Page 70 of Things I Read About

My phone buzzes in my shorts pocket.

Kat: I just can’t believe it.

Kat: What are the odds?

Janie: Not as low as you’d think. Nate works for rich people.

Janie: Rich people, See Also: Your Family

Kat: Ha! True.

Kat: So, have you dumped Joe and jumped Nate’s bones yet?

Kat: The ol' dump and jump!

Janie: Great question.

Sally: No. As you expected, he wasn’t too pleased with my age or my true identity.

Kat: He’ll come around.

Janie: That seems likely. Forced proximity.

Sally: Forced proximity in Hades. Even my eyelids are sweating.

Sally: Imagine the smell.

I send a photo of the animals and fields ahead of me. Nate kills the engine at our last stop, where I toss the corn for the wild deer.

Kat: You forget where I live. I need photo evidence of that man, with you, in that setting.

I walk over to the fence where Nate is scowling at one of the cameras along the fence line. I stand in front of him, ready to take a selfie.

“What are you doing?” he grunts.

“Kat wants photo evidence that you are actually here, suffering on the ranch, with me and the chickens.” I smile, and to my surprise, Nate stands up and walks closer. He towers behind me in the screen. I smile and watch him lean so his head is right above mine. He glares, looking beyond pissed. It makes me laugh. I take the photo but it’s a tiny bit blurry.

“Wait, it’s—” I turn, but Nate’s back to work.

I look down at the image. My second blurry photo of him. There’s something sad and fitting about that, like we can’t quite get ourselves in focus.

Still, the image is hilarious, so I send it. Kat and Janie send a string of laughing emojis in reply.

Nate and I finish the rounds and arrive back at the garage in silence. Nate kills the engine and hops out, back to studying that stupid device.

“Go about your day as usual, like I’m not here,” he grumbles.

“Wait,” I say, with no real thought or plan. I just want to stay beside him. Try to talk to him, to befriend him again. He stalls, his back to me. “What about breakfast?”

“I’ll find my own way around.” He turns his body toward me slightly. “This isn’t a sleepover. We’re not friends, we’re not hanging out. I’ll be monitoring a million variables at once, only one of which is you.” He stalks over to me, and my whole body buzzes in anticipation. He extends his hand, palm up. “Phone.”

I pull it out of my back pocket and hand it to him.

“Surprise, surprise, it’s not even locked.” He huffs as he taps and scrolls. “Mother f—” He drops his hand then levels me with his angry gaze. “You have location sharing on?”

“I do?”

“You don’t, now,” he says as he changes a bunch of settings. He shoves the phone back into my hands. “You need to change all of your passwords to something from a randomized password generator. Right now, this morning. You also need to either disable your social media accounts or add two-factor authentication.”