He Asked Me Out to Get Back at Her, I Gave Him a Rulebook Instead novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Flowers
Linc's public confession to Ainslee dies, he shoves the roses at Frannie, floating comments warn her about his bet, and she makes him sign her rulebook in front of everyone; that night he sends a dress in Ainslee's size.
The richest boy at Halloway got down on one knee for my roommate, and I was standing right behind her holding the cake.
Three tiers, white fondant, her initials in gold leaf.
Her friends had made me carry it across the quad because I "had the arms for it."
Three hundred people stood on the grass in the September dark.
A string quartet played under the oaks.
A banner hung between two lampposts. AINSLEE, ONE MORE YEAR.
Linc Sayre came out of the crowd with ninety-nine white roses in his arms.
Everybody knew who he was.
His family's name was painted on half the trucks on the Mass Pike.
He went down on one knee in front of Ainslee Ogden.
Her father, Marshall Ogden, chaired the college trustees.
His name was already on the library.
"I was an idiot last spring," he said. "Give me one more year."
Phones went up all around us.
Ainslee turned her champagne glass in her fingers.
She was twenty-two tonight, and she looked bored about it.
Then she laughed.
"Get up, Linc. You're getting grass stains on your good pants."
Her friends shrieked.
The quartet stopped in the middle of a bar.
Linc stood up slowly.
He looked around for somewhere to put ninety-nine roses.
His eyes landed on me.
He shoved the whole armful into my chest, right on top of the cake.
Thorns went straight through the fondant.
"Fine," he said, loud enough for the back row. "Then she's my date. To everything."
He didn't know my name.
We'd been in the same economics lecture for a year.
Ainslee looked at me over his shoulder.
She looked at the roses, and then at my thrift-store sundress.
"Sweetie, he needs somebody in his own zip code."
"Give it a week. He'll be back on his knees."
She tipped her head at the flowers.
"And you're holding another girl's roses. Desperate isn't a good look on you."
Everybody laughed.
Somebody behind me said, "Greenhouse girl."
I opened my mouth to tell all of them where to put the roses.
That's when the words appeared.
They drifted across the dark from right to left, pale and see-through.
[GIRL. do not fall for this.]
[he bet his boys you'd be easier to get than the heiress lol]
[the second you say yes he uses you and tosses you]
[spoiler: he marries ainslee anyway. huge wedding. YOU get dragged online as the homewrecker]
I blinked hard.
They kept coming.
[she's just the roommate, don't get attached]
I looked at the girl next to me.
She was filming Ainslee and chewing gum.
Nobody else was reading the sky.
Linc was already walking away through the crowd.
I stood there with a ruined cake and an armful of roses and a stream of strangers telling me my own future.
I went back to the suite and put the roses in the recycling bin, stems first.
My best friend Jess texted me a video of a man falling off a roof.
"Is this you right now?"
"Worse," I wrote back.
Ainslee came in at two in the morning, and the words came in with her.
[she's so iconic for that line]
[linc's going to make the roommate his whole revenge arc, watch]
[poor thing has no idea about the bet]
I had an idea about the bet.
I had about three hours.
I sat down at my drafting table and tore ten pages out of my green field notebook.
The Sayre house boys always took the long table under the windows at Saturday brunch.
Linc sat in the middle in sunglasses.
Austin Daley sat on his right, telling the story of the roses with both hands.
Ainslee sat two tables over with her friends and her phone.
The words were drifting over her head before I got there.
[roommate incoming. oh no. she's going to beg]
I put my pages down on top of Linc's waffles.
"You told three hundred people I'm your date to everything," I said. "Fine. These are the terms."
Austin snorted. "She wrote him a contract."
"A rulebook," I said. "Contracts need lawyers. This just needs me."
Linc pushed his sunglasses up into his hair.
His eyes were gray and bloodshot.
"Read it to me," he said. "I'm hungover."
So I read it, loud enough for the next three tables.
"Rule one. It ends at Founders' Day."
"Rule two. You never say her name to me."
Ainslee's laugh cracked across the room. Nobody else laughed with her.
"Rule three. No kissing unless we both mean it."
Austin whistled.
"Rule four. Gifts are for me, sized for me, or not at all."
"Rule five. You work one six a.m. shift a week in the campus greenhouse."
Linc sat up. "I'm sorry, what?"
"I'm a pair of hands short, and the beds in the Founders' Garden won't dig themselves."
"What's the Founders' Garden?"
"That's my point."
"Rule six. In public, you look at me like I'm the only person in the room. In private, you don't have to."
"Rule seven. Whatever your boys bet on me, I get half."
The whole table went quiet.
Austin's fork stopped halfway to his mouth.
Linc didn't look at Austin.
He looked at me, and for the first time all morning he actually saw me.
Over Ainslee's head, the words scrambled.
[WAIT how does she know about the bet]
[ok the roommate has a spine, i'll allow it]
[ainslee's face lmao]
"Rule eight," I said. "I'm the one who ends it."
"Nine and ten are blank. For later."
"And what do I get?" Linc asked.
"You get exactly what you wanted last night." I tipped my head toward Ainslee's table without looking at it. "An audience."
He held my eyes for a long second.
Then he held out his hand for my pen.
"Dude," Austin said.
"Shut up, Austin."
He signed across the bottom of page ten in big slanting letters. Lincoln Sayre.
I signed under him. Frannie Keeler.
"Frannie," he said, like he was trying it out.
"Monday. Six a.m. Wear boots."
He was still holding the pen when I walked out.
My hands didn't start shaking until I was outside.
That night a white box with a gold ribbon was waiting on the floor of our sitting room.
Ainslee was on the velvet sofa painting her toenails.
My phone buzzed.
"Got you a dress. You'd look amazing in it."
Then a second text.
"If it's not your thing, give it to your roommate."
I pulled the ribbon.
Pale green silk, folded in tissue.
The tissue was printed with the name of a boutique on Newbury Street.
Ainslee had posted herself in green silk from that exact store last month.
I turned over the tag.
Size zero.
I'm a size eight.
Ainslee didn't even look up from her toes.
"Green's always been my color," she said.
[LMAOOO he bought it for her]
[told you. the roommate is a coat rack]
I'd been his girlfriend for eleven hours, and he'd already broken rule four.
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