Chapter 01: The Cabbage Proposal.

SYDNEY.

The first thing I did when Marcus sent that text was not cry, and it was not scream into my pillow either.

The first thing I did was grab my keys and walk straight out of my dorm room, because the only place that ever made sense when nothing else did was Corbin's apartment.

Corbin Stones stayed off campus because he had money, the kind that meant he never had to share a bathroom wall with a stranger or eat dining hall pasta on a Tuesday if he didn't want to.

Trust me, he never wanted to.

He was also, objectively, the most attractive man I had ever seen in my entire life.

Not that I had ever once felt anything about that beyond mild acknowledgement.

We grew up together.

I watched this boy eat sand at age four and cry because a butterfly touched his ear at age seven.

There was simply no universe where I, Sydney Sharma, looked at Corbin Stones and felt anything other than the very specific fondness you feel for someone who already knows every single one of your embarrassing stories and has chosen to keep them all anyway.

The thing about being the best friend of the guy every woman on earth wanted was that I had spent a portion of my life being the one he called to ease them out when he was done, and I was very good at it.

So when I got to his door I didn't knock, because I never knocked, I pushed it open and walked straight in and then I stopped so fast that my sneaker squeaked against his floor.

"What the fuck!?" I said, to nobody and everybody all at once, "next time, learn to close the door if you're going to be eating a girl's ass."

I spun around and covered my face with both hands, hearing them behind me whispering.

I cleared my throat. "It's fine, I'll just give you guys some space," and I was already turning to leave when Corbin's voice cut through. "Syd, you can stay."

I turned slowly.

The girl was already pulling her jacket on and walking past me with her eyes down, slipping out of the door like she was never there at all.

I watched her go as Corbin pulled his shirt back over his head and looked at me with that expression he always wore when he was pretending to be more unbothered than he actually was.

"Maybe next time," he told me, "you should learn to knock."

I walked over and looked at him from head to toe, genuinely trying to figure out how it was possible that I had known this person my entire life and still couldn't find whatever it was that made every other girl lose her entire mind over him.

I rolled my eyes. "You smell like pussy, go take a shower or something."

He stared at me. "Then maybe you should shut my door first."

I went and closed it, because honestly that was fair.

That was just how we were.

Our parents had spent the better part of our teenage years trying to smooth out the rough edges between us and none of it ever worked.

I dropped onto his couch and buried my face in the nearest cushion. "He broke up with me. I am so devastated right now Corbin, I am genuinely not okay."

I heard him move into the kitchen, heard the tap run, heard the soft clink of glass, and then he came and sat beside me and held a glass of water out until I lifted my head enough to take it.

"Tell me what happened. Why did he break up with you?" he said.

My eyes were already swollen, I could feel it, that tight hot feeling that meant I had been crying harder than I realized. "You remember I told you I was suspicious about his whole situation with Sasha?"

Corbin scratched the back of his head with the expression of a man doing his absolute best to remember.

I stared at him. "Corbin. What exactly do you remember from anything I have ever told you about my love life?"

He laughed. "I'm sorry, but did you actually call it a love life?"

I grabbed the nearest pillow and hit him with it. "Corbin, focus, I am heartbroken right now. I caught him having sex with her in his apartment, and when I tried to make him understand how serious that was, he told me that maybe if I stopped being a cabbage he wouldn't have to go looking elsewhere."

There was a silence and I watched his face go through several distinct stages.

He burst out laughing so hard he had to lean forward.

I grabbed my bag and stood up. "Great, enjoy yourself, I'm leaving," and he caught my arm immediately.

"No no no wait, I'm so sorry, but why cabbage, of all the things he could have said, why did he land on cabbage." he asked, still laughing.

"I think he meant that I have all these layers and none of them are actually interesting and he wanted me to strip them back so he could find something worth staying for." I whispered.

Corbin made the soft face, the one he only made when he was about to say something sincere.

