Finally Moving On After A Decade novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: The Lot

Freja asks Nolan to be the heartbreak lot at Saturday's auction, he sets one condition, she sets one rule, and his best friend dares him. Hook: Lydia has registered as bidder number one.

"Why would the internet want my face?" I asked.

"Because you're the one who walked up the aisle," Freja said.

She handed me the second coffee, and I took it because my hands needed something to do.

"It's trending as 'the man who left.' Forty thousand comments say they'd bid on you."

"On me."

"We hold an auction every year, the Saturday after the gala. Two hundred people, a silent room, a lot of casseroles." She pushed the pencil deeper behind her ear. "This year three donors pulled four hundred thousand dollars in pledges this morning. They said they won't have their names near a circus."

"That's not my circus."

"I know. I was in the ballroom."

She said it flatly, and I looked at her.

"Lydia and Brooks aren't coming back to anything we hold," she said. "You are. If you stand on the block, Saturday sells out. People will pay to bid on the dinner."

"I fix chairs."

"Lot nine is a chair," Freja said. "Lot ten is you."

I almost laughed, and it hurt somewhere under my ribs.

A man walked a dog past us and looked at me twice.

He had seen the clip.

"I'm not a lot," I said.

"No. You're the best bad idea I've had all week."

I looked up at our window on the fourth floor.

Lydia was standing behind the glass with her hand flat on it.

She had sat beside her mother's bed through the whole winter, and I had sat beside her.

The bed had belonged to Fairhaven House.

"Every dollar goes to the house," I said. "Not a cent for fees, not a cent for the band. And nobody says her name on the microphone."

"Done."

"Why?"

"Because four hundred thousand dollars is eight beds for a year, and I want to keep every one," Freja said. "My father died in the room at the end of the hall. I'm not losing a bed over a kiss."

She said it plainly, and I believed every word.

"I have one rule too," she said.

"Go ahead."

"The dinner is a charity date. One night, a restaurant, you buy the wine, the winner gets a story to tell. That's all it is." She held up one finger. "I don't date men who took off a ring this week. I give it thirty days."

"I didn't ask."

"People do," she said. "I'm saving us the trouble."

"Thirty days," I said. "Fine."

She stuck out her hand.

I shook it.

Her palm was warm from the coffee cup, and she let go first.

She glanced at my left hand, where a pale band of skin marked the spot the ring had sat for three years.

"That's going to show under the lights," she said. "I'll bring concealer."

"I'm not wearing makeup."

"Then you'll have a story," Freja said, and went to find her car.

Teddy's bar opens at four, and he gave me a stool at the end and a plate of fries I hadn't asked for.

I told him about the auction.

He set down the glass he was drying.

"They're going to bid on you."

"It's a dinner."

"Nolan, there is a woman on my staff who has screenshotted your jaw."

"That's not funny."

"It's a little funny." He leaned his elbows on the bar. "Wear the jacket open."

"I'm not wearing it open."

"You're going to stand on a stage with a hundred thousand dollars of pity money in the room," Teddy said. "You might as well have the chest for it."

I threw a fry at him.

He caught it.

"Ten years, man," he said, more quietly. "Do something stupid once."

My phone had buzzed twice while he talked.

Both were from Lydia: "Please come home. I'll be good."

I turned the phone over on the bar and did not answer.

I ate the fries and watched the bar fill.

At nine my phone buzzed on the wood.

It was Freja, with a link to the bidder list for Saturday.

The first name on the registration was already filled in and approved.

Lydia Sorrell, paddle number one.

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