For the most part, he respectedthat.
I turned off the lamp and sat down on the bed in the dark, listening to the soft roar of the ocean through the open windows as the sky began to lighten, totally unable to sleep… and eventually, I decided to return Dylan’s call. It was still early in L.A., though not as ungodly early as it was here. He’d probably be asleepanyway…
But he answered on the first ring. “Hey. How areyou?”
“I’m fine,” I said. “How’reyou?”
“What’s going on? I heard Seth’s withyou.”
I took a breath. “Heis.”
“Why?”
“Because…” How to answer that, exactly? “I invited him to come to Woo’s withme.”
“Uh-huh.Why?”
“Because I wanted to talk to him and this is where I was headed. So here weare.”
“Elle. Everyone’s worried. The guys. Ash… Everyone wants to know what’s goingon.”
“I know. But there’s no need to worry,okay?”
“Elle…”
“You can tell them I’mfine.”
Dylan was silent a moment. “You thinkhe’sfine?”
I wasn’t even sure how to answer that. “Uh, yeah. I think so. I mean, he probably knows everyone’s gonna be upset that I brought himhere—”
“Okay,” Dylan said. “But I was talking aboutAsh.”
Oh.
“You think he’s okay withthis?”
“I didn’t ask him to be okay with this, Dylan. I don’t need his permission anymore than I needyours.”
“You’re not seeing me,Elle.”
“I’m not seeing him,either.”
“Sincewhen?”
I sighed. It wasn’t like I’d expected Dylan not to find out about me and Ash. I never told him that we’d hooked up at Jesse’s wedding or that we’d been hooking up, casually, ever since. But I also never explicitly asked—or expected—Ash not to tell him. And even if Ash didn’t say a word, Dylan was close enough to both of us to figure it out on hisown.
“Yes, Ash and I had a thing,” I admitted. “But it’s over now, and it wasn’t a real thinganyway.”
Silenceagain.
Then: “Does he knowthat?”
I didn’t respond to that. Of course Ash knew it was over. It had been dying for a whilenow.
But did he know it wasn’treal?
“I’m gonna go, Dylan. I’ve got messages coming in.” It was true enough; my phone had jingled with incoming texts while I was talking to him. The calls and texts would probably be flooding in all fuckingday.
