in the dining hall while my life was ending.

He had dark hair and gray eyes behind thin glasses, and when I got close I saw that he was very handsome and did not seem to know it.

He looked, I thought, a little tired.

Possibly disappointed.

I found a granola bar at the bottom of my bag and held it out.

"You look disappointed," I said. "Would you like this?"

"No, thank you," said Lars.

He did not look up.

Nobody had ever said no to me.

I stood there holding the granola bar.

"It's low sugar," I said.

"I'm not disappointed," he said. "I'm reading. They're different."

"Everyone who reads looks disappointed."

"Then everyone who reads is saying the same thing I am."

I tried a bottle of water, which I could warm or cool to any temperature he liked.

"I have water," he said, and he showed me his bottle without taking his eyes off the page.

I tried a pen.

"I have eleven," he said.

I tried standing quietly beside him with my hands folded, ready.

"You're standing in my light," Lars said, very gently.

I stepped aside.

My hands kept reaching for things to give him.

I sat down two steps below him, because I did not know where else to go, and I pulled out my phone.

The campus Confessions page had a new post.

It had been up since noon.

It was a photograph of a laminated card, tilted a little, sitting on a dining hall tray beside a half-eaten sandwich cut on the diagonal.

Preston Aldane: Service Specifications. Revision nine.

Water, sixty-four degrees.

At the bottom, in my own careful handwriting, it said: Prepared with love, T. Brightwell.

The caption said: found this today, pray for the girl.

It had four thousand views.

← 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