“So, you needed an excuse to touch me?” I tried to come back to my senses and feel less like I was about to come undone. David was just some guy from high school who liked to preach stoicism and judge intellect on his own moral scales.
“You know I’m always looking for a good excuse,” he murmured as he typed. “I got a taste of it at the beach, and now, I can’t get enough.”
I would have scoffed if I weren’t taken aback by the fact that he brought up that moment. He could have referenced anything. He could have left it alone. And yet, his mind lingered on something I was also stuck on every time we came face-to-face now.
His brief comment sparked a moment of deep reflection. As I weighed the likelihood of seriousness underlying his teasing, David’s forehead furrowed at whatever was on the screen.
His confused, hushed “shit” sent off immediate alarm bells.
My smile faded. Visions of sugarplum sandcastles washed off the shore. “What?”
“I didn’t realize she was going to respond so quickly…” His brow knitted. “And angrily.”
“Give it to me.” When I reached for my phone, he pulled it back.
“Yara, give me a second to…”
“To?” I shook my head, waiting for an explanation that’d calm my nerves. “What the hell did you do?”
“It’ll be a temporary misunderstanding,” he promised, though the unsure tilt of his brow told another story.
“Give. It. To. Me,” I ordered through gritted teeth.
David took a deep breath and handed me the phone. As soon as I saw the name at the top of the text thread, my heart dropped. But that was just the tip of the iceberg. The text David sent made bright dots cloud my vision.
“What the hell is wrong with you?” I chewed on my thumbnail as I watched the text dots disappear and reappear, then disappear again. God, she was still responding.
“This is my ex,” I hissed at David.
“Well, that was the point,” he said in an admittedly remorseful tone. If I weren’t so furious, I would have noted how he winced with regret, how his fingers pushed through his hair in a slow and steady motion, how the small bit of color in his cheeks stretched toward his neck.
“You sent an ‘I’ve been thinking about you’ text to my ex.” My breathing was shallow.
“In my defense…”
I stared at him, waiting for a valid explanation. After a few seconds of floundering, David couldn’t come up with a single thing.
“Yeah, I thought so.” I groaned as Ren’s text finally came through. I squinted, hoping limited visibility would lessen the sting. It didn’t.
Yara (David):
Hey, I’ve been thinking about you. And us.
Ren
Are you being serious? This is so weird and inappropriate. You know I’m with Rose. She’s in the room right now. What if she had my phone?
Ren
Have your sisters not mentioned the proposal? Is that why you’re sending this??
I almost threw up while reading the last part. No one had mentioned any proposal. That news must have been stuck somewhere in the grapevine… Uncle Kevin, probably. He could sit on a secret for weeks.
“The Rose she’s talking about wouldn’t happen to be…” David stopped as if he’d rather not know the answer.
“My sister, genius.” My hands trembled as I tried to type a response. Ren and Rose had been together for three years. They were madly in love and had no guilt about it. Not that they should… even though I wouldn’t have minded a bit of groveling from either party.
Every time I typed up a response, it sounded too try-hard. Too fake.
