Page 40 of The Accidental Text

I will her with my eyes to see where this is going without me having to say it.

“My mom’s number is no longer hers.”

“I know,” she says.

“It belongs to someone else now,” I say, nodding my head slowly as if to nudge her along.

Hannah looks confused, but I decide I’m just going to let her lawyerly brain put the puzzle pieces together.

I see the moment she realizes. Her eyes practically bug out of her head. “The texts you were sending to your mom were going to this Chase guy?”

“Yes,” I say, feeling suddenly relieved that this secret is no longer mine alone. It’s almost like a weight I didn’t realize was there has been lifted off my shoulders.

“What in the … the entire time?” I’m not sure her eyebrows can go any higher at this point.

“No, only for the last two weeks of it. It took him that long to tell me. I think he thought they would just go away, and when they didn’t … he finally texted me back to tell me.”

“And now you’re what? Texting buddies?” Her voice gets more shrill with every question.

“Sort of?”

Hannah stares at me. Her facial expressions vacillate between confusion and concern. She stands up and starts pacing the dining room, back and forth, and back and forth.

She finally stops in front of me.

“So you’ve been texting a stranger? Like, how often?”

I take in a breath. “Here’s where it gets weird.”

Her eyebrows shoot up again. “It getsmoreweird than this?”

“So he told me he had my mom’s number, and that was that. I stopped texting my mom, obviously, and deleted the number off her contact page.”

“Right,” Hannah says, sitting back down at the table.

“And one night a few weeks later, Chase texted me.”

“Creeper!” Hannah yells, and Halmoni says something to her from the kitchen.

“Mind your own business, woman!” she yells back at her.

“Go on,” she says to me.

“I was initially concerned about him contacting me … but he reached out because it turns out his mom died in a car accident.”

“Oh,” Hannah says, sitting back in her chair. “That’s so sad.”

“I know, and my heart just—”

“Wait, how do you know his mom died? How do you know he’s not catfishing you?”

“He’s not.”

“But how do you know? Have you seen pictures of him?”

“I’m getting to that,” I say, letting the impatience show in my tone.

“Oh my gosh, he sent you pictures? Please don’t tell me they were of his junk. Were they of his junk? The world is full of pervs. I just saw a case where this woman was catfished by this old dude and he stole a bunch of money from her. Has he asked for money? Please tell me you didn’t give him money. As your lawyer, I advise you against ever speaking to this guy again.”

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