Taming the Bad Boy Was a Mistake novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Space

Callie tries leaving Jesse alone all day to lower the meter, it climbs instead, and at one in the morning he's outside her dorm asking why she didn't text goodnight.

"No," I said.

It came out too loud.

A guy at the next table laughed into his milk.

"No," I said again, quieter. "I'm not dumping you. I'm giving you space."

Jesse looked at my wrist in his hand.

He let go.

"I don't want space."

Ninety-nine point eight.

[Okay,] said the System. [Okay. Whatever that was, do more of it.]

I had no idea what that was.

"Then what do you want?" I asked.

He opened his mouth.

He shut it.

Behind him, one of the girls with the phones said, "Oh my God, she broke him."

Jesse picked up the cigarettes, the lighter and the key and shoved them in his jacket.

Then he walked out of the dining hall without his salad.

The bar went with him, floating over the crowd.

I sat back down because my knees told me to.

"System," I said. "What's the plan?"

[Simple. You've been on him like a heat lamp for a year. Turn the lamp off. Leave him alone for a day.]

"A whole day?"

[You'll live. That's sort of the point.]

So I left him alone.

It was the hardest thing I had done in two lives.

At two o'clock, when his statistics lecture started, I didn't text him "ARE YOU IN YOUR SEAT."

I sat on my hands in the library instead.

At three, I didn't check his location.

At four, I walked past the gaming cafe on Fourth Street and didn't look in the window.

I looked a little.

He wasn't there.

At five, my phone buzzed.

JESSE: you didn't text about stats

I stared at it.

[Don't,] said the System.

"He's asking."

[He's testing. Be breezy.]

I typed, deleted, typed again.

ME: hope it went ok!

I added a smiley face.

I took the smiley face off.

I put it back.

Sent.

[Breezy,] the System said. [I'm proud of you.]

No answer.

At six, I ate dinner with my roommate instead of across from him.

At seven, I didn't go to the library.

I lay on my bed and stared at the ceiling and listened to my heart going too fast.

My roommate looked at me over her laptop.

"Are you sick?"

"I'm being breezy."

"You look like you're being held hostage."

At eight, the System made a small noise.

[Huh.]

"What?"

[I'm getting a reading from his building.]

"And?"

[It went up.]

I sat straight up. "Up? I didn't do anything!"

[I know. That's what's weird. Ninety-nine point six to ninety-nine point seven.]

"Wait, it went down before that?"

[It dipped when you said 'what do you want' at lunch. It's been crawling up since you vanished.]

"So he's annoyed I'm gone?"

[Or he's annoyed in general and you're a coincidence. I don't do feelings, Host. I do numbers.]

"You told me to leave him alone!"

[I've been wrong before. Once. It was today, apparently.]

At ten, the bar was at ninety-nine point eight.

At eleven, I texted Bea, my roommate, who was sitting four feet away.

ME: if I die tonight you can have my cardigans

She read it and threw a pillow at me without looking up.

At midnight I turned off the light.

I couldn't sleep.

I kept seeing his face in the dining hall when I said free.

I'd seen Jesse Rainey bloody after a fight, freshman orientation week.

I'd seen him get kicked out of a lecture hall for swearing at a professor.

I'd never seen him look like that.

Like I'd taken something.

At twelve forty, my phone lit up on the pillow.

JESSE: you up

I stared at it.

[Careful,] said the System. [I don't know what this is.]

ME: yes

JESSE: look outside

I went to the window in my socks.

Our dorm was on the second floor, over the bike racks.

He was standing under the streetlight in his leather jacket.

His black hair was messed up.

No cigarette in his hand.

No lighter.

Just his phone, lit up, and his face turned up toward my window.

The purple bar over his head glowed in the dark.

Ninety-nine point nine.

My phone buzzed against the glass.

JESSE: you didn't text me goodnight

JESSE: you always text me goodnight

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