Page 99 of Fate Fiction

Might not be high end enough for you.

lol.

@eomc195

lmao. I think I’ll live.

I could also just have you take me to them.

He replied so fast I couldn’t put my phone down between sending my message and his answer.

I sat and stared at his reply. No, I couldn’t take him to my favorite local spots. We couldn’t sit across from each other in awkward silence, play that weird game of “who’s gonna pay?” when the check comes, and then awkwardly hug before parting ways forever. I couldn’t let that happen.

I groaned and dropped my head into my hands. “He’s trying to get me to take him out.”

“I swear to god if you don’t say yes—” Andrea started.

Caroline shooed off her fiancée. “Why do you think he wants to meet?”

“I don’t know, to serve me with lawsuit papers? To publicly humiliate me?”

“Maybe he wants to talk things through?” she posed the question while mopping up the last bits of her channa masala with a piece of naan.

I shook my head, trying to get that hypothetical out of my head. “Somehow that feels worse. I’ve spent three months pretending that week didn’t happen.”

“I’m sure it’ll be fine,” Caroline insisted. “Maybe awkward, but no one in the public eye like him will freak out on you in public. He has a reputation to protect.”

“Really helping the situation there,” I replied. I didn’t care about his reputation. Or his motives. I cared about that gnawing feeling in my sternum that told me I wanted to see him again. It was barely noticeable, but it scratched at my insides to the tune of “what if, what if, what if.”

“Tell him yes!” Andrea interjected.

I sighed and looked at the message again, waiting there like an unpopped bubble.

@dani_kg

Can do.

Message me when you’re in town and we can coordinate something.

@eomc195

I can also get your number and text you my itinerary.

If that’s cool?

“He wants my number,” I said, still mildly dumbfounded by the prospect.

“Do you think he’s going to text you himself or have his assistant do it for him?” Caroline mused.

How funny that six months ago Evan McLeod asking for my number would have sent me into full body shock—maybe even killed me—and now it felt like an awkward exchange between two random strangers. Who happened to sleep with each other. Two and a half times.

The prospect was a little funny. His name nestled between my gynecologist office and a former coworker.

“I don’t know,” I was distracted, hesitantly typing my number into our message thread. If I had given my number to him at camp I know I would’ve always been talking to him directly. If this was a legal ordeal, wouldn’t he have had someone else reach out initially? I was silently panicking, thinking of the hundreds of outcomes.

I tossed my phone to the other side of the couch and didn’t touch it again until Andrea and Caroline left hours later. Andrea reviewed her notes on my manuscript and we spent the better part of an hour writing a query letter that I scheduled to go out to her boss the following morning. I thanked Andrea well over a dozen times.

I still managed to avoid my phone as I tidied up, showered, and slathered my face in the various serums and creams I bought because someone on the internet told me to. As a face mask marinated on my pores, I finally checked my phone.