Page 88 of Mr. Wrong Number

After she disappeared our food came, and just as the waiter was filling her wineglass, my phone lit up.

It was Olivia.

Texting Wrong Number.

From the ladies’ room.

Olivia:I need to talk to you. Can I call you later?

I double-checked that my phone was on silent and put it in my pocket. What in the hell? She was out with me but thinking about Nick? Texting Nick from the bathroom?

I knew Mr. Wrong Number wasn’t an actual person andthat Nick wasn’t attached to the number, but my gut burned at the thought of her wanting to talk to him.

Olivia

I rubbed my lips together and put the gloss back in my purse. I felt better now that I’d put Mr. Wrong Number on notice, and now I could go enjoy the rest of the night without feeling so guilty.

Because from the second Colin had grabbed my hand by the elevators at our building, I’d felt like a snake. Nothing was going on with Mr. Wrong Number, but it felt wrong to have a secret textual relationship that he didn’t know about.

The truth of the matter was that even though Colin might just be a “fun fling,” if he were doing the same thing—if he had his own Misdial who he talked to on the regular—well... that would not be okay with me.

Even though technically we’d never talked about exclusivity.

I was sad to lose Mr. Wrong Number because he’d really meant a lot to me since I’d come back to Omaha, but the combination of the no chemistry with Nick and the out-of-this-world chemistry with Colin left me without any doubt that it was the right thing to do.

Before leaving the bathroom, I scrubbed the paw prints off my skirt and sweater and removed my tights, tossing them into the garbage can.

Done and done.

When I got back to the table, Colin’s eyes dipped down tomy legs and he smiled. There was something about the way he noticed little things—my missing tights, how early I liked to eat dinner—that made me feel like I mattered to him.

Even if only temporarily.

Colin seemed a little quieter when I came back. He was still charming and entertaining, but I felt like something was a little off.

Maybe he didn’t get along with his grandparents and seeing them had upset him.

Maybe he was embarrassed that they’d seen him with a girl who looked like she’d been dumpster diving. I wanted to break this weird feeling, so when we got in the car, I turned toward him in my seat.

“Okay. Question. Did you ever think about me before I moved in with you guys?”

He gave me a weird look out of the corner of his eye. “What?”

I giggled and looked out the window. “Let me give you an example. Even though I hated you because you were a jerk, there was a time your senior year when you crashed at our house. I had to go into Jack’s room at like five in the morning, looking for my charger, and there you were.”

He glanced over at me and just shook his head slowly.

“You were sound asleep on the air mattress, wearing just your boxers, and, well, this klutzy nerd about had a heart attack.”

He slid into one of his deep chuckles that warmed me from the inside. He squinted his eyes at me and said, “You little pervert!”

“Guilty. I can still rememberexactlywhat those plaid boxers looked like.” I grinned. “Now you go.”

“Not a chance.” He hit the blinker and slowed as he merged onto the east ramp. “I plead the Fifth.”

“Oh, come on—give me something. There wasn’t one tiny moment of attraction in all of our years?”

“Not doing this,” he laughed.

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