Page 12 of Exes That Puck
That should make me feel better, but it doesn’t.
What gets me is what happened after. Outside. The way she kissed me back like no time had passed. Like we never broke up at all. Her hands in my hair, her body pressed against mine, every wall she’s built crumbling the second our lips touched.
That wasn’t pretending. That was real.
So why won’t she text me back?
I grab my phone again, scroll to our thread, and start typing.
Hey.
Delete.
Can’t stop thinking about you.
Delete. Too honest.
We should talk.
Delete. She’ll ignore that for sure.
My thumb hovers over the keyboard. What do you say to someone who’s pretending you don’t matter when you both know you do?
I switch to Instagram instead and laugh at the first thing that pops up in my feed. It’s a meme that’s a screenshot of a post. Someone wrote,Really debating on weather or not to take AP next year.The two comments below say,*Whether. And then the second one says,Don’t take it. You not ready.
It makes me snicker, so I screenshot it and send it to Kara without much thought.
Once it’s sent, I realize what I’ve done. Shit. I put my phone down and stare into space. I need to remain casual. Like I’m not desperate for her to respond.
The message delivers immediately. I pick up my phone and stare at the screen, waiting for those three dots to appear. For her to type backlmaoorpoor kidor literally anything that proves she’s not completely shutting me out.
One-minute passes. Then two.
My phone buzzes and my heart jumps, but it’s just the guys on the team. I don’t bother to respond.
Three minutes. Four.
The message switches from delivered to read.
Still no dots.
“Fuck,” I mutter, letting my head fall back against my pillow. She saw it. She looked at it. And she chose not to respond.
That stings worse than I want to admit.
Dylan’s moving around the kitchen now, slamming cabinet doors and clanking dishes like he’s trying to wake the whole house. I check my phone again. Still nothing.
“You’ve been staring at that thing for hours,” Dylan says when he notices me. He’s standing at the counter with a piece of toast hanging out of his mouth, looking at me like I’m pathetic.
“Waiting for her to reply,” I say, leaning against the counter.
“You shouldn’t,” he says.
I shrug, not giving a damn what anyone else thinks. I know what I want, and what I want is Kara Day.
Dylan shakes his head and grabs his gym bag. “You know she’s not gonna text you back, right?”
“We’ll see about that,” I snark.
