He laughs softly. "A predator, definitely."
But he straightens and steps back. "Send that to me, please. And since you're so pleasant, I will give you the rest of the afternoon off."
I open my mouth to respond, but he shakes his head.
"I wouldn't. Any word from you just might change my mind. Take the damned afternoon off."
I should feel like I won the lottery, but I don't.
The dampened mood clings to me faintly all through Friday night and into Saturday.
It is not Enzo, I tell myself. It is Alex.
He hasn't texted me in so long, and his number is not in the cloud. I'm not sure why I didn't program it in, but I didn't.
And now...
Now I can't reach him.
Normally, I would have heard from him, even given his telling me he is busy. He is not going to be busy forever.
I didn't even think of checking in with him after the phone smashing. Enzo took up too much time with his demands, his annoying bossiness, his Enzoness.
And the guilt is now bone-deep.
Guilt I didn't think of him. Guilt that maybe Alex texted when I had no phone and thinks I'm ignoring him.
I didn't even get the new phone up and running for a number of hours—plenty of time for Alex to have texted multiple times. Shit.
Why didn't I program it in? All I have is the photo of me. Not even the one of him.
And I'm ashamed to admit I want that photo. Desperately. I want to gaze at it to cheer me up. I don't care that I wouldn't see his face, he couldn't see mine, but that hot, hot body did things to me and my fantasies...
And now it is gone.
The panic bites deep. Shouldn't the photo be there? And the texts? I have texts from other random shit I don't have numbers for, so... A glitch? Or something to do with the phone?
I'm not technical in that way, so I don't know.
My eyes burn as I blink back the hot blur of tears I refuse to shed.
There must be a way to find him. That app. The dating app. Whatever it is called...
I spend the next few hours setting up a profile and looking for him that way, but all I get are creeps asking me to show them my tits, or asking if I'm good in bed, or...to send them some nudes.
I put the phone down.
The thing I liked most about our relationship was that it was anonymous, and I knew we would never meet. But never meeting and not talking are two different things.
And what if I want to meet him? Not now, obviously. But one day...soon?
I swallow the lump in my throat.
I might never hear from him again. He might have tried, got nothing back, and left the ball in a court I'm locked out of. It makes me sick to my stomach that he could think I'm not interested.
But I blink hard. "Grow up, Lola. You don't even know him. Take it as a sign."
There are plenty of things I can do this weekend.
