“What?” my mom mumbles half-heartedly. Her attention is solely on the movie.
Or Bradley Cooper.
Dimming the brightness of my screen, I bring the phone up to my chest. If Mom catches me responding to an unknown number, she’d lose her fucking mind. Eighteen or not, she’d take my phone and find out herself who was texting me.
The number doesn’t look familiar, starting with an area code I’m unfamiliar with. I’ve also only given two people my number. So, who the fuck is this?
I can still taste you on my tongue.
Excuse me?
Ummm, who the fuck is this? And how did you get my number?I reply, my hands trembling under the bubbling nerves.
The gray chat bubble appears right away, seeming to go on endlessly. I can’t stop myself from holding my breath while I wait, watching the dots disappear and reappear until my chest is screaming through the fire.
One word is all it takes for that fire to engulf the remainder of me.
Mr. Ellis.
The choked gasp that leaves my throat is too loud to ignore. Turning her head away from the movie, Mom stares at me oddly, eyebrow crooked and mouth twisted into a judgmental smirk. “What?”
“Uhhh…” I stumble, unable to form any coherent sentence or thought as I gape at the text. Dynamite blows in my chest, shattering my heart into a million tiny pieces.This can’t be him!There’s no fucking way. “Umm. Nothing, just something Dana told me about this girl in her ceramics class.”
“Oh. Okay,” Mom says, losing interest and going back to Bradley.
I’m grateful for that. It makes it easier to excuse myself and dash into my upstairs bathroom. As I throw myself into the room, I gag on my hammering pulse, almost losing my dinner from the violent surge of disbelief.
I reread the message, scan it, and study every letter three times before clicking it open. My thumbs hover over the keyboard, rotating in rapid, jerky circles.
What do I say?!
“Shit! Fuckingfuckfacefucking gaaah!”
I pace the bathroom floor, knowing I don’t have much time before my mom comes to look for me.
Okay, there are three ways to play this game. I could, A, appear unaffected, B, respond with the same because lord knows I’m still savoring the taste of him as well.
Or option C.
How did you get my number?
The nerves twisting my insides warn me to stay in the bathroom unless I can control the undiluted high streaming through my system. See, my mom, as kind as she is, can be a fucking bloodhound, and if she sniffs out poorly contained excitement, she has no issue in poking and prodding until I spill every last detail of that secret.
It's only happened once before, two years ago. It was the night of my friend Lydia’s Quinceañera. I lost my virginity to Carson Reager in the back of her mom’s 2015 Ford Ranger.
It was nothing to brag about, but I guess I came home with a glow on my cheeks. My mom knew instantly, as if the universe gave mothers an extra sense, one that allows them to catch their children doing things they aren’t supposed to.
If I don’t want to relive that night and go through rounds of cross-examination, then I got to get my shit together and walk out of this room with a modest, inconspicuous smile and no ammunition.
Breathe in.
Breathe out.
“Okay, Scarlett. You can do this!” I hiss, working the muscles around my jaw to fall into a relaxed position while I hop from foot to foot. Then, with a crack to my neck and a shake of my sweating palms, I rip open the bathroom door and run down the hall. That was my final burst of energy before meeting the stairs. There, I slaughter the adrenalin and slowly descend. I keep my eyes down, pretending to care about not falling down the steps. But, in actuality, it's because I know she’s looking.
“Hey, where did you go? I was about to go looking for you.”
See!
