Page 42

Sydney

AXEL

Jordy’s only been gone thirty seconds, when he’s back ringing the doorbell.

“What the fuck did you forget?” I snap as I grudgingly open the door. It’s late, I’m tired, we’ve fucked, I feel empty and I don’t want him hanging around.

Only, when I open the door, it’s not Jordy standing there.

A familiar figure with dirty-blond hair is on my doorstep with the bleakest look on his face.

“Justin?”

Oh fuck. It’s so soon after Jordy left that there’s no way they haven’t run into each other on his way in.

“Was that…? What’s he doing leaving your place in the middle of the night?” he demands. But he knows. I can read his face easily and the hurt I see there crushes me. I feel completely and utterly sick. I’m sure my guilt is written all over my face.

“You got over me pretty quick,” he says bitterly, when he finally speaks. My heart twists. That’s not how it is.

“It was just a fuck, it meant nothing,” I whisper. “I didn’t think I’d ever see you again.”

He frowns, like something doesn't compute. I can see him turning thoughts over in his mind, and the question he wants to ask, but won’t.

“You were never just that for me,” I tell him, pleading with my whole being for him to believe me. Now that he's finally here, is he going to turn and run?

He takes a deep, stuttering breath, and draws himself upright. He doesn’t look at me.

“Can I come in?”

“Of course.” I mumble, opening the door wider and stepping aside to let him pass.

He makes as if to go to my bedroom, like we’ve always done when he’s been here, but then he falters. I shake my head. I don’t want him to go in there. The bed is messed and the room will smell of sex. If he goes in there, I’ll lose him forever, if I haven’t already.

I steer him towards the couch and sit down. Justin lowers himself cautiously onto the opposite end. As far as he can get from me. Clearly, he’s come to talk, but finding Jordy here has thrown him. I desperately want to bridge the distance between us, but I daren’t touch him. I don’t even know why he’s here.

“Why are you here?” I need to know.

Instead of answering, he asks a question of his own.

“If you were so upset that I was going to stay at my parents' that night, why didn't you just say so? Why did you ghost me? And then you left without trying to work things out with me. You just left. And then… nothing.”

I draw in a deep breath, trying to centre myself and keep what’s left of my composure, although I’m kidding myself if I think I’m more than one step away from completely breaking down.

"But you sent me that text," I stare at him, brows scrunched in confusion. "You told me not to contact you again. And then you blocked me!"

"What are you talking about? I never fucking did that. Why would I do that?"

"You can't fucking deny it now it's not convenient for whatever reason. I called you. I texted you. Even though your text said not to. Why are you here anyway?" Confusion is giving way to anger, and I've raised my voice, but this is stupid because if I want to get back together with him, this is not the way to do it.

"I'm here because I want to sort this out. I don't know what's going on. You ghosted me ! And I swear to you, I didn't send you any break up text!" Justin retorts.

His whole face is flushed, and he looks panicky. I want to get back together, but not if he's going to gaslight me. I start rifling though my phone.

“I heard you talking in the kitchen,” I admit, while I scroll to the app I'm looking for. “I know I shouldn’t have been listening, and I didn’t mean to, I was just bringing some dishes in. But I overheard your mum tell you that you had to choose between your family and me. It sounded like you chose your family. Then you gave me that story about spending a night with them to sort things out, and then later that night you sent me this text..."

I frown, peering down at my phone. I'm in my messages now, but I can't find Justin's last message to me.

It's gone.

"Show me," Justin scoots across the couch and leans in close, trying to see my screen. My skin tingles from the brief contact of our shoulders brushing up against each other, even through the fabric.

"Wait. It's... it's gone. It's not there anymore." I narrow my eyes at him. "Did you erase it before coming here?"

"What???" he sounds exasperated.

I shake my head. But I have a habit of taking screen shots of anything I want to think about later, so I flick over to my photos and find the screenshot I took that day. I hold the phone out to Justin. His face pales and his eyebrows shoot up. If he's faking his surprise, he's doing a wonderful job of it. Still, the evidence is there on the screen. It can't be denied.

