Page 103 of The Accidental Text

Chapter 29

“Itake it last night didn’t go well,” Hannah says, standing over me. I’m lying on the bed, my face focused on the ceiling.

“What gave it away?”

“Your face looks like you’ve been crying all night. Unless I’ve got it wrong and they were tears of joy?”

I scoot over on the bed and she lies next to me. “Not good,” I say, my voice breaking up.

“What happened?”

“He … rejected me.”

“What? I’ll kill him,” she says, exasperated. “What did he say?”

I take a ragged breath, tears falling down the sides of my face. “It’s what he didn’t say.”

“Talk to me.”

I tell her the conversation, the one that’s been playing over and over again in my head, on repeat, like a broken record. He doesn’t want me. He only used me.

That’s what it feels like. All the texts we sent back and forth. All that time together. That was just him distracting himself from his loss, him trying not to feel.

“Wow, he’s got a lot of nerve,” she says.

“Yeah,” I say.

My phone, which is down by the end of my bed where I threw it, beeps. I just lie there, ignoring it.

“Do you want to see who that is?”

“Not really,” I say.

She sits up and grabs my phone, then looks at it and lies back down. “It’s Chase.”

“Yep,” I say. I knew it was him. Like some stupid sixth sense. It’s not the first text I’ve gotten from him since I heartbrokenly left his car last night.

Chase:Please call me

Chase:Can we talk?

Chase:Please talk to me

Chase:Please, Maggie

I’m sure the one he sent just now is just a repeat. Or maybe he’s at the jump, telling me he wishes I were there with him. To hold his hand, or whatever he needed from me, like the safety net that I was to him. I could help him not feel his feelings there too.

It doesn’t feel like me to not text him back. It feels weird. Like an itch I refuse to scratch. But I’m not ready to talk yet.

I sniffle, needing a tissue. “The part that hurts the most was his rejection.”

“Did he actually reject you?”

“Not with his words. He … changed the subject.”

“Oh, gosh.”

“I know.”

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