You are such an introverted killjoy, Galen.
Instead, the message was from Chast. I raised my brows in surprise.
I smiled, without even having a reason to, as I read.
Was it wrong of me to rather want to spend time with Chast, doing nothing, than going out with a group of great people? I always wanted to be included, and now I was, so why was I still so anxious and uneasy about it?
I knew I should go and have fun, but the idea of it still made my insides clench. It was going to be loud, stuffy and crowded, with a huge possibility of something going wrong. Somethingalwayswent wrong...
Unfortunately.
Drawing circles in the carpet with my foot, I glanced out of the window to make sure my taxi wasn’t waiting, and then back at myself in the mirror. My phone buzzed with another message from Chast right away—I imagined he laid on his couch, spread out and with Kitty next to him like he always did, a bottle of beer in hand.
Staring at the letters, I stopped moving my foot. Was he trying to tell me what it sounded like? To not worry about hooking up with someone else?
Of course, Chast probably wouldn’t care.Not like we’re a couple.It still made me wonder if he didn’t think I enjoyed our time together. That I had fun, in my own weird way. He would always encourage me to find ‘people my age’ and go out with ‘people my age’... I felt better and more understood with him than anyone else around me.
But I wasn’t stupid, either. I knew how much older Chast was. Maybe—no matter how infantile it made me feel when I thought about it—he had a point. Trying to make me spend more time with my peers. He definitely had more life experience than me. I just couldn’t help but feel like he was trying to get rid of me.
Grimacing playfully, I could almost see his mischievous expression as he wrote that message. Was he expecting me to send a photo?
Straightening my back and looking at myself in the mirror, I nervously shuffled around to find the best angle.
Covering my face with the phone, I took a picture and before the critical voice in my head could tear it to pieces—forcing me to take a thousand more and disliking all of them—I quickly pressed send and held my breath. Staring at the screen, I watched the icon change to ‘seen’, which tortured me for a few long seconds.
My heart skipped a beat, pushing a tidal wave of hot blood into my face.
Pinching the inside of my lip with my teeth, I tried to fight against the stupid smirk while I read the message again. The word ‘bite’ sent a pleasurable, tingly sensation through my body, together with the images of what happened several weeks ago. My skin burned and pulsed in the spots Chast’s teeth indented, like it still remembered.
Drawing in a deep breath, I closed my eyes to bring myself back to Earth.Nothing more than a joke to do with the strawberries... Calm down.
Suppressing any inappropriate thoughts, I noticed the lights from the outside reflecting on my bedroom window. Leaning toward it, I saw the taxi parked up outside our gate, and seconds later received a notification about my ride’s arrival.
Sighing, I threw one last glance toward the mirror and hurried a reply to Chast.
Knowing I wouldn’t get another text—because Chast replied only when he had something to say—I put the phone in my pocket, together with the keys and a card, and ran downstairs.