Justin frowns, and gets a distant look as if he’s trying to remember exactly what happened that day. He blinks rapidly a few times as he concentrates.

He pulls out his phone, checks his messages.

"It's not here." Justin shows me his screen.

"Well if you deleted it, it wouldn't be," I snark.

"I'm telling you, I never sent it. I never sent it and I never deleted it," he insists. "And I never got any messages or calls from you. And yeah, I did have that conversation with my mom. She did give me an ultimatum, and I told her I wanted to be part of the family, but that if I had to choose between the family and you, that I’d choose you.”

I'd missed that part of the conversation. If I’d listened just ten seconds more instead of running off with my pathetic hurt feelings, maybe we'd be in a different situation now. Or maybe not. It still doesn't explain the rest.

I try to explain. “I came to the house the next day, you know. You weren't there. Your dad told me you didn't want to see me anymore. And with everything else that had happened... I... I believed him." I shrug, but I'm not feeling quite so confident now.

Justin frowns. “He told me you came around, but he said you told him you were done with me, tired of 'all my drama',” and he uses air quotes around the last three words. "You hadn't texted me..."he holds his hand up to stop me interrupting, "I thought you hadn't texted me, 'cause I never got that text, and with all the trouble I'd caused you... well, it just made sense..."

I shake my head. “I never said that. I would never. I promise. I thought you were letting me go. So in the end I just left.”

We look at each other, both stunned, I think. Thinking about what Justin had just been through, how confused and unsure he had been when he'd come to me after escaping the Centre, how certain he was that I wouldn't want to see him... it would have been easy to make him think I didn't want him.

"Fuck!" I swear, barely containing my anger. I feel like I'm going to explode.

Justin grinds his teeth together, managing to look both furious and vulnerable at the same time. “They just keep lying to us, don’t they?” he rasps. It's not just his dad... there were also Justin's letters with his desperate pleas for help that lay hidden in my mother’s desk for months too.

"That doesn't explain the text, though," I remind him. "And did you really block me?"

His dirty blond locks swish around as he shakes his head. He puts his screen in front of us both and goes to Favorites. Clicks on 'info' beside my name, scrolls down and shows me the number's not blocked.

"Hang on! That's not my number," I burst out.

"What?"

I grab his wrist, and run my finger down the screen until the number shows again. I stab my finger at it.

"Look! The last digit is wrong... it's a 2 when it should be a 1."

"That's weird. I haven't even been in Contacts recently. I wonder how that got changed. That explains why you didn't get my calls or texts, but it doesn't explain why you couldn't contact me," Justin speaks slowly, frowning. "And it doesn't explain why you think I sent you that text."

We're both puzzling over how any of this could happen, when suddenly I have an idea.

"While you were at your parents' house, was there ever a time when you didn't have your phone with you?"

Justin gets that distant look again. Then he nods, super-slowly.

"Y-e-ah. You know... that night... after dinner my dad made me leave my phone in the kitchen while he and I went out and worked in the garage together. It was still there when I came back but..."

"Do you think your mother could have done it? You have a lockscreen, right? How could she have gotten past that?"

Justin humphs. He purses his lips and screws up the side of his face in annoyance as realization hits.

"Yeah...Well... I think I know when it happened. We were in the kitchen earlier that afternoon, and there was a lot going on. They got me to show them something on my phone, and I remember thinking they were standing uncomfortably close. When I unlocked it, they could've seen the code."

We look at each other.

"Fuck!" exclaims Justin. He goes back to his phone.

"What's your actual number?" he asks.

As I tell it to him, he types it into the search bar of his contacts. When he types the final digit, a contact appears on the screen. The name is 'XX' so it was unlikely to show up in a normal search, and when we scroll down, sure enough, it's my actual number and the number is blocked.

So much misunderstanding between us. So many lost opportunities.

"Fuck," Justin says again, his voice barely a whisper. His shoulders sag.

Ultimately, Justin answers my original question, but he looks shattered.

“You asked why I came... I came to ask if we could try again.”

My heart breaks.

Despite everything, we’d had a chance. And I’ve screwed it up by fucking Jordy.