Konnor: Sorry for swearing at you.
I hold my phone to my chest for a humiliating amount of time, like a teenager reading her first text from a boy at school.Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.Fucking fuck.
Elise rolls over in her bed and eyes me. "Are you... hugging your phone?"
I keep hugging it. "No."
"You're hugging your phone."
"It's cold in here."
Day Seven:
It’s been a week, and I look forward to his silly messages, though they come at all times of the day and night.
Today, I try the affirmation thing properly. I write one on a sticky note and put it on my mirror:Someone will love all the pieces of me.
I read it while combing my hair into a high ponytail and even believe it, for about three seconds after my hairbrush lands on the chest of drawers.
I should text him now.
Thank him for not pushing me.
Thank him for— And apologise. Yes, I should. For all sorts of things that are not, on reflection, my fault, or maybe they are, including the weather, a mix-up at the campus café, and now, apparently, a national cheese shortage that only affects one block, in one fridge, several blocks away.
Elise walks over to my mirror and leans in close to it, a sparkly purple pen braced in her hand. She writes: Except for the piece that hugs my phone. It's WEIRD.
She grins at me.
My phone buzzes.
Konnor: 0 cans of beans, 6 rolls of toilet paper, 0 tomatoes, 1 clove of garlic, 1 frozen meal, 3 batteries, 5% block of cheese.
I sigh angrily. At myself. At the situation and the unbearable and fictional image of him wrapping a clove of garlic in toilet paper and eating it out of pure stubborn determination to stay lonely rather than walking the four hundred metres to a shop.
The day goes by with classes, and I check my phone over and over, but I’m not sure why. It’s time for a different conversation with him! One devoid of batteries and toilet paper. But… I can’t bring myself to start one.
That night, I am almost asleep when my phone beeps. My eyes flash open and when I look at my phone, there is a voicemail. A voicemail? He called?
He called!
Smiling, I listen to his voice.
"Hey. It's me. Obviously. Look, I'm not going to keep doing this, the daily thing, it's... probably not great for either of us. I just. You want to be just friends? I can do that. I want you any way I can have you. I need you to know I'm not going anywhere. Whenever you're ready. If you're ever ready. Okay. Bye. That was a weird way to end that. Bye, Blesk."
The phone shakes by my ear. I play it four more times just to hear him saybye, Blesk,and hug my phone to my chest as if I can crush the words inside the speaker.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
blesk
Day Eight:
I stir in bed on the eighth day of my Konnor-fast. Rolling over, the sheets pulling with me, I blink at Elise who is still snoring softly.
She is really pretty. I don’t think she knows that, but her nose is just right and her freckles shuffle like they have a life of their own every time she twitches or moves her face.
My phone is under my pillow.
