I'm In Love With My Brother's Best Friend?! novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: Birthday Cake
Lucinda catches her boyfriend with a girl under a blanket, answers in front of the whole hall, and Cam's best friend comes to pick her up.
I carried a chocolate cake across the Hollis Hall courtyard with a candle already stuck in the middle.
It was Brock's twentieth birthday, and I was nineteen and three months into my first year at Kingsley University.
I had skipped my chemistry study group to bake it in the dorm kitchen.
I had used my grandmother's recipe, and I had burned the first one.
Brock had texted that morning that he needed a "study break" from us.
I figured a cake was the opposite of a break.
I took the stairs to the third floor two at a time.
His roommate's door was open, and the room was empty, so I knocked on Brock's door with my elbow.
Nobody answered.
I pushed the door open with my hip.
Brock was in bed with the blanket pulled to his waist and his shirt off.
A girl was beside him with the blanket pulled over her head.
All I could see was a long fall of copper-red hair on his pillow.
The cake was still in my hands.
The candle was still lit.
"Lucinda," Brock said, and he did not even have the decency to sound scared.
He sounded annoyed.
"It's not what it looks like."
"It looks like your birthday," I said.
The girl under the blanket stayed completely still.
I walked to the foot of the bed.
"I have a question," I said, "and I want a real answer."
Brock sat up.
"You told me you needed a break to study."
"Yeah, I did."
"Is this studying?"
The girl moved under the blanket.
A voice said, muffled, "You told me you two were over."
Brock's face did something I had never seen it do.
It went completely blank.
"Babe," he said to the lump, "don't."
"Over since September," the girl said.
"That's what you said."
I looked at Brock.
"Since September," I said.
"Brock, I met your mother in October."
He opened his mouth.
I put the cake on the girl's lap, right on top of the blanket.
"Happy birthday," I said.
"It's chocolate, and it's from scratch, and you should eat it before it gets cold."
The girl said, "Oh my God."
The candle was still burning.
Brock grabbed the cake and it slid, and chocolate frosting went down the front of his bare chest.
I did not say anything.
I took my grey university hoodie off his desk chair, the one he had borrowed in September.
I took my phone charger out of his wall socket.
I took the framed photo of us at the lake from his shelf, and I dropped it face down in his trash can.
Then I went to the door and turned around.
A crowd had gathered in the hallway, because Brock's door was never closed and everybody on that floor liked to watch a scene.
Some of them were holding their phones up.
"Everybody," I said, loud enough for the end of the hall.
"Brock Tennant told me he needed time to study, and he told his girlfriend that we broke up in September."
"He lied to both of us, so neither of us owes him anything."
A guy near the stairs whistled.
Brock said, "Lucinda, come on, don't do this in front of people."
"That's exactly where I'm doing it," I said.
I left.
I made it down two flights and into the stairwell before my knees stopped holding me up.
I sat on the concrete step and dialed my brother.
Cam picked up on the first ring.
"Luce?"
"I need you to come get me," I said, and it came out as a croak.
"Where?"
"Hollis Hall. I'm okay. I just can't be in this building."
"Stay there," he said.
"I'm in the lab, I can't leave, but I'm sending someone right now."
The phone went dead.
Ten minutes later a gray pickup truck pulled up outside, and a tall man got out and held the passenger door open.
He had sandy hair that needed cutting and a silver ring on his thumb.
I had met him exactly once, on the lawn after Cam's graduation in May.
I had thought about it more times than I would admit to anyone.
"Lucinda," Jude Ransom said.
His voice was lower than I remembered.
"Cam says you need a ride and a place to sleep."
I climbed into the truck with my hoodie in my arms.
He didn't ask me a single question.
He just drove with one hand and slid a travel pack of tissues across the seat with the other.
At the house on Linden Street, Cam was already on the porch with a marker and a sheet of paper.
He looked at me, and he looked at Jude.
He walked to the fridge, taped the paper to the door and held it for me to read.
RULE ONE: NOBODY TOUCHES MY SISTER.
"Jude," Cam said, without turning around, "that means you."
Behind me, Jude's jaw moved, and he said nothing at all.
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