I’d stood there for a full minute after he disappeared, my back against my car, trying to remember how breathing worked.
What the hell had that been?
And then he paused and looked back.
And my heart flipped in ways that would make Simone Biles jealous.
My phone buzzed on the coffee table, snapping me back to the present. I was sprawled on my couch, supposedly watching some true crime documentary but actually staring at the ceiling and spiraling.
PuckingSkylerShaw: Question of the day: if you could only eat one food for the rest of your life, what would it be? And it can’t be pizza. That’s Erik’s lamego-to.
Despite everything, I smiled.
This had become our thing over the last few days—random questions lobbed back and forth, keeping a conversation alive that never seemed to end. He’d text during breaks at practice; I’d respond between bar shifts. It was easy and comfortable and felt like something I’d been doing for years instead of weeks.
It also felt very, very dangerous.
Because every time my phone buzzed with his name, my heart did a little skip that had nothing to do with friendship.
Me: Rosa’s carnitas. Obviously. I’m a man of refined taste.
PuckingSkylerShaw: You’re a man who’s obsessed with a taco bus.
Me: Those two things aren’t mutually exclusive.
I watched the typing dots appear, disappear, then appear again.
Waiting for Skyler’s responses had become its own form of torture—the good kind, the kind that made me feel alive and slightly insane.
PuckingSkylerShaw: When’s your next day off? We should grab food again before I leave for the road trip.
My thumb hovered over the keyboard.
He wanted to see me again.
Before a two-week trip.
That meant something, right?
Or it meant nothing. Friends made plans. That was normal friend behavior.
God, I was exhausting myself.
Me: Tomorrow night, but don’t you fly out Thursday morning?
PuckingSkylerShaw: Yeah. Early. Like, stupidly early.
Me: Then you should probably sleep instead of hanging out with me.
PuckingSkylerShaw: Sleep is overrated.
I stared at that message for way too long.
Sleep is overrated.
He’d rather hang out with me than rest before a major road trip.
Good googly moogly, that was . . .something. Wasn’t it?
