Claimed Hard by My Best Friend novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Confession
Kate tells the campus playboy she likes him in front of two hundred people, is rejected cruelly, then hugged for the camera, and her best friend vanishes that night.
The night before graduation week started, I told Dane Mahoney I liked him in front of two hundred people.
It was the senior party on the quad, with a keg on the library steps and music from somebody's speaker.
Malachi walked me there.
Malachi had been my best friend since the first week of freshman year, when he lived across the hall and lent me a screwdriver.
He took a twenty out of his pocket and pushed it into my hand.
"For the bus home after," he said.
The bill was crisp, with a paper bank band still around the stack. All his cash looked like that. He called it tutoring money.
"I can't take your tutoring money again," I said. "Dad's bar is already behind on the loan from that private lender in Atlantic City. I can't owe anybody else."
Malachi went still. He didn't ask who the lender was.
"Take it," he said. "Go."
"What if he laughs?"
"Then I'm standing right here." Malachi looked at the steps, not at me. "Whatever he says, I'm right here."
I was twenty-two. I had liked Dane Mahoney since the first week of freshman year, when he had held a door for me and called me sweetheart without looking up.
Everyone knew what he was. He took a different girl home every month, and none of them looked like me.
I was flat-chested and skinny, with a plain face and a ponytail. I knew it.
I went anyway.
Dane stood on the steps with a red cup, laughing with four guys from his crowd.
"Dane," I said. "Can I say something?"
"Kate Flanagan." He smiled. He had a great smile. "Sure."
My mouth was dry.
"I've liked you since freshman year," I said. "I wanted you to know. That's all."
The people near us went quiet. One of his friends held up a phone.
Dane's smile did not move. He looked me up and down, slowly, from my sneakers to my ponytail.
"That's sweet," he said. "I mean it. But you're not my type, Kate."
Somebody laughed.
"Not even close," he said. "Look at the girls I go home with, then look in a mirror. You can see it, right?"
More people laughed. The phone stayed up.
I could feel my face burning. My feet wanted to run.
I looked for Malachi at the bottom of the steps, and he wasn't there.
He was at the top of the library stairs, behind the crowd, standing very still in the light from the doors.
He was looking at Dane, not at me.
Then Dane saw the phone too, and his face changed. He stopped sneering and looked kind.
"Aw, come here," he said loudly, and pulled me into a hug. "She's shaking, you guys. I'm not a monster."
His arms went around me. His mouth was at my ear.
"Smile," he whispered. "They're filming."
People cheered. Somebody said the nicest rejection ever.
I stood stiff in his arms and understood that he was making himself look kind with me.
I pushed him off.
"Thank you for being honest," I said. My voice shook, but it came out loud enough for the phone. "Now I know what three years of liking you was worth."
Dane's mouth opened.
I didn't wait. I turned and walked down the steps through two hundred people.
Nobody stopped me.
I looked up at the library stairs. They were empty.
I called Malachi from the path. It went to voicemail.
I called again from the dorm lot, and again from the stairwell.
"Mal, it's me," I said into the third message. "He said no. Where are you? Please call me."
His door was unlocked. I pushed it open at two in the morning.
The lamp was on.
His bed was stripped to the mattress. The shelves were bare and the closet was empty.
My grey cardigan, the one I had left in his room in March, lay folded on the desk with his room key on top.
I stood there holding it for a long time.
At six I called once more, because I couldn't stop.
A woman's recorded voice answered.
"The number you have dialed is no longer in service."
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