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Dylan: Are you still going to be able to make it tomorrow?
Dylan: Totally okay if not. I’ve still got time to ask Row to come with Cal and babysit Grav. Serafina is staying in the UK with the nanny.
Like hell he would. First of all, she was downplaying how much my being there meant to her, and I knew it. Second, I’d rather feast on my own bowels than look like a bad boyfriend in front of Row.
Rhyland: I’ll be there.
Dylan: You really don’t have to.
Rhyland: Why are you still up?
Dylan: I could ask you the same thing…
I peered down at the semi behind my jeans. Touché. The mere thought of her staying up so she could talk to me gave me a chub.
Dylan: I know this weekend is super important to you.
Rhyland: No. You’re super important to me.
She was typing, deleting. Typing, deleting.
Dylan: You’re just saying that bc you want your dick wet before I go to the gig.
I groaned. Dylan still struggled with words of affirmation when they weren’t directed at her kid. But I wasn’t gonna take the L. I’d wear her out. I’d make her as obsessed with me as I was with her.
Rhyland: And? Is it working?
Dylan: Yes.
Rhyland: Good night. See you tomorrow, Cosmos.
Dylan: See you tomorrow
DYLAN
Dylan: Hey! Are you on your way?
Dylan: I tried to call but it threw me to voicemail.
I stared at the unanswered messages, willing myself not to freak out. Cal and Gravity were sitting at the dining table making friendship bracelets and drinking hot cocoa, even though it was a thousand degrees outside.
We had to leave in about three hours. Every instinct in my body told me to brace myself for the worst. That he was going to disappoint me, break my heart, never show up. After all, that was what happened last time Tucker went on a fishing boat. He never returned home. Decided he was better off without me.
Rhyland is not Tucker. Snap out of it, bitch.
This was just residual trauma from the other times I hadn’t gotten to see Taylor, that’s all.
Standing up from the couch, I made my way on wobbly legs to Cal and Gravity, who were chatting animatedly.
“…and then Uncle Rhyrand looked at his clock belt…” Gravity said animatedly.
“Clock belt?” Cal lifted her head from the colorful beads. She’d been relentlessly looking for the Y so she could spell my name.
“Yes. When you have a clock on your hand.” Gravity pinched her wrist, frowning seriously.
Cal threw her head back and laughed. I smiled too.
“And then he said he will be here to help us make bracelets, and he didn’t, so now he needs to buy me all the candy and all the toys and all the dinosaurs.”