HotCraic97:That’s to say, if you ever need a wingman for a meet, I got you
The message pops up, but the dots don’t go away. Galen keeps typing for ages before he abruptly goes offline.
A frown folds my face in half. My thumbs hover, as if by typing out a message he’ll suddenly reappear and unfuck the complex place my imagination has taken me to. A low-lit room…somewhere, where every connotation of what he’s saying plays out in HD.
Him.
Me.
Other people.
The more I think about it, the more I like it.
The more I hate it.
Iwantit…maybe?
I know I want him.
Galen.
But what if this is the only wayhewantsme?
Merde, my head feels more tangled than the Christmas lights I promised Esme I’d get down from the loft if she chilled out in my bed for a little while. And I know it’s ameproblem. One that years ago I’d have blasted through with a bag of sniffand an endless night of nothing. But these days I have nothing but silence for company, at least until Esme wakes up, and it leaves me at the mercy of the fear I’ve carried since I first told Charmaine I’d noticed the same hunk of muscle in the street she had. The one she had to tear her gaze from to notice I was speaking.
“Why are you always trying to be like your brother? You know you’ll never, like, be him, right?”
Ugh. I do not need to relive that conversation right now. Even thinking about it has me wanting to pitch my phone over the fence and never look at it again. Never mind that it’sGalen’sfence and I haven’t replied to most of the messages he’s sent me today. A reality that sends a different fear coursing through me. I’ve been out here too long. I need to get the lights from the loft before Esme wakes up. Untangle them without her tiny hands getting caught in the wire, and make a plan for how I’m going to wrap them around her favourite tree in the garden.
I need to message Galen back before he gets bored of my shitty dithering and moves on to someone else.
Fuck it.
I rise, typing. Fire a message into the black, then toss my phone onto the frost-dusted deck, abandoning it, turning my back on the house on the other side of the fence.
It’s a reckless message.
Impulsive.
Probably a mistake.
But something deep in me—something quiet and insistent—won’t shut up, or let it lie.
I’ve only just met him. It shouldn’t matter this much. And yet, I can’t live with that Friday night kiss being the first and last time he looks at me as if I’m the one lighting him on fire, or any other metaphor that doesn’t pun badly with his occupation.
I don’t want that kiss to be the end.
Galen
I’m so tired I can’t focus on my phone screen. I showered at the station, and again at home. But somehow I still find soot in my ears and grime on my skin. And, as my vision clears, a reply to a message I barely remember sending.
LeLionDuBois96:I think I’d like that xx
Jesus.
I scroll back, matching what he’s saying to whatIsaid, when I should’ve been out cold before my next shift instead of sleep-texting on my phone, and…
Yup.
