Page 22 of Finally Loved

Roxanne breaking up with Neve changed a lot in her life—and what she needed to tell people. Well, the couple she had to tell. Oh, how she hated telling people. The pity, the sympathy, the knowing looks… Perhaps she should have been more grateful Roxanne had insisted on keeping them so quiet.

But, if Alba didn’t reply to her message, what difference did it make? They’d met twice, both times accidentally. All of the people in Neve’s life didn’t know about Alba. Even the two people who did know would likely be glad nothing ever came of the infamous napkin.

And still, there was something so painful about the prospect of rejection. Maybe that was just the human experience. Maybe it was just the idea of another rejection, even a tiny one, so closeto such a huge, impersonal, and heartbreaking rejection. Maybe it was just Neve.

She wasn’t ever going to know the answer, she feared.

She tipped her head back further as she lay on the couch, letting the napkin fall to her stomach, and tried not to cringe as the remembered need to suck in her stomach in front of Alba’s date lanced through her, burning hot and shameful. She squeezed her eyes together, shaking the thought from her head. It had been a moment of weakness, that was all. These things happened, and nobody else knew that it had. Everything was fine.

As if to prove a point to herself, Charlie, Alice, and the entire world, she dragged her phone towards her. She didn’t have the energy or the wherewithal to cook, but she could order food. She could order food and be grateful for her body and enjoy every bite of it.

And she could think about something other than whether or not the only use for her phone tonight was texting Alba.

It was a good plan while it lasted. But ordering food only took so long. Even monitoring the progress of her food only took so long and so much energy. All too soon, she was left in a transitory space waiting for her food to arrive with nothing to do but stare at her phone.

Maybe she should have mustered up the energy to cook after all.

She stared at her phone on the coffee table, lying right next to where she placed the napkin, for far too long. She flicked the TV on in a desperate attempt at a distraction. She checked the progress of her food again.

And, when it was less than five minutes away, Neve finally made a decision.

Sometimes, she did the things she was dreading most right before bed, when she was exhausted. That way, she could fallasleep, and, by the next morning, the thing was dealt with and her brain was rested, no longer stuck on whatever it was she’d needed to do. In five minutes, she’d be eating her dinner—her favorite meal from her favorite Vietnamese restaurant—and that would be a distraction, a mental reset. Maybe it would work like sleep.

She glanced around the room. If this was going to work, she needed to set the scene. Fussing after sending the message would do no good. It would just force her to fixate on her own mistakes and her impending rejection by Alba. Then, she’d have to think about how to have the necessary conversation with Charlie whilst knowing that Alba wanted nothing to do with her, and the whole situation would be a million times more embarrassing than it already was.

“Stop.” Neve shook her head, speaking aloud to the room as if her brain could be commanded simply because she spoke loud enough to drown it out. It never quite worked like that, but she kept trying.

She took a deep breath and released it slowly. Three minutes until food. She pulled up a comedy show she loved on the TV. Set the lighting to her favorite level. Took another deep breath. And picked up her phone, switching to the texting app.

As she typed, it occurred to her how infrequently she ever just texted people these days. It was always done through another messaging app or platform. If anyone raided her texts, they’d think the only people who ever messaged her were her service provider and companies texting her confirmation codes. Even Neve wasn’t quite that lonely.

By the time she reached the end of the text, she wasn’t completely sure what she’d said, but, if she read it back, she’d pick at it until there was no message left to send. So, rather than check it, or doubt herself, or act like a regular, confident person,she just hit send. Releasing her thoughts and her likely typos out into the universe.

Maybe if Alba ignored her now, she could pretend it was simply from a deep hatred of people who made typos in texts.

The second the message was gone, her doorbell buzzed, saving her from the inevitable panic and debating whether she could simply recall the message. She wasn’t even sure that was something you could do with texts. And she wasn’t going to figure it out now.

She locked her phone and threw it face down onto the couch as she jumped up to answer the door, letting the scent of food and an interaction with someone who knew nothing about her other than her name and where she’d ordered her dinner from wash over her like a soothing balm. Experience told her the relief was unlikely to last long, but she tried desperately not to let her mind drift back to the phone or Alba—is she on her phone? Has she gotten the message? Does she leave people on read? She might be out. Or sleeping. Or busy…

It was only when trying actively to ignore her phone that Neve realized just how frequently she tapped its screen, just to check the time, the weather, if she had any notifications. An odd habit developed in the time of smartphones on silent. Not wanting to be hit with notifications constantly, but needing to be available and reachable.

She tried desperately to concentrate on her show and the delicious meal before her, but her hand moved time and time again to the side as if to touch her phone screen. She even realized how much she tended to put her phone down on her left side as that hand flicked out repeatedly, driven by a habit she hadn’t consciously realized she’d been developing.

Perhaps, if she could be annoyed with herself for that, she’d be less concentrated on what she actually wanted to see onher phone. But she couldn’t help thinking the two things were related, and that didn’t help at all.

She really needed to figure out why she was feeling this way—well, she needed to figure out how to heal from Roxanne’s rejection so that she could handle situations normally again.

Neve consciously refocused and made every effort to listen to her show, to watch it and not see anything else in her mind, to enjoy her food and ignore her phone. By the end of the episode, she’d done both better and worse than she’d hoped.Betterbecause she hadn’t picked her phone up once.Worsebecause it was the only thing she’d thought about.

Her dinner had been hot and delicious and comforting, and everything she’d needed. The show she’d been watching, she was certain was as funny as always, but, if pressed, she had a funny feeling she’d only have been able to give the broadest overview of the plot. Maybe she should have done a rewatch of something instead. She’d been counting on the fact that it was new to keep her attention. Apparently, Alba demanded more attention than that. Neve should have known, really.

She let the next episode play. It didn’t really matter. She was going to have to go back and watch them both again anyway. She cleaned up. And then it was just her and the phone, sitting together on the couch, desperately demanding her attention.

She couldn’t ignore it forever.

Her heart pounded in her chest as she picked it up.

The screen lit up.

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