Page 24 of The Princess & the Prospect

“Were you working on homework?”

“No, something else. Is there something you need?”

“Yes,” he finally said before taking a seat across from me in the chair.

“Okay, what is it? Do you need me to move out now?”

“No. I told you the house is yours, Anna.”

“What do we need to talk about then?”

“I wanted to make sure you had everything you need. I was paying the utility bills today, and it reminded me that there were other things you might need. I don’t know when your make-up appointment is, but if you let me know how much…”

“You paid the utility bills?” I asked.

He grinned at me. “Yes, that’s why the lights stay on.”

I felt a little sick. I was already failing at this adulting thing. “I didn’t even think about it,” I admitted.

“Why would you? You’ve never had to pay them before.” He shrugged it off like it was nothing. In reality, it was everything. He was still taking care of me even when I had refused to tell him about appointments and had been a brat. He had been right that day when he yelled at my sister and Gretchen. I had been purposely avoiding him every step of the way. I never allowed him to speak to me long enough to even ask more than a simple, ‘how are you?’.

When I didn’t say anything else, the slip of a smile on his face vanished and he stood again. “Okay, well, I’ll get out of your way then. I just wanted to check in and let you know that’s been taken care of so you wouldn’t be worried. If you need anything, shoot me a text.”

I laughed at that. It sounded like the most empty promise I’d been handed outside of our wedding vows.

“What’s so funny?”

“You wanting me to text you.”

“What exactly is funny about that? I meant it.”

I continued to laugh, but with each heaving breath I took as a result the laughter turned to me choking on sobs instead. These hormones were dooming me to eternal humiliation.

“Anna? What the hell?”

It took a minute, but I was able to pull myself together enough to let him know why me texting him about my troubles was about as ridiculous and pointless as me writing in my stupid drool-stained journal. “I’d have to know your number in order to text you, Joker.”

A look akin to horror and surprise crossed his face at the mention of the fact that I didn’t have a number I could text to get a hold of him other than through a third party, I supposed. If I was going to go through someone else, I’d just tell them my troubles instead.

“Shit! I thought I had given it to you.” He seemed to be trying to remember the moment when he supposedly gave it to me, but I knew better. That moment never happened. “I remember talking about it with Deck,” he told me as he glanced back down at me looking puzzled still. “I’m sorry, Anna. I didn’t realize.” He asked me to get my phone out then, and rattled off his new number. I put it in my cell. “Now text me really quick so I know you got the right one in there.”

“I’m not stupid,” I scolded.

“Not saying you are, beautiful. I hit the wrong numbers often. It happens.”

I didn’t respond to him calling me beautiful. Instead, I texted him.

Me: This is not the wrong number.

His phone dinged with the incoming text and when he read it, he laughed, making me feel warm inside to see that response from him for the first time in far too long. I used to love making him laugh because it made his eyes shine so brightly when he did. Joker was a man who was born to smile, laugh, and make people happy. I felt like I had destroyed a part of that when I wasn’t honest with him about who I was, and I’d been swimming in that guilt ever since.

“I see you got the text this time, Joker,” I insisted.

“I don’t like when you do that,” he told me.

“Do what?”

“Call me Joker. It doesn’t seem right coming from you.”

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