His Affection Meter Hit 100% novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: Don't Make It a Thing
Heath's best friend sits on his lap at a party, Ainsley finds them in an upstairs room, and she smiles and says it is no big deal. His meter jumps, and Frankie warns her it moved.
The day Heath and I got back together, his best friend climbed into his lap in front of the whole room.
Frankie Guthrie did it with a beer in one hand and her boots still on.
"Don't start, Ainsley," she said. "I've been sitting on this idiot since we were twelve."
Everyone in the lake house turned to look at me.
The host, a friend of Heath's, pushed a cold drink into my hand.
"Brave face," he said, grinning. "Heath's lucky you're a good sport."
He ran finance at Heath's father's company, and he had been nice to me for three years.
His phone was in his other hand with the screen lit.
He turned it face down against his leg when I glanced at it.
Frankie looked up at the empty air above Heath's hair.
She frowned at it for a moment, then slid off his lap and sat on the arm of the sofa.
"She's basically my brother, Ains," Heath said, red in the face and laughing. "You know that."
His friends laughed with him, and one of them raised a glass at me.
I had come to this party as his girlfriend again, after four months apart, and he had not once looked at me since I walked in.
I knew what I was supposed to do next.
My phone buzzed in my back pocket.
*Room two, upstairs. Go see what your boyfriend does when you're not looking.*
I read it once and put the phone away.
I said, "I'm going to find a bathroom."
"Second door on the left upstairs," Lyle said, and went back to his phone.
I took the stairs slowly, because I already knew what was behind the door.
I had opened that door before.
Last time I flipped the table at dinner when they shared a fork.
Last time I slapped Frankie until her cheek swelled, and I put location sharing on Heath's phone.
His friends called me a psycho, and Heath called me worse.
A System had dropped me into this world three years ago with one job.
Raise Heath Gresham's affection to 100%, and everything he gave me would come home with me.
I got him to 100%.
Then the System went dark, Heath dumped me, and I scrubbed floors at a fish cannery with no papers and no way back.
Then the System came back.
It put me here, on the afternoon we got back together, with the whole thing still ahead of me.
I opened the door of room two.
Heath was sitting on the bed with his shirt half unbuttoned and his hair wrecked.
Frankie stood by the window, wiping her mouth with the back of her wrist.
They had both slipped away from the party twenty minutes ago, and nobody had said a word about it.
My drink was still sweating in my hand, and I set it down on the dresser.
"Ains," Heath said. "Ains, I swear. It was an accident."
He was drunk enough that his words were slow.
"We were talking, and then I..."
He stopped and rubbed his mouth.
Frankie grabbed a pillow off the bed and threw it at his head.
"You idiot," she said. "I told you to sit down and drink water."
I looked at the two of them.
Last time I would have screamed here.
Last time it had cost me three years and given me nothing.
So I made a decision.
This time I would be the girlfriend who never got angry.
"It's okay," I said. "You'd had too much to drink, and it just happened. We don't have to make it a thing."
Heath stared at me.
His brows pulled together tight.
"What?"
"We don't have to make it a thing," I said again, and smiled at him.
"You're not angry? At all?"
"No. You didn't plan it."
I walked over, fixed the button he'd done wrong, and kissed his cheek.
"It's fine, Heath. Really."
His shoulders dropped, tension draining out of him.
By the window Frankie made a sharp, choked sound and sat down on the sill.
A pale gray panel opened in the corner of my vision, where only I could see it.
*HEATH GRESHAM. AFFECTION: 31%.*
The number blinked and changed.
*AFFECTION: 38%.*
*Return window: 90 days.*
I kept my face still.
Last time the number crawled up for months, and I had to scream for every point.
This time it had jumped seven points because I smiled.
"Get some sleep," I told Heath. "I'll be downstairs."
I walked out and pulled the door shut behind me.
Downstairs somebody turned the music back up, and somebody laughed too loud.
The door opened again before I reached the stairs.
Frankie came after me and caught my elbow.
Her hand was shaking, and her face had gone white.
"Whatever you just said in there," she said, low and fast, "don't say it again."
"Why not? I forgave him."
"Because it moved."
I stared at her.
I had never told a single person about the panel.
"What moved?" I said.
Frankie didn't answer.
She was looking at the empty air just above my left shoulder, right where the pale gray panel hung.
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