Page 62 of Rebound

Thomas:I’m here.

Ben:Here?What does that mean?

Thomas:It means I’m here. At work. Moving on with things.

Ben:You’re really bad at this.

Thomas: At what?

Ben:Give me an emoji or three that describe how you’re feeling.

Thomas furrowed his brow at the demand, but sent back the yawning smiley face, a peach, and beer mug.

Immediately, the phone rang and he picked it up on the first ring.

“Hey,” he greeted.

“Those are horrible answers,” Ben chided. “You are horrible with texting.”

“I text just fine,” he protested, stabbing the thin plastic fork into a quarter of peach.

“You don’t emote well.”

“What’s wrong with my emoting?” Thomas bit the peach and chewed while he waited for Ben’s answer.

“Tired, sure. I get that one. Exes are exhausting. But the peach is slang for ass, so are you out cruising or something?”

“What?”Thomas choked as he swallowed, smacking himself on the sternum until his throat cleared. “No, I’m eating a peach!”

“A peach is an ass!”

“An actual peach. I’m eating an actual peach right now.”

“You’rethe worst,” Ben said with a laugh.

He went after a cube of watermelon next. “You’ll have to teach me. Next, you’ll tell me that eggplants are sexual too.”

“They aaaaaare. Oh, myGod. Sometimes I forget you’re so much older than me.”

“Not that much,” he grumbled.

“Clearly enough.”

That little comment landed in the pile alongside his earlier worries about things in their relationship being uneven, and the scales tipped a little more in the wrong direction.

“Uhm, speaking of that.” He dropped his fork and wished he had some water. “I was thinking on the way back to the office.”

“About?”

“You. Us. I don’t know.”

Ben sighed. “Out with it.”

“I just want to make sure that you and I have made the right decision about being together.”

“Are you having second thoughts?” Ben’s voice went quiet.

“Not at all,” he said quickly. “Nothing like that. I just…I know it was a lot for you to admit you wanted more than something casual with me, and I want to make sure that, like…things are fair between us.”