Page 35 of Between the Lines

I raised an eyebrow. “Here I was thinking I was being ghosted,” I said, sitting back in my chair as I made the full spin to face her.

Instead of responding, she crossed her arms. “You’re not even going to get up to greet me? No hug or anything?”

I chuckled. “Do you think that’s the energy I should be on?”

“Why not?”

I scoffed.

Shehadto be playing.

“Did you not get any of my texts over the last couple of days?” I asked—not that I didn’t already know the answers.

The texts had read-receipts attached.

So Iknewshe’d received them, but what was unclear was the reason behind her lack of response—which, honestly, made my conclusion surrounding any connection to her even easier.

“I did,” she admitted. “But they said we needed to talk, and I didn’t think I was going to like what I heard.”

She shrugged.

“I…appreciate the honesty, I guess,” I said, shaking my head. “But avoiding it doesn’t eliminate the need for us to talk.”

“Am I going tolikethis talk?”

“Probably not.”

“Then I’m not trying to hear this shit,” she said, making a dramatic point of putting her fingers in her ears, another antic I couldn’t help laughing about.

“Let’s not do this.”

“Oooh,” she groaned. “You hear that? How you didn’t put a pet name on it to soften it up or anything?”

I sucked my teeth. “We were never on any ‘pet names’ energy.”

“Idefinitelyused to get a ‘baby’ here and there.”

“Yes, in averyspecific context,” I countered with a shrug. “Context that…I don’t think it’s good for us to share anymore.”

She scoffed. “And, there it is. I knew it was coming. Let me guess—this has something to do with Elodie Perry running to you to be her hero last week?”

Immediately, I frowned. “What? What does Ellie have to do with anything?”

“Ellie?” she asked, eyes big. “Oh. It’s definitely that. The rumors are true, then.”

“Stella, what the fuck are you talking about?”

She rolled her eyes. “Since you’re acting clueless—it was all over the blogs that her car was spotted coming out of your neighborhood the day after her supposed ‘attack.’ The same night you told me you were too busy running through lines for me to come over.”

“I’ve known Elodie for years—the show I was on with her, her brother’s show, was a pivotal moment in my career,” I said. “So yeah, when I saw what happened, I told her she should come to my house—not that it’s your business.”

“Right, because we were only ever just fucking,” she snapped, in a tone that made me frown.

“Am I missing something here?” I asked. “’Cause I could swear you were the main one reminding me left and right every time we stepped out that it was ‘just for the blogs.’ And any timeit was just me and you, yes fucking is all you were interested in—you got your nut and bounced.”

“Which you never complained about!”

My face twisted into a frown, confused. “Did youwantme to complain about it?!”

---