He Turned Me Down, So I Dated His Best Friend Instead Chapter 01

He Turned Me Down, So I Dated His Best Friend Instead Chapter 01

After Julian Rhodes turned down my confession, I started avoiding him.

If he was going to a party, I stayed home.

If we were assigned to the same group, I found someone to switch with.

Soon, our paths stopped crossing altogether.

Then one of his closest friends posted on Hartwell Confessions that he wanted to ask me out.

He tagged Julian too.

[Rhodes, you know more girls on campus than anyone. Ever seen her before?]

My roommate forwarded the post to me.

She was practically vibrating with excitement. “Look! Somebody’s trying to find you on Hartwell

Confessions!”

I picked up my phone and read the title.

[Who was the girl outside the Hartwell Library around three this afternoon? Does anyone know her?

I want to ask her out.]

Attached was a photo of me in profile.

My roommate explained,

“No one replied at first. Then he tagged Julian Rhodes.”

“And just like that, the post took off.”

At Hartwell, just about everyone knew Julian Rhodes.

He came from one of Boston’s most influential families, earned top grades, and had the kind of face that belonged on a movie poster.

More importantly,

in the two and a half years since we’d started college,

he’d gone through more than a dozen girlfriends.

Every one of them had been gorgeous.

He was brilliant, handsome, and an unapologetic player. People even bet on which department would produce his next girlfriend.

kimmed the comments.

Plenty of people had already recognized me and posted my name and cohort.

One comment read,

[That girl is in Julian Rhodes’s honors cohort. He definitely knows her. Go hit up your boy and get

him to help you win her over.]

The theories kept piling up.

Still,

Julian never replied to the post.

My roommate couldn’t resist asking,

“Come to think of it, you and Julian were pretty close last month. I thought you two might get

together. Then he started dating Dawn Ellis out of nowhere.”

Hearing that,

I went still for a moment.

A scene from a few weeks earlier came rushing back.

We’d been alone in a dim stairwell.

Julian had casually taken the letter from my hand, met my gaze, and said in that lazy voice of his,

“I’m sorry.”

“Maybe we spent too much time together and I gave you the wrong idea.”

“I don’t like you that way.”

I’d made a fool of myself.

A few tutoring sessions and two breakfasts had been enough to convince me he might like me back.

Even so, I couldn’t help wondering,

Why? Was I really so unappealing? He had dated one girl after another, but when it came to me, he wouldn’t even give me a chance.

I never got the chance to ask.

Because

the very next day, he made his new relationship official on Instagram.

Back in the present, I pressed my nails into my palm and forced myself to calm down.

“No.”

“Julian and I barely know each other.”