Caught Between My Boyfriend and His Cousin novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: Row Two
Miranda stares at the professor to make her ex believe she's over him, texts him a bold joke, and learns the stoic man she texted is Brandon's cousin.
Brandon Newberry told his entire row that I would be crawling back to him by Friday.
He said it loud enough for me to hear it from two rows down.
It was the first night of the guest lecture series, and the hall held two hundred people.
I had dumped Brandon three weeks ago, by text, after I found his messages to another girl.
He had told everyone we were on a break.
Maddie leaned over from the seat beside me.
"Don't turn around," she whispered. "He's looking right at you."
"I know he is."
"He's doing the smile."
"I know about the smile, Maddie."
I opened my notebook and looked straight ahead.
That was when the visiting professor walked up to the podium.
He wasn't what I'd expected from the course page.
He was tall, with dark hair going grey at the temples and a plain white shirt with the sleeves pushed to his elbows.
He set down a single index card and looked at the room.
"Good evening," he said. "My name is Professor Ames."
He had a low, even voice that didn't try to carry, and the whole hall went quiet to hear it.
Maddie put her mouth next to my ear.
"Okay, that one is criminal."
"He's the professor."
"He's a professor who looks like a crime."
Behind us, Brandon laughed at something and I heard my name in it.
I made a decision.
I would stare at the professor like I had never wanted anything more in my life, and Brandon would see it.
So I did.
I tilted my head and rested my chin in my hand.
Professor Ames talked about supply and demand for six minutes.
I didn't hear a word.
Then I felt it, the weight of Brandon's gaze on the back of my neck, and it wasn't enough.
I took out my phone under the desk.
The course page listed his cell number for emergencies.
I didn't think about it very hard.
I typed with my thumbs.
"Nice tan, professor. Is it a full-body situation?"
I sent it from the free texting app I used for my library job, so no name came with it.
On the podium, the professor's phone buzzed against the wood.
He picked it up and glanced at the screen.
The hall kept breathing.
Maddie grabbed my knee.
"What did you do," she said, barely moving her lips.
"Nothing."
"Miranda."
"It's a joke."
Professor Ames read the message once.
He set the phone back down, face up, and his expression didn't change at all.
He went right on with his sentence about price elasticity.
I raised an eyebrow.
A professional, then.
Not a flicker, not a cough, not even a look around the room.
"Ms. Linden," he said, without lifting his eyes from his card. "You have a question."
I had my hand halfway into the air.
I hadn't known I'd raised it.
"Yes," I said. "How elastic is, um, demand for tanned professors?"
Somebody snorted.
Maddie slid a few inches down her seat.
Professor Ames finally looked at me.
His eyes were grey and calm and a little amused, and they stayed on mine longer than they should have.
"Inelastic," he said. "People will pay whatever it costs. Thank you, Ms. Linden."
The hall laughed, and I did not hear Brandon laugh with it.
I gave myself a point.
Nobody had taken attendance, and he hadn't looked at the seating chart once.
The lecture ended at nine.
Two hundred people stood and gathered coats, and I stood up with them.
Maddie hooked her arm through mine.
"You are a lunatic, and I love you, and he's going to murder you."
"Who?"
"Either one."
Brandon was already waiting at the end of our row.
He wore the blue sweater I'd bought him for his birthday, and the smile was fully loaded.
"Nice show, Mira," he said. "Very convincing. You don't have to fake being over me."
"I'm not faking."
"You stared at that guy for an hour."
"Twelve minutes," Maddie said.
"Stay out of it, Maddie."
I opened my mouth to say something worse.
Then the professor came down the aisle with his index card in one hand and his phone in the other.
Brandon's whole face changed.
It lit up in a way I knew, the way it did when he got to take something.
"Geoff!" he called. "Hey, man!"
Professor Ames stopped beside us.
"Brandon," he said.
Brandon threw an arm around his shoulders.
"Mira, this is my cousin Geoffrey. Geoff, meet my girlfriend."
I stood there holding a phone that had just sent a dirty joke to my ex's family.
Geoffrey Ames looked at my hand, and at the phone in it, and then at me.
"Ms. Linden and I have already been in touch," he said.
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