I click on the message.
HotCraic97:Hope you got home okay. Sorry if I made things weird. I really want to see you again…maybe we can arrange a meet with a couple? xx
Shit.
I swallow thickly.
There’s so much in the short message that makes my stomach clench, but my foolish heart latches onto the seven words in the middle that make it fucking sing.
I really want to see you again.
With other people that he’ll likely fuck. That might fuck him, or want to fuckme, and everything about the prospect feels so wrong, except…
Galen.
I want him.
And if this is the only way I get him, I’d be an idiot to blow him off.
A ludicrous way of thinking, I’m aware. Dangerous, even. The kind of fucked-up rationale I used to chase with powder and adrenaline, misery and self-loathing my constant companions. But the trouble with an addiction-riddled brain is that it never quits. Never shuts the fuck up. Tricks. Lies. Whatever it takes to convince you what you want most in the world won’t fucking kill you.
This isn’t quite that. But I want Galen enough that the worst parts of my brain swing into action, the familiar tattoo of failure, and I’m powerless to stop it.
I swipe through FlingIt, turning the DM notification function toonfor the first time ever.
Then I message Galen back.
LeLionDuBois96:Let’s do it
Nothing happens straight away.
Galen doesn’t reply.
Hours pass and I convince myself he won’t. That he’s done with me and the message I sent from my bed will wither and die without him reading it.
By the time the evening rolls around, I think I might’ve dreamed the whole thing, and I’m too gutless to go back into FlingIt and check. I know the notifications are working. Myphone lights up all day with new DMs and updates, but none of them are the one I feel like I’ve been waiting my whole life for.
Christmas is close. My festive shopping is done, but I take Esme into town anyway. She likes the decorations, I like her face when she sees them. A win-win, even if she does bully me into buying another set of lights for the tree in the back garden. At this point, I’m pretty sure it can be seen from Mars. Fuck knows what it’s doing to Galen’s living room, and when we get home, I tell myself that’s why my gaze keeps straying to the gap in the trees. Why I notice when his bedroom light turns off. Why I can’t stop wondering if he’s thinking about me too.
Esme falls asleep in my bed watchingL'Enfant au grelot.I tuck her up and go downstairs, taking my phone with me, turning off lights as I pass.
It leaves me in the dark, staring out at the ridiculous tree, but I leave those lights be…
So Galen knows you’re here?
No.
No.
Because they make me think of Esme and how happy she is when we turn them on every night. There’s no room for recalling the graveness in Galen’s bright green eyes when he’d told me to throw the old set away. Or how it was the first time he ever looked at me without a killer smile on his face. There’sno fucking roomfor how I feel about him at all, and that’s what I try to remember when a FlingIt notification comes through around the same time the lights go on in Galen’s house.
HotCraic97:Okay…maybe we should sit down one night and look at some profiles together?
That lump comes back to my throat. My thumbs hover over the screen, but Galen’s typing again, gifting me a reprieve.
HotCraic97:It’s worth taking the time to find the right couple/people…especially for your first meet xx
I take a slow breath, trying to match what he’s saying with everything that’s gone before, both real and imagined. Andmerde, it’s a mess. All of it. I don’t want to meet other people. I don’t want tofuckother people or have them fuck me, whether Galen’s there or not. So how the hell did I wind up here?
