Page 177 of Safe With You

By the time I reached my truck, I was still thinking about what she said, but it wasn’t the part about Lucas that stayed with me. It was the text that brought me there in the first place.

I need help with something.

Luna could’ve figured it out herself. I knew that much about her already. She hadn’t asked me because she had no other choice. She’d asked because, out of all the people she could’ve called, she chose me.

I opened the truck door and tossed Mila’s jacket onto the passenger seat, unable to shake how much that mattered to me.

I’d watched twenty-three minutes of a show I couldn’t name if somebody paid me.

The woman on the television was crying now, which felt important considering the music playing behind her, but I had no idea why. I’d missed whatever happened somewhere between reheating my dinner and sitting down on the couch, and instead of rewinding it, I reached for my phone again.

There was nothing new waiting for me, and I set it facedown beside me.

The woman kept crying.

“You and me both,” I mumbled.

Except I wasn’t crying, and nothing was actually wrong with me.

I was home before eight for the first time all week. I’d showered as soon as I walked through the door, changed into an old T-shirt and a pair of shorts, reheated the Chinese food I’d ordered the night before, and planted myself on the couch with every intention of doing absolutely nothing until it was time for bed.

This was what I wanted. A quiet night where I didn’t have to think about customers, inventory, or whatever event was coming next. I didn’t even have Naomi asking me questions from three aisles away because walking closer apparently took too much effort.

Just me, my couch, and a show I’d stopped paying attention to almost half an hour ago.

My phone was in my hand again before I realized I’d picked it up. It was 8:17, and when I checked my messages, there was nothing new there either.

I stared at the screen for a second before locking it. This was ridiculous. It wasn’t like Ellis texted me every day.

At least, I didn’t think he did.

I unlocked my phone again.

His name was close enough to the top of my messages that figuring it out wouldn’t take much effort, but I refused to become the kind of person who scrolled through timestamps to determine how frequently a man texted her.

I tossed the phone onto the other end of the couch.

It landed against one of the pillows and stayed there.

“Problem solved.”

The woman on television had stopped crying. There was a man with her now, and apparently I’d missed enough that they were kissing.

I reached for the remote and changed the channel, flipping past a couple of commercials before landing on a cooking competition. I left it there.

For the next ten minutes, I watched three people turn a basket of ingredients that had no business being together into meals that somehow looked better than anything I’d eaten that week. One of the judges took a bite and immediately made a face.

I laughed.

The contestant looked like he might pass out.

The judge chewed slowly before announcing that there was entirely too much salt in whatever he was eating.

My phone stayed exactly where I left it.

I looked at it anyway.

This time, I caught myself.