Page 31 of Her Football Star Ex

“Let’s think this through first.”

“What?” he asked. “What’s there to think through? I’m not going to try to date Emerson.”

“I know. I don’t want you to date her but…” I sighed. “I’m probably crazy for saying this, but I just wonder if this is some sort of gift from the universe or something.”

“A gift from the universe?” He was eyeing me like I was crazy.

I shrugged. “I don’t know. I guess, for a year I’ve been trying to figure out how to get her to forgive me, how to get her to let her walls down so we can actually have a real conversation with each other, but it hasn’t worked. So it just seems like, maybe this is the universe’s way of letting me do that.”

Cole's black eyebrows squished together. “But dude. She’s messagingme. Not you.”

“I know.” I sighed again. “But she doesn’t know it’s you. I mean, all she knows about you is what you have on your profile. Your photos don’t even show your face. All she knows is that you like fishing and have a similar body type as mine.”

“So you’re saying she only swiped right on me because she thought I looked like you?” He tilted his head to the side. “Because if she was looking for you, she could have just told you that this morning when you dropped off Jaxon.”

“I don’t mean it like that,” I said, trying to sort through my own thoughts that were going about a mile a minute. “I guess what I’m hoping happened was that she did it subconsciously.”

“But you don’t fish.”

“You’re being too literal,” I said. Then I shook my head. “I don’t know. Maybe I’m trying to make something out of nothing just because I hate the thought of her moving on when I can’t.”

Cole leaned back in his chair and crossed his arms. “So you’re saying you want me to message her back and use some sort of voodoo magic and somehow inspire her to realize she really wants to get back with you?”

“No.” I looked back at his phone and the messages she had already sent and tried to figure out what I was actually trying to say. “I just want a second chance so bad that I want to somehow use this situation to win her back.”

“As in, you want to use my profile to chat with your ex-wife?” Cole offered. “Kind of like that old Tom Hanks movie my mom used to love?”

“You’ve Got Mail?” I asked. That was one of Emerson’s favorite movies, too, and she had picked that at least once a year for us to watch for a date night in.

“Yeah, that’s the one,” he said.

“I guess it would be kind of like that.” I pursed my lips and thought about it.

The characters in that movie had never been married and divorced, but they were rivals. And when the Tom Hanks character found out who he’d fallen in love with through email, he had used the situation to his advantage to help Meg Ryan’s character to move past the issues they had and fall in love with him.

If I could pull off something similar and not make Emerson really mad at me for doing it, it would be a miracle.

Because nothing else I’d tried had worked.

Maybe this opportunity really was the miracle I was looking for.

“I just want to send her a few messages and see what happens,” I said.

“I should probably recommend some sort of intervention or call your therapist to talk you out of doing this.” Cole shook his head like he still couldn’t believe what I was suggesting. “But go ahead and respond to her.” He gestured to his phone.

So I made myself as comfortable as I could be, given the sudden swirl of nerves in my stomach, and tried to figure out a good response.

10

Emerson

My heart joltedin my chest when a message came through from Tyler.

It was Saturday night, and Jaxon and I were watchingThe Croodsfor about the hundredth time this winter. So while the caveman dad started to tell his stories where everyone inevitably died, I had decided to check back on the guys I’d messaged last night.

A couple had responded earlier, and we’d messaged back and forth this afternoon, but Tyler—the buff-looking fisherman—had left his message unread all day.

Until now when he’d apparently seen my second message that had teased him about his lack of response.

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