Page 35 of Hot for Her
After what happened, a part of my soul is deeply bruised and in danger of turning black. That part wants to tell her it’s best to stay away from this guy before he breaks her tiny little tiger heart. Or worse.
But I won’t let someone else’s behavior change my tiny tiger heart, dammit. So I tell her the truth.
“Even if it’s just a fling, Em, it sounds like you had a really amazing time. Minus the hospital part. And if I were you, I’d tell him that. Don’t hide behind me or Ethan or your mom or your hectic life. If he’s the kind of man you say he is, tell him the truth. That you have a lot going on. That you’re almost eighteen, and that he makes you feel alive. If he cares about you, which it sounds like he does an awful lot for someone you just met, he’ll understand.”
“I can’t stop thinking about him,” she admitted. “I don’t know if that’s a good thing. But when I’m with him, it’s like everything else just—”
“Floats away? Doesn’t matter as much? Isn’t so terrible after all?”
She nodded. “Yeah. All of that.”
“So tell him. Go. Tell him now. Trust me, you’ll regret it if you don’t.”
After I convince Em to go, a new night shift nurse comes in to take my vitals. Of course she flips the high beams on to do it.
“Was that your girlfriend that just left?” she asked while strapping the blood pressure cuff to my arm. “She’s beautiful.”
“Yeah, she is,” I said, responding to the second part of her comment and not the actual question.
Emersyn has always been beautiful, inside and out. I remembered of the first day I saw her, in middle school when I hated this town and everyone in it.
My dad was in the Marine Corps and we moved a lot. In all the schools I’d been to, I’d never seen someone so attractive be an outcast. She was new, too, it turned out, having moved here just a few weeks before me and eventually, Emersyn from Texas and Drew from everywhere became best friends.
I loved her and she loved me back. So we let people at school think we were more than friends because it kept my secret safe. Judging from where I am, it obviously didn’t keep metoosafe.
Listening to the machines beeping, I realized this hasn’t been fair to Emersyn. She deserved to have a life and not be saddled with a pretend boyfriend who only wanted her for her mind. Her mom had already caused her to miss out on enough teenage rites of passage. I wouldn’t ask her to miss out on anymore because of me.
When school starts, I’m going to tell her we need to stage a break up so guys will start asking her out.
I close my eyes and silently ask the universe to make whoever this guy she’s going to see a really, really good one.
