His Public Confession Was a Lie, So I Stopped Loving Him novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: Whose Jacket Is This
Rory runs to the Larkin Room when Preston posts her jacket with a confession, hears him admit in private that it was a favor, and says no in front of everyone. Preston posts her 412 likes, and one comment says he did not write the caption.
On Saturday night Preston Lowry posted a photo of a green field jacket and asked the whole campus whose it was.
I was on my bed in my dorm room, looking through his page for the third time that day.
Nobody knew I did that.
The first line under the photo was short.
"Does anyone know whose jacket this is?"
The second line made me sit up.
"Please tell her I'm into her. If she's willing to give me a chance, come to the Larkin Room."
My laptop slid off my knees.
The jacket in the photo had a mustard stain on the left cuff and a torn tag at the collar.
It was mine, and I had lost it three weeks ago, on the night I sang at open mic for the first time.
The top button had been sewn back on in black thread.
I had never fixed that button. It had hung loose for a year.
I decided somebody must have fixed it kindly, and I stopped thinking about it.
My roommate, Sage Telfair, came in from the library and saw my face.
"What happened?"
I turned the screen toward her.
Sage read it twice and started laughing.
"Rory, that's your jacket. Go. Right now."
"He has never said my name," I said. "Not once in two years."
"Then he's going to say it tonight." She threw my coat at me. "Text me everything."
I ran the whole way across the quad.
The Larkin Room is the old dining hall behind the student union. By the time I got there, a crowd had filled the steps.
I saw Preston's friends near the door. When they noticed me, their faces changed.
"Why is she here?" one of the girls said. "Isn't that Sage's jacket?"
Sage had worn it freshman year before she lent it to me. Half the campus still thought it was hers.
"Is she going to claim it?" someone else said. "That is so embarrassing."
My face burned, and I almost turned around.
Then Preston came through the doors with a bouquet of red roses.
He looked straight at me and smiled.
The crowd opened a path, and he walked down it.
"Rory Beckett," he said. "Will you be my girlfriend?"
Forty phones were pointed at us.
I had liked every photo he ever posted, and I had never once expected him to look at me.
My eyes filled up, and I nodded.
Somebody cheered. Somebody else clapped.
Preston took my hand and led me through the side door into the small private room where bands wait before they go on.
The moment the door shut, he dropped my hand and wiped his palm on his jeans.
"Okay. Sorry about that." He put the roses on a chair. "You're not the one I like."
I didn't understand him, so I waited.
"Everyone was about to call you a liar out there," he said. "I jumped in and saved you. You're welcome."
"You posted my jacket," I said.
"It was a good way to get attention." He shrugged. "Here's the deal. We say we're together. We break up in a month. Nobody gets hurt."
"And what do you get?"
"Your roommate." He grinned. "Sage won't even look at me. You'll tell her I'm worth a coffee."
The roses were still on the chair. The petals were already coming off.
"I asked you one thing," I said. "Is the jacket mine?"
"Of course it's yours. Say yes to the month and I'll give it back tonight."
I looked at him for a long moment.
Preston had never been told no in his life.
I had been planning to say yes to him for two years.
So I opened the door and walked back out.
The crowd turned toward me, still holding their phones up.
"Preston doesn't like me," I said.
Nobody was clapping now.
"He told me in there. He said yes was a favor to me, and that I should tell my roommate he's worth a date."
Preston had followed me out. "Rory, come on."
"My answer is no," I said. "And I want my jacket."
Somebody in the crowd laughed, and then a lot of them did.
One of the girls near the door said, loudly, "She wants him so badly it's sad."
Preston lifted his hands and smiled at his friends. "Guys. She's just upset. Give her space."
He held on to the jacket and didn't give it back.
I walked home alone to Dunmore Hall and did not cry until the stairs.
At eleven, Sage held out her phone to me.
Preston had posted a screenshot of my account, the one I never used, with my likes on his photos in a long red column.
It said four hundred and twelve.
His caption read: "Be kind to Rory tonight. She's having a hard time."
Nine thousand people had already seen it.
Every comment was someone laughing, and every comment used my name.
Except one.
It came from an account with no photo and no name.
"That is not what I wrote."
I refreshed the page, and the comment was gone.
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