His Public Confession Was a Lie, So I Stopped Loving Him novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Jacket Girl

The whole campus has seen her likes. Preston offers a month of fake dating for her jacket and she refuses again, then a gossip page posts a photo of her dorm window.

By Sunday morning, forty thousand people had seen my likes.

I knew because Sage read the number out loud while I pulled a hoodie over my head.

"It's not forty thousand people from here," she said. "Most of those are strangers."

"Strangers who know my name. And someone wrote 'That is not what I wrote' under his post, and it vanished."

"Or somebody wanted a reaction and lost their nerve."

"Strangers who will forget it by Wednesday." She stuffed my phone into her bag. "You're not looking at this until you've eaten."

The dining hall was full.

Every table went quiet when we came through the door, and then the talking started again, lower.

A girl I had shared a lab with for a whole semester looked at her tray when I passed.

Sage walked half a step ahead of me, between me and the tables.

"If one person says a word," she said, not very quietly, "I'm throwing a bagel."

I laughed, and it came out wrong.

We had just sat down when Preston dropped into the seat across from me.

He had a coffee in each hand and put one in front of me.

Brooks Denham stood behind him with his phone up, filming.

"Morning, Rory," Preston said. "Good news. I'm not mad."

"Turn that off," Sage said to Brooks.

"It's a public dining hall," Brooks said. He grinned and kept filming.

Preston leaned in and lowered his voice to a friendly murmur.

"Here's where we are. Everyone saw you freak out. Everyone saw me stay calm. I can fix both."

"How?" I said.

"We go out for a month, like I said. I post us. You get your jacket back, and I delete the likes."

"You'll delete a screenshot you posted," Sage said.

"I'll make it a joke." He kept his eyes on me. "Rory. Two years of liking every photo. You'd really say no to this?"

My ears went hot, because everybody at the next table could hear him.

I looked at the coffee he had bought me.

It was a hazelnut latte. I don't drink hazelnut.

He had never asked what I drank, and I understood that he had not wondered either.

"No," I said.

"You'll change your mind."

"I won't."

"Last night I was embarrassed for you," Preston said. "This morning I'm just sorry for you."

Sage stood up.

Before she could say anything, I picked up the latte and set it down in front of Brooks's camera.

"I'm finished here," I said. "Keep the coffee. Keep filming. And give me my jacket."

"After the month," Preston said.

"Then you can keep that too."

I walked out of the dining hall with Sage behind me and did not look at one table.

Outside, the cold air hit my wet face.

"That was incredible," Sage said. "You didn't even shake."

"My knees are shaking."

"Nobody saw your knees."

She hooked her arm through mine, and we went to the library, which was the one place on campus where no one would say a word to me.

We sat in the back corner, and Sage started sorting through every message I had received.

Eleven were from people I knew who said they were sorry.

Four were from people I knew who said they had always thought I was weird.

Thirty were from people I had never met, and Sage deleted those before I could read them.

Then she put my phone on the table very carefully, and I knew something had changed.

"Rory."

"What?"

"There's a new post on Halloran Confessions."

I took the phone from her.

It was the gossip account that every student followed and everyone claimed they didn't.

The new post had a picture, and I looked at it for a while before I understood what I was seeing.

It was the front of Dunmore Hall at night.

The photo had been taken from the lawn, with a long lens.

Third floor, second window from the left.

My desk lamp was on, and you could see the shape of me sitting on my bed.

The caption said: "JACKET GIRL, we found you. Don't worry, we'll be nice."

The comments had already reached two hundred.

The top one said: "Which window is hers? Asking for a friend."

Someone had replied underneath: "Third floor. Second from the left. Already posted."

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