Me -Who is Milo? And why didn’t you tell Johnny that he hurt you like that? He would never hurt you.
I would never. I could never do anything to hurt Becca.
Becca -Fuck Milo. Milo doesn’t matter. He was over twenty years ago. Tell me your secret.
Me -Okay, here’s my secret. I really like you a lot, Becca. I’m pretty sure I love you.
FUCK!
Just as I hit send, I realize it doesn’t matter if Becca doesn’t remember what I say. There will be a record of it in text on her phone.
“Fuck! Fuck, fuckity, fuck, fuck. What the hell, Johnny? How could you be so stupid? She’s definitely going to run from you now.”
How can I fix this?
A quick Google search tells me that I am not qualified to do anything about it without the help of an expert hacker. I don’t know any hackers, and I can’t just find someone online. Imagine the field day that tabloids would have with that. I can see the headlines now:
Johnny Donovan, guitarist for Sleeping Dogs, is a dirty pervert.
Johnny Donovan pays hacker to delete evidence of his freaky sex fetish.
What is Johnny Donovan hiding? What sort of depraved pictures does he like to send to unsuspecting women?
Actually, that part doesn’t bother me so much. Tabloids print whatever they want, anyway. It’s not like I haven’t been splashed across their pages before. Usually, they’re announcing that I’m dating one of my own sisters when they catch me out in public with one of them. That’s one of the consequences of Travis and me having kept our family out of the spotlight. Everyone thinks our sisters are groupies or baby mommas.
What really bothers me is Becca finding out.
So why was I stupid enough to text it to her? I’m such an idiot.
Becca -Oooh, that’s a good secret. I won’t tell her. I promise.
She doesn’t realize I’m talking about her. This is amazing. I might be able to salvage this after all.
Me -That’s great. Thank you.
Suddenly it hits me: I have to go and delete the message directly from her phone. There’s no other way. I throw my blankets around again, looking for the jeans and t-shirt that I left on the floor. I find them and pull them on, hopping my way to the kitchen as I do so. I stop to grab a box of my freshly baked cookies to give me a reason for showing up tonight before continuing to the door. After shoving my feet into shoes and grabbing my keys, I jump into the elevator and punch the button to close the doors.
Becca was right earlier. It would be so much faster if I could run down the stairs.
* * *
Someone has propped the door to Becca’s building open with a rock. That’s sort of annoying, not to mention unsafe, but it benefits me tonight. Right now, all I care about is getting to her before she goes to bed, and, most importantly, before she realizes it was me she was messaging the whole time.
I bang my fist against the door, a little too enthusiastically, and then wait.
And wait.
And wait.
Fuck, what if she’s already asleep?
I knock again, this time with a more restraint. I’m not trying to wake up her neighbours, after all.
“Becca? You home?”
I listen with my ear to the door. I don’t hear anything, so I knock again, louder this time.
“Becca?” I press my ear to the door again, finally hearing some movement. As the clinks and clunks of the door unlocking sound through the door, I add, “I have cookies.”
