“Let’s be real, both of us have time blindness,” Bonnie says with a laugh. “Wemightmake it to Foster’s before midnight.”
“We can do this.” He starts backing away, pointing toward her. “Five minutes!”
She chuckles at him. “Five minutes.”
And as her gaze moves to me, that smile fades.
God, what have I done?
“You up for a night of gaming, Gemma?” she asks awkwardly.
“If that’s what you want,” I reply.
Talk to me.
I will beg right here.
Just say something that isn’t forced.
She gives me a half-smile and turns to the steps, intent on heading inside to change.
And I follow her because I’m fucking desperate.
“Hey,” I say, launching up the steps to catch up with her. “Can we talk?”
Bonnie barely acknowledges me as she takes her bag off the floor and begins rummaging through it for clothes. “Ah… sure. What’s up?”
I shut the door behind me and pause between the couches. “I wanted to ask if everything was okay,” I admit. “You’ve barely spoken to me since the morning after the hike. I don’t know if I did something wrong.”
“No,” she says quickly. “No, you haven’t…” She twists and pushes her hand through her hair, messing it up in the most perfect way. “I’m okay—I mean,we’reokay. It’s just being busy with the song this week, thinking about moving, the fact that someone tried to get into my apartment, and then when you had Kade checking in on me the other night instead of you, and I couldn’t find you—which I know is because you were doing things, but… I think it’s all piling in.”
What the hell?
“Whoa, wait,” I say, confused. “I didn’t know you were upset about any of that.”
“Which part?”
“Ah… Let’s start with you being upset that Kade checked in on you. Was that the night before our hike?”
“Yeah,” she replies. “I called you to come over, and you had Kade check in. I wanted you.”
I can’t tell if she’s actually mad or picking a fight in an attempt to push me away.
“Where is this coming from?” I ask.
“Just… never mind. It doesn’t matter. If it did, you would have come the other night.”
I nearly balk, confused as fuck by this turn of events. “Bonnie, we went hiking the next day,” I say deliberately. “We talked,all day long. I met Darcy. We spenthourstogether. We even kissed. Why didn’t you say anything then?”
She huffs in disbelief. “You couldn’t tell something was wrong? You kissed me because why? Because you thought it would just make me forget? Was that part of your job, too?” She presses her hands to her hips and shakes her head at theceiling. “Funny that you—who’s supposedly interested in me—can’t come when I need you, yet if I were to tell mystalkerI was remotely scared, she’d be there in seconds.”
I blink. “Are you comparing me to yourstalker?”
She pauses as if she didn’t mean to, as if it was a comparison in her head that she’s been thinking about for days now, like one of us is better at loving her than the other.
“You didn’t say anything about being scared or worried when we talked the day after the hike. You didn’t say anything about your stalker. How was I supposed to know? Did she come over?” I ask.
She scoffs and shakes her head, avoiding my eyes once more. “It doesn’t matter.”