He opened his arms. "Come here, my baby."

"Ew," I said immediately, "you still smell like her squirt, I am not putting my face anywhere near you right now."

He pulled back looking offended. "She did not squirt for the record, I don't even think she got wet."

I opened my mouth and we both started laughing at the exact same time, and then I sat up. "Wait, do you think Anna squirts or just gets really wet?"

"Honestly? If he kept going back to her, she's probably not bad in bed, that's just the reality of it." he said.

And that one landed differently.

Because it wasn't just a joke anymore, it was the thing I had been sitting with for months without saying out loud.

The quiet voice that sounded a lot like my ex telling me I should eat less, wear different clothes, stop taking french fries, fix how I walk, change my scent, be less of whatever I currently was and more of something he could actually show off.

I just sat there and felt it settle across my chest like something heavy.

Corbin must have seen it on my face because he pulled me into his side without making a big deal of it. "Hey. I have always told you that you are fine the way you are Sydney, the boots and the hoodies and all of it, and I mean that."

"I don't need Shakespeare right now Corbin, I need a plan, I need him to understand that I am not a cabbage." I said in pain.

He was quiet for a second. "Can I be honest with you? I feel like I don't actually know anything about this guy, who is he exactly?"

I took a breath because I knew how this was going to sound. "His name is Marcus."

Corbin paused.

Something shifted behind his eyes. "Wait, Marcus as in the hockey captain?"

I looked at him with my best impression of mild surprise, like I hadn't absolutely known he was going to recognize the name.

He shook his head. "Sydney, I am on the same campus as you, and I am the basketball captain. How did you think I wasn't going to know who the hockey captain is?"

"Hot dude knows hot dude, makes sense. I just personally don't understand why these girls go crazy about you."

He smiled and ran a hand over his head, doing this whole slow, deliberate thing like he was in a photoshoot.

I scrunched my face. "Stop it, that's so weird."

He laughed and settled back into the cushions. "Does Sasha have any social media?"

I was already reaching for my laptop.

Corbin watched me navigate directly to her profile in about four seconds flat and I could feel his eyes on the side of my face. "Don't judge me."

"I'm not judging you but you are such a stalker, Syd." he said, but his face said something completely different.

I pointed at him. "You don't understand what it means to actually fall for someone so please just don't."

After about thirty seconds he let out a low whistle. "Okay, damn, she's actually really pretty."

"Yeah, I know," I told him flatly, "he has eyes, clearly."

Corbin closed the laptop. "She looks very confident, you can tell just from how she carries herself, and that's the thing Sydney, it's not even about how she looks, it's the energy."

He paused. "Although she's not my type for the record, not enough up top, she's more of a bottom heavy situation and that's just not where I live."

I stared at him. "So helpful, thank you so much."

He ignored me completely. "You need to let people actually see you, because right now you hide behind the hoodies and the boots and the whole I don't care thing, and maybe that's part of the problem."

I didn't say anything because that was uncomfortably close to something true.

"We go shopping," he said, "we find you something that isn't a hoodie, we reset the whole thing."

"The problem isn't the hoodie Corbin, I have the clothes, I just don't know what to do with them once they're on my body, I always feel like I'm wearing a costume." I sighed.

He looked at me for a long moment and something in his expression shifted.

I felt my heart do something slightly panicked because I knew what I was about to say and I knew exactly how his face was going to look when I said it.

I took a breath anyway. "How about you fake date me."

The room went very quiet.

Corbin stared at me and I could see it happening in real time.

The way his whole face rearranged itself into something that was one part disbelief and two parts are-you-being-serious-right-now.

I stared back because I needed him to know that I was being serious.

The only way to make Marcus understand that I was never a cabbage was to show up next to the one guy on this campus that every single person stopped to look at.

The longer Corbin stayed silent, the louder my heartbeat got, because his expression was already giving me the answer, and it was not the one I came here for.