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I swallowed.
Thank you.
My fingers tapped against my screen, thinking over my text sitting in its metaphorical holding cell—whether I should send it or not. I hovered over the send key for one… two… three seconds.
Screw it.
Can we talk?I sent him the message.
The three little dots on his end blinked for what felt like forever. He had to know I didn’t mean just surface talk. I wanted answers. I wanted to put back together what was broken, even though the thought of it was terrifying. That, or have him tell me it was over for good. No more thinking on it, no more sitting in limbo.
It would suck—of course it would suck—if he decided on the latter, but I was tired of sitting around like an idiot, not knowing how he felt. All the while, my heart was screaming at me things I didn’t want to hear, and I was barely succeeding at shoving them back into the dark corners where they belonged.
Yeah, of course,his message pinged through.Right now?
My heart started racing, beating so fast it felt like my chest was vibrating. Now?No, not now,I chickened out.I’d rather talk in person, you know? Tomorrow, maybe?
Yeah, okay. We can talk tomorrow.I had a whole two seconds to let his confirmation sink in, before,Actually, shoot. I’m sorry… I promised my mom I would help her with something tomorrow. Would Friday be okay?
Yeah, Friday is good.I spent too long debating on what else I should say—if anything. So long that it would be obvious I was cradling my phone like a crazy person and thinking way too hard about it.
So, about these deviant nuns…Neil opened the conversation back up, and I grinned like an idiot.
I wasn’t even mad at myself for it.
I didn’t know what to say to him. How to start the conversation. I’d been thinking about it almost constantly since yesterday, and I already knew I wouldn’t be able to stop until I saw him tomorrow.
What our conversation was going to look like, how it was going to turn out, was completely lost on me. I knew what I hoped for, despite my better judgment, but I had no clue what to expect.
But at the very least… I didn’t want it to feel weird between us. I didn’t want him to hate or resent me, I didn’t want him to regret everything that happened between us before that stupid night in his truck, and I didn’t want to look at him and feel like I couldn’t tell him something, or laugh with him, or…
I didn’t know.
I just wanted to feel like we were okay, whatever that meant.
These nagging thoughts were playing on a loop in my mind, exhausting me. I should’ve just taken him up on his offer to talk last night—over the phone. Instead of torturing myself for the next forty-eight hours with the ridiculous amount of what-ifs floating around in my brain.
I legit thought I might combust from the nerves alone.
What if he was done?Done,done?
I didn’t think that was the case, though. Not after how much we’d been texting since yesterday. Surface stuff, sure. But if he was talking to me, it was because hewantedto be talking to me, right?
I was going withyes.
I wondered if he was as nervous about tomorrow as I was, or if he was even nervous at all. It made me feel better to assume he was, so I was going with a yes on that, too.
And Ireallyneeded to stop thinking about it so damn hard.
I grabbed my keys and my bag and made my way downstairs, heading straight through the front door, down the driveway, and into Wednesday, plopping into my seat. Driving to Inkcafé was probably a terrible idea, but if Neil was there, and I could see his face, maybe tomorrow wouldn’t feel like such a big, looming storm cloud hanging over my head. And if he wasn’t, well, then I could work on editing my screenplay.
But… spoiler alert: He wasn’t there.
I curled myself into a seat at the back of the room, over a small table, and got to work. Apparently, my vampire nuns needed to be a tad more likable, hanging a little less precariously over the edge of totally unrelatable. Justa little.
I could do that—make them likable. Right? Totally. (Ha, I was going to try, anyway.)
It was about halfway through my script when I swear, I felt the air in the coffee shop shift. I didn’t care how dramatic it sounded in my head, that’s exactly what it felt like. Like Neil opened the front doors and let all the oxygen out.