I Slept With My Ex's Best Friend novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Dare
A freshman kisses Linnea's boyfriend on a dare and he chooses her; Linnea ends it in front of everyone, and when his best friend Jace is dared to take any girl home, he says her name and she says yes.
The freshman kissed my boyfriend in the middle of the living room, and forty people counted it out loud.
"Five! Six! Seven!"
She was up on her toes in a dance-team jacket, her hands in Tanner's hair.
Tanner's hands were on her waist.
He wasn't pushing her away.
"Eight! Nine! Ten!"
The room exploded.
Somebody's phone flash went off.
Somebody else yelled, "Freshman dare of the year!"
I was standing by the kitchen doorway with a warm can of cherry seltzer, because I was the designated driver, because I was always the designated driver.
The girl stepped back, pink to the ears, and wiped her lip with her thumb.
She was maybe eighteen.
Her ponytail had a bow in it.
Tanner laughed and looked around for his applause.
Then he found me.
"Linnie. Babe. Come on. It was a dare."
"I saw," I said.
The music was still going but nobody was dancing anymore.
The Langdon house had that kind of living room. Big, loud, sticky floor, a couch nobody should sit on.
Tanner had lived here two years before he moved into my apartment.
Every guy in this room was his friend.
"It's a party," he said. "Don't be weird."
The freshman was still standing next to him.
His hand was still on her back.
"What's your name?" I asked her.
She lifted her chin. "Kenzie."
"Hi, Kenzie. I'm Linnea. I'm his girlfriend."
Her face did something complicated.
She looked up at Tanner.
Tanner didn't look at her.
He kept his eyes on me and his hand where it was.
"Tanner," I said. "Her or me. Right now."
The room went "ooooh" like a sitcom audience.
Somebody turned the music down.
Tanner smiled, the one from his campaign posters.
He was running for student body president. His slogan was Respect on Campus. I had picked the font.
"I'm not doing ultimatums, Linnie," he said. "That's not healthy."
His hand slid from her back to her waist.
That was the answer.
Two years.
I nodded.
"Okay. We're done."
"Babe."
"Your stuff's in my apartment. I'll figure out what to do with it."
I set the seltzer down on the bookshelf next to a traffic cone somebody had stolen.
My hands weren't shaking.
I was proud of that.
Tanner laughed and turned to the room.
"She'll be back by Sunday," he said. "She always is."
Some of them laughed with him.
Not all of them.
I picked up my bag.
Then a voice from the dining room yelled, "Dare jar! Jace hasn't gone!"
The guys had a mason jar full of folded index cards on the table.
They'd been pulling from it all night.
Take a shot. Text your mom "I'm pregnant." Do a lap of the block in your boxers.
Jace Thorsen was sitting at the end of the table with his chair tipped back and a can of LaCroix in his hand.
Tanner's best friend since they were eight years old.
He'd been at every dinner, every birthday, every game day for two years.
He'd said maybe a hundred words to me in that time.
I knew his truck, and I knew he didn't like cilantro, and that was about it.
Somebody shook the jar at him.
Jace dropped his chair onto four legs and pulled a card.
He unfolded it.
He looked at it for a long second.
"Take any girl home," he read.
The room howled.
Tanner laughed loudest.
"Pick a freshman, man. They're everywhere tonight."
Jace stood up.
He was taller than everybody else in the room, in a flannel shirt over a grey t-shirt, and he didn't hurry.
He looked across the living room, past Tanner, past Kenzie, past the beer pong table.
At me.
"Linnea," he said.
Nobody laughed this time.
Tanner's smile stayed on his face but stopped meaning anything.
"Real funny," he said. "Pick someone else."
Jace didn't look at him.
He was looking at me.
"It's her choice," he said. "Not yours."
I should have walked out.
I should have said something cool and gone home and cried in my car.
Instead I thought about every time Jace had passed me the salt without being asked.
The way he'd driven back to a bar once at two in the morning because I'd left my scarf.
The way he never looked at me, right up until I wasn't looking.
And I thought about Tanner saying she'll be back by Sunday.
I wanted to know what Jace was like when he stopped being quiet.
I wanted it so much it scared me.
"Get your keys," I said.
The room lost its mind.
Somebody actually screamed.
Tanner's face went red from the collar up.
"Linnie. Stop. You're embarrassing yourself."
"No," I said. "I'm leaving with your best friend. You're the one standing there."
Jace was already holding the front door open.
I walked out past Tanner without touching him.
The cold off the lake hit me on the porch.
Jace's old green pickup was parked half on the curb.
He opened my door for me, then went around and climbed in.
For a minute neither of us said anything.
The house was still roaring behind us.
My heart was going so hard I could feel it in my teeth.
"You don't have to," I said. "Do this. Because of a card."
Jace reached into his shirt pocket.
He took out the folded index card and put it in my hand.
I opened it under the dome light.
In somebody's sloppy Sharpie it said: Take a shot.
I looked at him.
He started the truck.
"I've been sober since nine," he said. "I didn't want a shot."
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