Page 49 of A Very Snowed In New Year
I like Journal Guy. I do. I just need to stop liking Holden so much.
I’m going to do what I gotta do.
I gotta get this out of my system.
Like writing in my Extra Super Secret Diary. Except it will be interactive. Hopefully. I will release this so it doesn’t have to live in my head anymore. Or in my heart. Or my belly. Or between my legs. I will do it because I know that if I don’t, I will always regret it. I will do it before Shay cancels or changes her password for that Backroom account. More importantly, I have to do this before Shay does Holden.
I’ll just have to keep reminding myself that the person Holden Archer really likes—or the personality he’s really responding to anyway—is me.
I lock my bedroom door and turn on a carefully curated private playlist on my laptop, the one I called “Ride the Storm.”
I shrug off my sweater and shimmy out of my miniskirt, letting it all pool to the floor. Just kidding. I almost fall over when I’m taking off my tights. But then I put on something that I feel sexy in. And I check out my butt in the full-length mirror.
I gotta say…I do like what I see.
FOURTEEN
Holden
FIFTY TEXTS OF NOT-SHAY
ShayAnything.83: Hi. Are you busy?
And here we go…
I close all the curtains in my hotel room and dim the lights.
I am not busy and I am beyond ready for Piper to get me out of her system. So she can get meintoher system. Or find out she’s been inmysystem to some degree for years. Maybe this really is complicated, but what is not complicated is what I want. I want to get to know Piper.
HoldUp.76: Hey. I’m here.
ShayAnything.83: Good. I set this new chat to disappearing mode. The messages will disappear after five minutes.
HoldUp.76: Yeah. I can see that. Cool. What exactly did you have in mind for this disappearing chat?
ShayAnything.83: Oh, you don’t want to know exactly what I have in my mind, trust me.
HoldUp.76: I think I do.
ShayAnything.83: Okay. I have to tell you I’m a little tipsy right now. But I was thinking about you. And I mean. I think about you a lot. And I wanted to think about you with you.
ShayAnything.83: Does that make sense?
Tipsy. Right. This here is what we call in the modern guy communitya potentially fucked-up gray area in an area that is already fucked up and many shades of gray.But I am going to get into it with this woman. Because it’s virtual. And it’s disappearing. And because this woman is definitely not Shay Nicholls. This is Piper. And because I can’t think about her without touching myself right now.
HoldUp.76: You’re making a lot of sense. You always do. Tell me what you’re thinking.
ShayAnything.83: You’re definitely going to the cabin at big boob, right?
ShayAnything.83: omg bear!!! Big Bear.
HoldUp.76: I am. If you’re gonna be there, that’s where I want to be.
ShayAnything.83: Really?
HoldUp.76: For real, for real.
There are moving dots and then they stop. Too long of a pause.
