She Chased the Campus Heartthrob, Then His Friends Came After Her novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: Day Ninety-Nine
Sabrina bikes forty miles in a storm to bring Caleb a lemon tart, and he makes her his girlfriend in front of the whole cafe. Then Valerie Pendleton walks into the seminar and Caleb knocks his chair over.
On day ninety-nine, I biked forty miles through a thunderstorm to bring Caleb Johnson one slice of lemon tart.
I set the box on his table in the campus café, in front of at least thirty people.
The corner of the tart was crushed, and there was a smear of road on the lid.
Caleb turned the box a quarter inch with one finger.
"The corner's gone," he said.
"There was a flood and a goose."
"Then you should have gone around the goose."
"The goose was in the middle of the road, Caleb. It had right of way."
He looked at my hair, which was dripping onto his table.
"You look like something the tart was rescued from," he said.
At the next table, a girl whispered that Caleb would be perfect if he were mute.
I didn't mind at all.
I love beautiful faces the way other people love long weekends, and Caleb has the best face at Brandt University.
On day one, he had asked who was making all that noise.
On day two, he told me to go look in a mirror.
On day three, he said I should get my face fixed, and I brought him a sandwich.
I had brought him water at exactly one hundred and four degrees, which I checked with a thermometer I kept in my coat pocket.
I had saved his seat, cut his sandwiches into four even triangles, and typed up his lab notes.
I had never missed a day.
Caleb opened the box and took a bite.
He chewed for a long time with his arms crossed.
Then he held out his hand without looking, and I put the thermos in it.
He drank, set it down and frowned.
"One oh three," he said.
"It was one oh four at the bridge."
"The bridge was forty miles ago."
"Then tomorrow I'll bring you a hotter one."
"Don't you dare," he said. "Tomorrow, one oh four."
I wrote it on my hand with a pen, because that was the nicest thing he had said to me all week.
"Are you honestly this obsessed with me?" he asked.
"Yes," I said. "Completely. Look at your face."
His ears went red, and he lifted his chin so nobody would see it.
"Fine," he said. "I'll make it official. You're my girlfriend. Don't make it weird."
"I'm weird by nature," I said. "But I'll try for you."
The whole café went quiet.
In the corner booth, Asher Prescott laughed into his fist.
"Ninety-nine days," he said. "They give out medals for less."
Everyone called Asher "Fang" behind his back, because he had ended his last fight by biting the other man's wrist.
He was six feet two and tanned, and when he grinned, half the room forgot what they were doing.
Next to him, Elliott Wainwright turned a page of his textbook without looking up.
"Congratulations, Sabrina," Elliott said. "And I'm sorry."
I held up the box. "Does anyone want to split a crushed corner?"
"That's mine," Caleb said, and pulled it back.
I smiled so hard my cheeks hurt.
Most people thought I was suffering.
They watched Caleb tell me my sweater looked like it had been dug out of a ditch, and they felt sorry for me.
They never saw the roof of Harlan Hall at five o'clock, when the door was shut and nobody could hear us.
That was where Caleb unbuttoned his shirt, slowly, with his ears gone red again.
"For your eyes only," he said.
Then he kissed me until I forgot my own bike was still dripping in the stairwell.
For three weeks, I was the happiest person in the city.
I thought it could last the whole year, with the tarts and the insults and the roof.
Then, on a Tuesday, our professor tapped the whiteboard and said we had a new transfer student.
I turned around in my seat to look.
She stood at the front of the seminar room in a cream cardigan, with brown hair in soft waves.
When she smiled, it reached her eyes.
Her name was Valerie Pendleton.
Behind me, Caleb stood up so fast his chair hit the floor.
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