I'm In Love With My Brother's Best Friend?! novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Box Room

Lucinda's first night in the house with her brother and Jude ends with Brock on the porch holding flowers.

The box room had a twin bed, a window onto the porch roof, and a wall I could have touched with both hands.

Jude's bedroom was on the other side of that wall.

Cam's was on the other side of the hall, and the bathroom was the only door that locked.

"Welcome home," Cam said, and dumped my duffel on the mattress.

"You get the third shelf in the fridge, and you can have the hall closet for your boots."

"I paid rent on a dorm room," I said.

"Mom paid for a dorm room, and you can sublet it to a freshman," Cam said.

He left, because he had a seminar to prep, and he shut the door behind him with a hard click.

I sat on the bed and looked at my phone.

Forty-one messages from numbers I knew, and twelve from numbers I didn't.

Half of them said the same thing in different words.

Is it true?

Did you really throw a cake at Brock?

I turned the phone face down on the blanket.

At eleven-thirty that night I was still lying there, staring at the ceiling, not crying, because I had decided I was done crying over him.

Something sizzled on the other side of the wall.

Then I smelled butter.

I got up, pulled on my brother's old sweatshirt, and walked down the hall in socks.

Jude stood at the stove in gray sweatpants and a faded T-shirt with the sleeves cut off.

He had a spatula in one hand, and a frying pan with four eggs in the other.

"You're up," he said, without turning.

"I'm not," I said.

"I'm sleepwalking."

"Sleepwalkers don't talk back." He slid the eggs onto two plates.

"Sit."

I sat at the kitchen table with my knees pulled up on the chair.

He set a plate in front of me, with toast and a dash of hot sauce, and sat across from me.

"Do you do this for everybody who moves in?" I asked.

"Cam moved in with two black eyes and a lamp," Jude said.

"I made him eggs, and he cried a little."

"You're lying."

"A little."

I took a bite, and it was the best thing I had eaten in three days.

I looked at his hands, big and sure on the fork, and the thumb ring caught the light.

"Is that Cam's?" I asked.

"His graduation gift," Jude said, and turned it with his other thumb.

"He said I needed something to fidget with so I'd stop cracking my knuckles in meetings."

"Does it work?"

"I crack them in the car now."

I laughed, which surprised me.

He watched me laugh, and he stopped chewing.

Then he looked at his plate.

"You were brave today," he said.

"Cam told me about the hallway."

"Cam wasn't there."

"Half of Hollis Hall posted it," he said.

"Somebody got the whole thing, and I'd say forty thousand people watched you hand a girl a cake."

I put down my fork.

"Forty thousand."

"Mostly girls," Jude said.

"Mostly cheering."

I picked my phone up off the table and opened it.

The video was there, twenty seconds of me in the doorway with frosting on my sleeve.

The comments scrolled by.

Legend.

Who is she??

Marry me, Cake Girl.

"I'm going to be sick," I said, and was laughing at the same time.

"You're not," Jude said.

"You were magnificent."

The word sat in the kitchen between us.

He seemed to hear it a second after I did.

He stood and took my empty plate, and his fingers brushed mine.

It was nothing, one second of skin.

My whole arm went warm.

"Go to bed, Lucinda," he said, and he kept his back to me at the sink.

"Is that a rule?" I asked.

"That's a suggestion."

"I don't take suggestions well."

He glanced over his shoulder, and his eyes were darker than a minute before.

"I know," he said.

"I saw the cake."

I went to bed, and I lay there for a long time listening to him wash the pan.

I fell asleep somewhere around two, with my hand flat on the wall between us.

At seven I woke to a doorbell ringing.

I stumbled down the hall in my brother's sweatshirt and opened the front door without looking.

Brock stood on the porch holding a huge bouquet of red roses.

His eyes were red, his hair was combed too neatly, and he gave me the smile that used to work.

"Hey, Luce," he said.

"Can we talk?"

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